In the program of Europe 1, "Historically yours", Stéphane Bern looks at the roots of an expression of everyday life.
Wednesday, he is interested in the origin of "we are not out of the hostel", an expression that does not exactly tell of a pleasant moment shared in a tavern.
Stéphane Bern suggests every day, in
Historically yours
with Matthieu Noël, to discover these expressions that we use on a daily basis without necessarily knowing their origin.
On Wednesday, the host explains to us those, both prison and judicial, of "we are not out of the hostel".
"We did not leave the hostel" has two different origins.
The first comes from 19th century slang.
The hostel then designates the prison and, when we have serious legal problems, we are not actually out of the hostel.
The second origin goes back to a criminal case, the detailed story of which you can also find in a podcast told by friend Christophe Hondelatte on Europe1.fr.
>> Find the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern in replay and podcast here
The inn we never left alive
It is October 2, 1833 and 30,000 people flock to Privas, in the Ardèche.
Two men and a woman are going to have their necks cut in public.
King Louis-Philippe I did not pardon them and the guillotine is installed in the courtyard of their own inn.
The owner, his wife and the servant were convicted of murder.
Justice was only able to prove a homicide, but more than 50 people were allegedly murdered by the evil trio.
The procedure is always the same: tourists far from their homes are surprised in their sleep.
And, as a sordid little detail, the walls of the rooms are painted red to better hide the traces of blood.
A scandalous affair which marked the spirits, to the point that, almost two centuries later, we still exclaim "we are not out of the hostel" when we are in a bad time.