CRUELTY TO CHILDREN IN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH
CENTURY—ATTEMPT AT REGULATION—DEFORMING CHILDREN FOR
MOUNTEBANK PURPOSES—ANECDOTE OF VINCENT DE PAUL—HIS WORK
AND HIS SUCCESS.
From Datheus to Vincent de Paul the general history of the child in
Europe moves as from one mountain peak to another with a long valley
of gloom in between. Datheus has received no credit; Vincent de Paul
has been justly recognized as a deserving contemporary of that list of
brilliant men who went to make up the Golden Age of France. Golden Age
that it was, with its highly polished manners, there, under the reign
of the elegant Mazarin and the delicate Anne of Austria, it was no
uncommon sight to see a child lying dead on the pavements, while others
died of misery and hunger under the very eyes of the passers-by. Not
a day passed, say the chroniclers, when the men who had charge of the
sewers or the police did not draw out at least the body of one child.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century Europe, and France
especially, was war-ridden. During the sixteenth century, the
religious and charitable impulses had suffered, first through the
national war, then by the factional wars, and finally by religious wars.
“The religious war,” said the historian of Languedoc,[427] “almost
entirely destroyed the Hospital of Montpellier ... and even the order
of Saint Esprit was dying out throughout France.”
It was a curious and disjointed society, that of the France of that
day. Kingdoms there were within the royal domain; the laws of the large
city frequently clashing with those of the province within which it was
located; here and there provinces following their own laws rather than
the laws of the kingdom itself. In some provinces the Church dominated;
in others the nobles; elsewhere, the two classes were beginning to melt
into the body of the nation which occasionally overrode both.[428]
At Aix, for instance, it was the custom to place the abandoned child in
a religious home where, as in the rest of Provence, the unknown bastard
was charged to the nearest hospital. Practically the same law was
observed in Bretagne.
At Poitiers, a decree on September 15, 1579, “condemning the provision
by which religious orders nourished infants found at their door,”
ordered that the monasteries and ecclesiastic chapters of the place
should be called on to regulate their contributions to the support of
the children.
But as a rule the great nobles were obliged to take care of the
foundlings abandoned within their jurisdiction. In the origin of the
fiefs, the bastards had been set down as _épaves_ (waifs), and the
interpreters of the law (_jurisconsults_) had decided that the lord had
no right to refuse to take care of the _épaves_. The parliaments too
took the view that, inasmuch as the _seigneur_ profited by all deaths
that occurred and succeeded to all titles in the case of disinheritance
within his domain, he should accept the liability for the care of the
unknown children found within their domain.
Of the many decrees which touch on this important point, the oldest is
that of the Parliament of Paris in the year 1547. Many other _arrêts_
followed, until on September 3, 1667, the following, in the interest of
the special hospitals, declared that:
“All the _seigneurs_ (_hauts justiciers_) will be held responsible for
the expense and nourishment of all infants whose parents are unknown,
and who are found exposed on their lands and taken to hospitals.”
This regulation, as Ramcle says, failed in its purpose, for it was not
possible to force what was considered charity on the none too generous
nobles. The laws were evaded, and each community tried to send to its
neighbours the unfortunate infants it should have guarded.
The mortality of infants increased, and as in Rome in the days of
the Empire, mothers threw their children into the sewers or left
them on the highways. Those less inhuman left them at the doors of
the hospitals, where, during the winter, in the morning, they were
frequently taken in more dead than alive.
Of course, the laws against these abandonments were promptly
enforced—the unfortunate women were easily punished. A girl who killed
her offspring was hung, and others who were caught leaving children in
solitary places were whipped and disgraced in the cities and villages
where they lived.
By an edict of Henry II., under penalty of punishment, a woman
_enceinte_ was obliged to declare her condition; and to add to this
bungling legislative effort, she was obliged to tell who the guilty
man was, the maxim _creditur virgini_ being accepted everywhere. The
attempts at curing the ills failed, for, while the intentions of the
legislators were undoubtedly honest, they only exposed shameless
conditions, made the unfortunate suffer even more, brought ruin to
many honest families, and gain to shameless women only. The number
of children abandoned and murdered in defiance of the regulations
increased instead of decreasing.
At this time there came an individual effort to better things, by a
woman whose name is not even known and whose efforts at a noble work
have, owing to the actions of her servants, been much misinterpreted.
Living in a house in the Cité de Saint-Landry, Paris, with two
servants, she received every morning the infants that the soldiers (or
police) had collected during the night. So many were eventually turned
over to her, that she was unable to feed them, and many died in her own
house for lack of food. In the crowded conditions we are also told a
selection[429] was made and some of the children were exposed again, or
at least they were turned over to some charitable or interested person
who would accept them. The care of the children devolving finally on
the two servants, many of them are said to have perished from the drugs
they were given to keep them quiet. The availability of children as
beggars led the servants to look on them as a means of money making,
and they were sold for various cruel and evil purposes, a condition
that eventually led to the reform undertaken by Vincent de Paul.
The fact that they frequently fell into the hands of magicians,
mountebanks, and pedlars, who deformed them in order to make them of
assistance in earning a livelihood, is attested by the biographer of
Vincent.
“Returning from one of his missions,” says Maury, “Vincent de Paul,
whom I have dared to call almost the visible angel of God, found under
the walls of Paris one of these infants, in the hands of a beggar,
who was engaged in deforming the limbs of the child. Although almost
overcome with horror, he ran to the savage with that intrepidity with
which the virtuous man always attacks crime.
“‘Barbarian,’ he cried, ‘how you deceive me—from a distance I took you
for a man!’
“He snatched the victim from its persecutor, carried it in his arms
across Paris, gathered a crowd about him and called on them to witness
the brutality of the day and place in which they lived. A few days
later he had founded his first institution for children, and the cause
of children had enrolled one of its noblest champions.”
In order to thoroughly understand the situation, a number of charitable
women under the guidance of Madame Legas, niece of the Lord Chancellor
Marillac,[430] went to the house in the Cité de Saint-Landry and
studied the question from the inside of the house. Their horror at the
things they saw led them to declare that the children massacred by
Herod were fortunate in comparison with the condition of the orphans
of Paris.[431] As it was impossible to take charge of all the children
then in the Cité de Saint-Landry twelve children were taken, and in
1638, under the care of Madame Legas and some charitable women, a house
was opened for them in the Faubourg Saint-Victor. As they were able to
enlarge the scope of their institution, more and more children were
taken care of; the enthusiasm of these women ran so high under the
glowing example of Vincent, that even in the dead of night in the cold
corners, they would be found going about the streets of Paris, into
the worst and least lighted sections, doing police duty, gathering the
unfortunate victims, and carrying them to the house in the Faubourg
Saint-Victor.[432]
In the course of time, sufficient interest had developed in this work
so that enough money was forthcoming to enlarge the scope. Vincent
gathered together the pious women who had acted as his assistants and
addressed to them that _touchante allocution_, sometimes quoted as a
model of eloquence.[433] The house in the Faubourg Saint-Victor was
soon found to be too small, and the Château de Bicêtre was obtained
from the king.
The place was not found suitable on account of the _vivacité de l’air_
and the children were transferred to the Faubourg Saint-Lazare, then
in 1672 to the Cité, near Notre Dame, where they remained up to the
Revolution. Then they were assigned the ancient _abbaye_ of Port Royal
and the _maison de l’Oratoire_, located in the southern part of Paris.
The success of the new undertaking was so great that even Louis XIII.
became interested and donated four thousand francs per year to the
charity. Inasmuch as in the long history of the child’s fight for a
place in the government, this was the first recognition by a government
since the Roman emperors, it is interesting to read Louis’s own
statement in the preamble of the letters patent relating to this gift:
“Having been informed by persons of great piety, that the little
attention which has been given up to the present to the nourishing and
care of the parentless children exposed in the city and outskirts of
Paris has been the cause of death, and even has it been known that they
have been sold for evil purposes, and this having brought many ladies
to take care of these children, who have worked with so much zeal and
charitable affection that their zeal is spreading, and wishing so much
to do what is possible under the present circumstances,[434] we have,”
etc.
The example of Louis was followed in 1641 by his widow, Anne of
Austria, who made an annual gift of 8000 francs. She had become regent
and, speaking in the name of the young King, said that “imitating the
piety and the charity of the late King, which are truly royal virtues,
he adds to this first gift, another annual gift of 8000 francs. Thanks
to what has already been given and the charity of individuals, the
greater number of the infants rescued have been raised, and there are
now more than four hundred living.”
In June, 1670, Louis XIV. made the children’s hospital one of the
institutions of Paris, and authorized it to discharge the functions and
enjoy the privileges of such an institution.
“As there is no duty more natural,” he declared, “and none that
conforms more to the idea of Christian charity than to care for the
unfortunate children who are exposed—their feebleness and their
misfortune making them doubly worthy of our compassion ... considering
also that their protection and safeguarding is to our advantage
inasmuch as some of them may become soldiers, others workmen,
inhabitants of the colonies,” etc.[435]
The edict declared that while the expenses of the institution had
reached forty thousand francs a year, the royal donation could not
exceed twelve thousand francs, and the King exhorted the women of
charity who had done so much, to continue their notable work.
This royal recognition of the great institution at Paris was not
without evil effect in the provinces. The nobles and the civic
authorities of rural communities, wishing to get rid of the burden of
the infants deserted within their jurisdiction, had the unfortunates
taken to Paris.[436] They were usually carried there by men who were
driving in on other business, and as many stops were made between
the starting point and the destination, and as the drivers were more
interested in other things than in the infant baggage, for which they
were paid in advance, the mortality greatly increased.
“There was hardly a town in the kingdom,” said Latyone,[437] “where
abandoned children were admitted freely and without information being
requested. In the towns that were not too far from Paris, they were
carried thirty and forty leagues, at the risk of having them die on the
way; and the hospital at Paris was overcrowded and in debt.”
This condition of affairs led to a new law, after a report which
declared that of two thousand infants carried to Paris from the
provinces, in all sorts of weather, by public vehicles without care or
protection, three quarters had died within three months. The new law
decreed that any wagoner bringing an infant to Paris to expose it would
be fined one thousand livres. Inasmuch as the rule was made in the
interest of the children, it was also decreed that abandoned children
must be brought to the nearest hospital, and if that hospital declared
that it had not enough funds to support the foundlings, the royal
treasury might be drawn on.