In and out of jail

The Marquis de Sade was arrested for the first time at the age of 23 for mistreating a prostitute. Later he would gain access to all the brothels in Paris. At the end of the 1760s he entered a relationship with his wife's sister and evidence indicates that he, his wife and her sister participated in his sadistic sexuality. In 1772 the Marquis was sentenced to death for several violent attacks on prostitutes, but he escaped. In 1775 it was revealed that the Marquis had had orgies on his estate and had to flee once again. De Sade spent 27 years in all in prison or mental hospitals by the time of his death in 1814.