19th Century Prison in France

[mackaa]

Hi everyone
I am tracking a convict who was transported to Australia.  He was court martialled in India then sent to Marseilles.  This is all the English prison records say that he was transferred from Marseilles.  I have no knowledge of France at all so am wondering if he would have been held at the Chateau d'If.  Would anyone know if this was the main prison in or near Marseilles in 1861?

My second question is do National Archives in France hold prison records similar to the ones in England?  ie recording prisoner name with arrival and departure dates etc.  I have had a look at the website but it is all in French (of course) and my school french lessons are absolutely no help to me now.  So do they hold these records? and how can one get a copy of them?
TIA
Melanie
   

[jorose]

There are other possibilities.
Maison de correction de Chave would be one: http://criminocorpus.hypotheses.org/201

A lot of records are held in the departmental (like county) archives.
For Marseilles this would be Bouches-du-Rhône.
Actually they do have some online! (surprised!)

http://www.archives13.fr/archives13/CG13/cache/bypass/pid/478
 at left, choose:
archives en ligne
 then, at top, click the link that reads "Répertoires d'écrous des établissements pénitentiaires"
then, look for the small link in red that reads "Lien vers le site externe 'Accéder aux documents des répertoires d'écrous des établissements pénitentiaires'"

It looks like most of what is online are index books, not the full records.
If you have trouble finding what you need in the records, let me know his name and I'll take a look.

[mackaa]

Thanks Jorose
The Maison de correction de Chave was too late for my prisoner.  And thank you for the link.  A lot of the documents are very hard to read but managed to get through all the indexes in the right time period.  (NB there are some full records but very pale and very difficult to read - also the images are a nightmare to load sometimes having to enter the page number three or four times before they load but still great to have online).

I have since received another document from National Archives and as I couldn't find my man in the indexes above I have decided I am barking up the wrong tree. 

This new document clearly says received from Calcutta per "Marseilles" 14 Dec 1861.  So I think I am looking for a ship.

Thanks so much for taking the time to reply to me.
I am going to start a new thread along these lines.

rgds
Melanie