[Location to be verified]

Apprenticed at the age of 14 to a stonemason, Claude Perret then practised the trade in Paris, where he became a mason and then a contractor. On 19 February 1869, he was sentenced to eight days in prison for insulting an officer.

He was a National Guard during the Siege and sided with the Commune. He was soon elected sergeant, then second lieutenant in the 4th company of march of the 1st battalion. He fought at Issy, at the Montrouge fort, and was at the Palais-Royal on 21 May: sufficient grounds to accuse him of looting and arson. On 9 August 1873, he was sentenced in absentia to death by the 4th Council of War.
He managed to reach Belgium, where his arrival in Laeken was officially recorded on 21 April 1873. His three children, who would later go on to become renowned architects and build reinforced concrete buildings, were born in Brussels. The most famous of them, Auguste Perret, led the team that rebuilt the city of Le Havre after the Second World War.