Fryderyk Skarbek

Fryderyk Florian Skarbek (15 February 1792 – 25 September 1866), a member of the Polish nobility, was an economist, novelist, historian, social activist, administrator, politician, and penologist who designed the Pawiak Prison of World War II ill fame.

He became, while absent in Paris, vicariously godfather to the composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–49), who had been born on the Skarbek estate in Żelazowa Wola.

When in 1828 he went to Paris to publish a book, the government commissioned him to report on prisons in Holland and Great Britain.

In March 1831 he became a member of the Provisional Council of the Kingdom,[c] and he returned to Poland only after Warsaw had been captured in September 1831 by Russian General Ivan Paskevich.

Despite Russian Poland's deteriorating situation under Paskevich as Namestnik of the Kingdom of Poland (1831–55) — with the changing of the Constitution in 1832, the closing of Warsaw University in 1833, the promotion of Russification — Skarbek went on to serve in the administration, as president of the Central Council of Welfare Charity Works, and later as president of the Directorate of Insurance.