Very fortunate are those who succeed in obtaining a bed at the hospice
in which to end their days; the number of applicants each year exceeds
by three or four thousand the number of vacancies. The crippled and
incurable paupers, for whom all labor is impossible, are admitted
without regard to age; the octogenarians, cancerous, blind, and
epileptic, and the sick transferred from the hospitals to the hospices,
are always eligible; but the slightest misdemeanor recorded on their
civil papers, even though atoned for by a long life of honesty, is fatal
to the hopes of the unfortunate aged;--for them there is no asylum but
the Dépôt de Mendicité. The most celebrated of these hospices of Paris
are the Bicêtre and the Salpêtrière; the former at Gentilly, about a
kilomètre from the southern fortifications, and the latter on the
Boulevard d'Hôpital. The Bicêtre especially, under the ancient régime,
represented everything that was abhorrent in a mediæval hospital,
asylum, and jail combined; it was "at once a prison, a dépôt de
mendicité, an asylum for the aged, a special hospital, a lunatic asylum,
a political Bastille, an establishment for receiving sick children." It
owes its name, it is recorded, to Jean de Pontoise, Bishop of
Winchester,--corrupted into Bicêtre!--who built a château here in 1286.
The present edifice was constructed largely by order of Richelieu, for
invalided soldiers, in 1632; it has been devoted to its present uses as
a modern hospital and asylum since 1837.
It is organized in two great divisions,--a hospice for old men, and an
asylum for the deranged; but the latter includes an infirmary for idiot,
epileptic, and feeble-minded children. The insane and the children are
received from the Asile Clinique de la Seine, in the Rue Cabanis, and
are maintained by the department of the Seine. The buildings of the
hospice proper are arranged around four rectangular courts, planted with
trees and gardens, in which the aged inmates sun themselves, and when it
rains they take refuge under arcades known as the _Allée des Bronchites_
and the _Rue de Rivoli de Bicêtre_. For a considerable distance around
the establishment these pensioners may be seen in fine weather taking
the air; they have this privilege for the whole of the day on Sundays,
Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and from eleven o'clock in the morning to four
in the afternoon on the remaining days of the week.
All the sounder ones, to the number of some four hundred, are obliged to
work at one of the many useful trades practised in the various
ateliers, and they gain, for their own use, from forty centimes to a
franc a day, money which goes to provide them with various small
creature comforts. Those who are not strong enough, or capable enough,
to work in the ateliers are obliged to pick vegetables for the culinary
department, for which they receive no pay;--from this obligation no one
is free excepting the octogenarians, the sickly, and the active workers.
The administration also encourages the enterprise of those who wish to
work on their own account; it provides them with a locality and
facilities, for which they pay a monthly rental of from twenty centimes
to one franc twenty centimes a month. Some of these petty industries are
very curious and ingenious.
At both the Bicêtre and the Salpêtrière, the quarters devoted to the
children, boys and girls, in which almost every variety of childish
affliction, bodily and mental, is under treatment, are the most worthy
the visitor's attention, though the inspection is not always a pleasant
one. The general method employed is that of Séguin and Delasiauve; by
its aid, and that of infinite tact and patience, very many of these
helpless unfortunates are provided with faculties and made useful
members of their community. At the Bicêtre, this section is visited by
foreign physicians as a model institution; the honor of its installation
is due entirely to Doctor Bourneville, who was a zealous advocate of its
establishment before the Conseil Municipal, and who, as _médecin de
service_ at the hospital, has succeeded in obtaining admirable results
from the methods employed. The number of his little patients is somewhat
under four hundred; some of them are sound bodily and others almost
helpless; with the exception of the _gâteux_ [feeble-minded and
incontinent], they are divided, according to their age, or their
infirmities, into two schools, the "little" and "great," the first
under the direction of women, and the second of men. The children of the
first are taught to exercise with the gymnastic apparatus of the system
Pichery, and their rudimentary senses are cultivated by giving them
small objects to see, to touch, to weigh, etc.; in both schools, but
principally in that of the older pupils, systematic instruction is
imparted in the workrooms of cabinet-making, shoemaking, sewing,
locksmithing, basket-making, the plaiting of straw seats for chairs,
brushmaking, and printing. The children are gradually accustomed to this
labor; the cabinet-makers and locksmiths are selected from among the
most intelligent, the makers of baskets and straw seats from among the
most feeble, and the tailors from among those paralyzed on one side. "We
have in the sewing-room," said Doctor Bourneville, in one of his
reports, "twenty-four afflicted with hemiplegia, that is to say,
unfortunates condemned, almost certainly, to pass their entire existence
in the hospice; five of them are already good tailors, the greater
number of the others will be. Formerly, they knew how to do nothing;
now, thanks to the instruction which they receive, whether transferred
to the epileptic adults if they are still subject to attacks, or to the
divisions of the hospice if they are not, they will be able to work in
the common atelier of the institution, and their work will compensate in
part, and during very many years, for the cost of their maintenance,
and, at the same time, will afford them a small pecuniary resource." The
little workmen are rewarded with slight payments, of from ten to forty
centimes a week, and special efforts are made, as recommended in the
system Séguin, to provide them with amusements and variety,--such as
walks abroad, visits to their families, games, etc.
In the similar quarter of the Salpêtrière, similar results are obtained
among the little girls afflicted with epilepsy, hysteria, _gâtisme_, and
idiocy; they are taught to sew and to make artificial flowers; they are
easily interested and amused by the concerts, the dramatic
representations which are provided for them, and the ball of the
Mi-Carême, in which they dance in company with the demented and insane
women, is a great event in their lives.
[Illustration: SKETCH BY M. LOÉVY ON A WITNESS-SUBPOENA.]
The foundations of the older portions of this immense edifice were laid
by Louis XIII, who began here the construction of an arsenal; the name,
Salpêtrière, is derived from a manufactory of saltpetre (_salpêtre_)
either in the buildings or in the neighborhood. By a decree of 1648, the
buildings of the Salpêtrière or the Petit-Arsenal, situated in the
Faubourg Saint-Victor near the confluence of the Seine and the Bièvre,
were assigned as a prison for _filles et femmes débauchées_; and in 1653
this establishment was placed under the direction of the administrators
of the _pauvres enfermez_, under the supervision of Mazarin. In 1656,
the whole establishment was presented by Louis XIV, then in his
minority, to the administration of the Hôpital-Général; the greater part
of the present buildings date from this period. At this time, says a
contemporary report, the asylum consisted of "two main buildings and of
fifteen grand dormitories of thirty or forty _toises_ each, which are
now occupied by six hundred and twenty-eight poor women of every quality
that human misery could cause to conceive; one hundred and ninety-two
children, from two to seven years of age, legitimate and bastards,
exposed and abandoned to the care of Providence, and which are brought
up by the poor women of the institution and shared among themselves as
adopted, with the same affection as if they were their own, and
twenty-seven officers and mistresses of the aforesaid dormitories, who
are charged to watch over the conduct of the poor.
"Then there is a large new building which has been commenced for the
reception of the married beggars...."
The chapel of the establishment was originally constructed of planks
from demolished river-boats; in 1669, Louis XIV replaced it by a church
more in keeping with the importance of the institution. In 1684, there
was constructed a special quarter for "the debauched women," which was
called the _maison de force_; the unfortunates confined here were
subjected to the most rigorous regulations, their labor was made "as
severe as possible," but was ameliorated if they showed signs of
repentance; their food was restricted to bread, soup, and water, they
were clothed in linsey-woolsey gowns and wore sabots, and they slept
upon straw, with a thin coverlet. For lighter faults they were punished
by withdrawal of the soup, imprisonment in the cachot, and the wearing
of the carcan, or wooden collar; for graver offences they were locked
up, for longer or shorter periods, in a dark and filthy dungeon which
was called the _Malaise_, and which was much like the _in pace_ of the
Middle Ages. A regulation of this same year, 1684, applied the same
system to the convicted prisoners and to the women imprisoned at the
instance of their relatives or their husbands. The maison de force,
placed in the centre of the Salpêtrière, became the prison de la Force.
It included the _commun_, for the most dissolute and degraded women; the
_correction_, in which were placed those who gave some hopes of reform;
the prison, reserved for those detained by the king's orders, and the
_grande Force_, for those condemned by the courts. The women and young
girls destined to be sent to the colonies were kept in the Salpêtrière
while waiting for their embarkation.
[Illustration: ANNUAL PROCESSION OF JUDGES, MAGISTRATES, ETC., ON THE
OCCASION OF THE GRAND MASS, HELD AT THE BEGINNING OF THE JUDICIARY
SEASON, IN THE SAINTE-CHAPELLE.