Victoria Mas on The Mad Women’s Ball: ‘My book is a fiction... but terrible things really happened to women in Paris 200 years ago’

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Terrible things that really happened to many women in the Salpêtrière 200 years ago, when the very thin line between medical treatment and voyeurism was blurred.” On a video link from her home in Paris, the shy, 31-year-old daughter of Eighties French electropop star Jeanne Mas tells me she only learnt about the “heavy history” of France’s largest hospital in 2017. I’m on the right side of the wall.’ It is the same thing.” open image in gallery Anatomist Paul Richer noted that ‘the camera loves’ Louise Augustine Gleizes: she was one of the hospital’s most photographed inmates At the Salpêtrière’s annual Mad Women’s Ball, the hospital’s “hysterical” inmates were given fancy-dress costumes to wear. open image in gallery Jane Avril pictured in ‘Divan Japonais’ by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec “Feminism has historically differed between French and anglophone cultures,” says Mas. Shouting politely,” she grins, “and without having to make a sound.” Prizewinning French bestseller ‘The Mad Women’s Ball’ by Victoria Mas is published by Penguin Books