Jacques Belhomme was a personality of the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 and the owner of the Pension Belhomme

Pension Belhomme

-History:Around 1765, the joiner Jacques Belhomme took on the construction of a building for the son of a neighbouring aristocrat, who had been mad since birth. Seeing that running an asylum was more lucrative than joinery, he opened an asylum for lunatics, old people and whoever else rich...

. He appears in the 1951 film Caroline chérie after the novel by Jacques Laurent

Jacques Laurent

Jacques Laurent or Jacques Laurent-Cély was a French writer and journalist.He belonged to the literary group of the Hussards, and is known as a prolific historical novelist, essay writer, and screenwriter under the nom de plume of Cecil Saint-Laurent...

.

Life

A joiner in the village of Charonne, he was made the holder of the "pension bourgeoise", precursor to the clinics and rest homes of today, then a gaoler when the Jacobin

Jacobin (politics)

A Jacobin , in the context of the French Revolution, was a member of the Jacobin Club, a revolutionary far-left political movement. The Jacobin Club was the most famous political club of the French Revolution. So called from the Dominican convent where they originally met, in the Rue St. Jacques ,...

s sent prisoners there from the end of 1793.

He gained fame for a scandal that broke out just after his death, when the comte de Sainte-Aulaire prepared for the press an article accusing Belhomme of having profited from the Reign of Terror

Reign of Terror

The Reign of Terror , also known simply as The Terror , was a period of violence that occurred after the onset of the French Revolution, incited by conflict between rival political factions, the Girondins and the Jacobins, and marked by mass executions of "enemies of...

to ransome rich suspects. As ever, the reality was more subtle.