PARISIAN MENDICANCY: THE PARIS POOR.
Parisian Mendicancy in the Sixteenth Century--The General
Hospital--Louis XV. and the Beggars--The Revolution--Mendicancy as a
Regular Profession--The Organ-grinders and the Trade in Italian
Children--The French Treatment of the Poor--Asylums, Alms-houses, and
Retreats--The _Droit des Pauvres_--The Cost of the Poor.
In Paris, formerly, mendicancy was so grave and manifest a plague that
it could escape the eyes of no one, and there is not a single Paris
historian who has omitted to write upon the subject. The documents which
subsist in reference to it--Parliamentary decrees, for instance, and
royal edicts, would supply material for a complete history of mendicity,
not only detailed but even anecdotal. There was a time when the beggars
of Paris organised themselves into troops, which were under the command
of a chief. The members of these troops understood their business. The
orphans and other little scamps, in groups of three or four, would go
out into the streets shivering and half-naked, weeping and begging for
bread; ostensible husbands and wives, with their own or other people’s
children, exhibited certificates to the effect that their property had
been destroyed by lightning; the _marchandiers_ were merchants whom some
conflagration had reduced to misery; the _piètres_ excelled in tying
their calves up to their thighs and proceeding legless on crutches;
while the _sabouleux_ rolled on the ground, with leaps and contortions,
foaming--thanks to a piece of soap which they kept in their mouths--as
though they were epileptic.
In this connection a droll anecdote may be told. A veteran Parisian
beggar had a very beautiful daughter, and many a suitor petitioned the
father for her hand. One day a retired soldier, who had taken to
mendicancy, came to him to implore the paternal consent. “What are your
qualifications?” asked the old man. “I have only one leg,” replied the
amorous warrior. “Bah!” cried the father, “you have no chance; only
yesterday I refused a man without either legs or arms.”
In the middle ages, however, the humours of mendicancy, were frequently
lost in the gravity of the perils to which a city infested by cunning
and desperate beggars was exposed. An edict was issued in 1524
condemning mendicants to be whipped and banished. It apparently had
little effect, for in the following year they were ordered to quit Paris
under pain of being hanged. In 1532 the Parliament ordered that, chained
in pairs, they should be employed to clean out the sewers, which at this
period were, for the most part, open. In 1561 an ordinance of Charles
IX. sentenced all beggars to the galleys during the remainder of their
life; for in those days, the offender who once found himself chained to
the oar never went on shore again. A Parliamentary decree of 1606
proclaimed that all beggars should be whipped in public by the
assistants of the executioner; a particular mark, moreover, was to be
placed on their shoulder; while, in virtue of an ordinance of 1602,
their heads were shaved--a punishment which was at least beneficial to
them from a hygienic point of view.
And now we reach the moment when severely punitive laws against
mendicancy were about to give way to preventive measures characterised
by humanity. The first person to occupy himself with the fate of the
mendicants seems to have been a certain theoretical reformer named Jean
Douet de Romp Croissant. He published, in pamphlet form, a series of
memoirs addressed to the Queen Regent. Many of the schemes he put
forward were wild in the extreme, but his writings contain the germs of
one or two excellent institutions. He proposed the organisation of those
State pawnshops which were ultimately to be opened in France, though not
until 1778. In view of the filthy condition of the Paris streets, the
dangers to which pedestrians were exposed from highwaymen, and the
extraordinary number of beggars then in the capital, he proposed to
employ these beggars in cleaning the town and protecting the citizens.
His idea was to place a beggar at every fifty yards along the
thoroughfares, armed with a brush and shovel, so as to remove the refuse
and to be able to call his next neighbour to the rescue should any
wayfarer fall into the hands of thieves. The scheme had its practical
and reasonable side, but no attempt was ever made to execute it.
It is to Louis XIV., or more correctly, to M. de Belièvre, first
president of the Parliament, that the honour is due of having first
acted in this matter with deliberation, method, and success. An edict of
the 4th of May, 1656, created the General Hospital, chiefly composed of
three establishments: Notre Dame de la Pitié; the Maison de St. Denis or
Petit Arsenal, familiarly known as Salpetrière; and Bicêtre. According
to Sauval the number of beggars in Paris then exceeded forty thousand.
They formed “an independent people, who knew neither law, nor religion,
nor superior, nor police; impiety, sensuality, libertinage, were all
that reigned amongst them.” De Belièvre’s measure was already accepted
in principle, but grave doubts were entertained respecting its
application.
The authorities feared that so vast a crowd of lawless people might be
able to defy their power. Everything, however, was effected in an
orderly manner, and with a facility by no means anticipated. It was
announced in all the churches that, on the 7th of May, 1657, the General
Hospital would be open to as many of the poor as deserved admission, and
at the same time criers went about the streets proclaiming a warning to
beggars against ever asking alms again. On the 14th of May every beggar
who could be found in Paris was arrested and shut up. The city now found
itself delivered from an ancient and formidable scourge.
How complete was the delivery may be seen from the account left of their
visit to Paris by two young Dutchmen--De Villers by name--who went to
inspect the “Little Arsenal designed for the confinement of paupers
accustomed to be in the streets,” and who, expatiating on the admirable
plan and general arrangements of the institution, declared it the finest
one of the kind imaginable, and that not one beggar was then to be found
in Paris.
In course of years, however, in spite of the General Hospital and of the
Hôtel des Invalides, opened in 1670 to indigent soldiers, mendicants
once more multiplied in the streets of Paris. The French metropolis was
indeed an irresistible centre of attraction to malefactors, vagabonds,
and beggars. Misery flowed thither not only from the provinces but from
abroad. At the close of the seventeenth century a curious and ingenious
ordinance was issued for preventing mendicancy, by which any person
giving alms to a beggar was liable to a fine of fifty francs. Under
regency, the famous Law put forth an emigration scheme for the clearance
of vagabonds from Paris. Authority was obtained for the transportation
of indigent young men and women from the various pauper institutions to
America, and numbers were shipped. The result, however, was apparently
unsatisfactory, for in 1725 the Duke of Bourbon ordered that every
mendicant who had come from the provinces to Paris should be seized,
branded on the arm, and deprived of his possessions.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, recourse was again had to the
scheme of Law, and beggars, particularly young and strong ones, were
kidnapped for transportation to the colonies by gangs of men in the pay
of the authorities. Blunders, however, occurred. Gentlemen’s servants
who chanced to be out at night, as well as the sons of artisans, were
seized and carried off. And now Paris, so credulous, so ready to believe
the most improbable tales, grew terrified. It was said--first in a
whisper, then aloud--that Louis XV., devoured by leprosy, could not
recover health except by taking each morning a bath of human blood, and
that the pauper children who disappeared were bled to death for the
benefit of the royal invalid. The rumour went so far as to produce
riots, in which a number of the king’s archers were killed and at least
one of the kidnappers torn to pieces. The Government now found it
necessary to relinquish the emigration project, and every endeavour was
made to provide mendicants with employment at home. In 1766 a severe law
was passed by which every mendicant caught begging was to be branded on
the left arm with the letter “M,” and sent to the galleys for nine
years, or for life should the offence be repeated.
Such heavy threats and penalties, however, were useless. The king
himself recognised the fact, and, in a wise and beneficent letter, wrote
as follows: “I have felt keenly afflicted at the great number of
mendicants that fill the streets of Paris and Versailles.... We must
furnish work for the strong, a hospital for the invalids, and a house of
detention for those who resist the benefits of the law.”
The Revolution, like every violent social or political movement, had a
disturbing effect on the regular industries, and threw upon the streets
of Paris vast numbers of workmen whom want of occupation plunged into a
misery rendered still deeper by the prevailing scarcity of bread. The
first decree on the subject of mendicancy was issued May 20th, 1790.
Needlework in special workshops was to be provided for the women and
children, the healthy men were to be put to manual labour; the sick and
infirm were to be treated in the hospitals; foreign beggars were to be
banished from the country, and provincial beggars conducted back to
their native place with pecuniary assistance along the road at the rate
of three sous a league, and with the obligation to follow a prescribed
route--a clause in the mendicancy law which is to-day still in force.
It was easy, however, to decree the extinction of mendicancy.
Unfortunately, mendicants continued to exist. A sharp law was passed
whereby every citizen convicted of having given any description of alms
to a beggar was condemned to a fine “equivalent to the value of two
days’ work”; whilst every person convicted of having solicited money or
bread in the streets or public ways was liable to arrest. Under the
Directory mendicants were for a time allowed to beg as they chose. They
abused their liberty, however, and became importunate and even menacing
in their quest of alms. Then they were arrested on all hands by
soldiers, who drove them outside the city with blows from the butt-end
of their muskets. Once in the country, some of them got into mischief,
stopped carriages and robbed pedestrians; so that it was found necessary
to issue an edict whereby any beggar bearing firearms or any kind of
weapon, even though he had not made use of it, was liable to
imprisonment for a period varying from two to five years, with police
surveillance to follow.
But rigour and leniency have proved alike powerless in Paris to relieve
the city of its beggars. Mendicancy is a profession, and it is not
exercised only by extending the hand and whining for alms. It tries to
disguise itself under various forms. It opens carriage-doors, sells
flowers and lucifers in the streets and on the boulevards, picks up
cigar-ends which it vends to illicit tobacco manufacturers at one franc
a pound, sings beneath the windows of the rich, turns the handle of the
barrel-organ, and lets out, at so much a day, little children to be
exhibited for the excitement of public sympathy. That the exhibition of
articles for sale from the street gutter is frequently but a pretence
everyone knows. The present writer once asked a woman, who sold matches
in Paris, whether a good many pedestrians did not give her the sou
without requiring anything in return. “Yes, sir,” she replied, in a tone
of lament, “but sometimes they take the matches!”
Mendicancy is a profession, and in the exercise of it a good deal of
ingenuity, and one might almost say talent, is frequently shown. Not a
few Parisian beggars have become historical. Years ago there was a
female beggar in Paris, without legs and with only one arm, who could,
by a certain trick in her breathing, produce in her interior a sound
like the tick of a pendulum. “Listen! ladies and gentlemen,” she used to
exclaim, “I have a clock in my stomach!” Her gaping auditors used
thereupon to apply their ear to her back. It was true! There was a clock
inside her! They could hear the click of the pendulum!
Formerly, in the gardens of the Hôtel Gontaut was stationed an old blind
man accompanied by a poodle. Every day he arrived and departed at the
same hours. Seated on a camp-stool, with a woollen cap on his head, and
enveloped in a large overcoat with seven plaits, he did nothing all day
but keep a pair of expressionless eyes directed towards heaven, and
shake his tin money-box from time to time. It was a tradition in Paris
that he had given his daughter a dowry of three hundred thousand francs
on the occasion of her marriage to a notary, and that in the evening,
after rattling his money-box all day, the old man could often be seen in
a box at the opera, to which he had driven in his carriage.
A blind beggar is always sure of a tolerable income, and, although he
may not frequent the opera, he generally lives well. “One day,” says M.
Ducamp in his work on Paris, “as I was crossing the Pont des Arts, I saw
a woman taking one of the blind beggars his dinner. She put into his
hand a metal porringer, which he rapidly uncovered. He smelt it and
asked--‘What do you call this?’ ‘It is stewed mutton and peas,’ replied
the woman with a certain expression of fear. ‘Devil take you and the
mutton too! You know I only care for beef!’ I retained my alms and kept
them for a better occasion.” How profitable a misfortune the loss of
sight has long been to Paris beggars may be seen from a report drawn up
in 1853 on the subject of mendicancy, which sets forth that “a number of
blind beggars come to Paris just for the season, and return with enough
money to live comfortably at home through the winter.”
Jugglers at one time abounded in the city of Paris, together with public
exhibitors of all kinds; men, for instance, whose stock-in-trade
consisted of a dromedary and an ape--which rode through the boulevards
on the dromedary’s back. These adventurers so obstructed the traffic
that a series of restrictive ordinances were passed on the subject. That
of February 28th, 1865, which was based on all the preceding ordinances,
provides that every individual wishing to take up the profession of
juggler, organ-grinder, singer, or perambulating musician, must be
provided with an authorisation from the Préfecture of Police. To obtain
this, the applicant must be a Frenchman, must have resided for a year
past in the jurisdiction of the Préfecture, and must bear a fair moral
character. This authorisation has to be renewed every three months, and
the holder must carry on him a numbered metal badge. It is expressly
forbidden to mendicants of this class to take with them those of their
children who are under sixteen years old, to lend their badge, to
divine, prophesy, or interpret dreams, or to perform in public any
operation which infringes on the profession of the manicure or the
dentist.
The profession of organ-grinder has declined in Paris. The street was
his domain, and he was often accompanied by assistants in queer
costumes, who grinned, gesticulated, and sang as he played beneath the
windows of the well-to-do. Towards 1830 one of these wanderers was well
known to Parisians as “the Marquis,” from the costume he wore. Although
upwards of fifty years of age, he was extremely nimble, and he excelled
in throwing into an open window, on the fourth or fifth floor, a two-sou
piece wrapped up in a small book of songs. His customer would thereupon
throw him down double the amount. It was asserted by some that he
belonged to the secret police, and he, in any case, rendered it
important services.
A new organ costs from four hundred to five hundred francs, a
second-hand one, with an occasional flat note, one hundred or a hundred
and fifty. This is a great expense, and necessitates beforehand a
capital such as few of the mendicant class possess. Most organ-grinders,
therefore, hire their instrument by the day, paying for a small organ
between fifty centimes and a franc; or for a big Cremona organ, which
imitates an entire orchestra, ten francs, with another two francs for
the hire of the assistant in charge.
These better kind of organ-grinders generally earn a good deal of money;
it is no uncommon thing for them to return to their squalid homes with a
profit of fifty francs.
Some of the humbler kind of organ-grinders were at one time accustomed
to supplement their income in an ingenious fashion. They quitted the
city under pretext of playing in the suburban pleasure-gardens, and when
they passed the barrier on their return they had replaced the pointed
cylinder of their instrument with another cylinder similar in appearance
and hollow, which was filled with brandy. Many of them thus evaded the
octroi duty, though occasionally they were seized by the authorities and
severely punished.
Among the Parisian street-musicians we must not forget the
orchestra-man, with a cap of bells on his head, a flute of reeds beneath
his lips, cymbals between his legs, a drum on his back, and a triangle
one hardly knows where. His gymnastic musical exertions seem to keep him
in a state of perpetual drought, for as soon as he has received a
little money he adjourns to the nearest wine-shop.
In London we occasionally see disinherited viscounts turning
barrel-organs in the street, or repudiated younger sons on the perch of
the hansom cab. This may result either from sheer necessity or from a
desire on the part of the discontented youth to make things a trifle
awkward for his sire; and we distinctly remember an earl’s son who was a
cab-driver taking a huge delight in plying for hire just outside the
paternal mansion.
In Paris there have been a good many instances of well or highly
connected persons becoming street-musicians either from want or in
virtue of an instinct. Quite recently there was a lady vocalist, nearly
related to an influential Parisian, who took to the streets and could
not be persuaded by her friends to resume the comforts of private life
which were freely offered to her. Two or three times she was induced to
quit the streets for a day or two, but each time she found existence
intolerable till she returned to the public pavement. For those in
distress there is always a living, no matter what the age of the
performer, to be got out of street-singing. A few years ago an old man
of eighty went about Paris singing with a voice which was almost extinct
and scarcely exceeded a whisper, but which, nevertheless, brought him in
regularly forty-five francs a month. As to the rest, street-singing is
to many paupers not merely a trade, but an hereditary tendency, handed
down from father to son.
The largest section of the Paris street-musicians consists, probably, of
the little Italian boys who overrun public places and who are to be
found at night asleep under the seats of the boulevards, against the
parapets of the quays, or upon some doorstep. They are as difficult to
suppress and as persistent as ants: the very police get tired of trying
to clear the streets of them.
Whence do they chiefly come? We will let M. Ducamp reply:--“One result,”
he says, “of the expedition led by Garibaldi in 1860 was that the
kingdom of the two Sicilies entered into the habits of civilised
nations. Formerly, at the time of the Bourbons, as it was held that any
individual demanding a passport for abroad could only be a Jacobin,
permission to travel was never given. It is no longer so; everyone can
go and come at pleasure. The inhabitants of the southern provinces have
quickly profited by this new right in order to get rid of their children
and disperse them over the whole earth. It is the Basilicate which
to-day furnishes nine-tenths of these unhappy little creatures.
“This is a sort of commerce of which those who engage in it do not, in
all probability, understand the immorality. Everything is arranged in a
regular manner, and generally before a notary: it is white slavery. A
speculator runs through the villages, collects the children, whom
parents are quite willing to let him have, and takes them on lease,
generally for three years. All that these children earn, no matter
where, during that lapse of time, belongs to him, and, in exchange, he
gives the family a lump sum or so much annually. Formal agreements are
signed, which become invalid in case of non-execution of the clauses.
“I have inspected several of these contracts. There could not possibly
be more _naïveté_ or good faith than they exhibit. A father lets out his
son as he lets out a field. The child is a capital, of which the produce
belongs legitimately to the father. That is the principle, and it is
very simple, as everyone can see. Highly immoral as it is amongst us,
and contrary as it is to all our customs, there is nothing in it to
shock the inhabitants of the Basilicate, for whom it becomes frequently
a profitable resource. The speculators believe themselves so well within
the law that often abroad, and particularly at Paris, they have recourse
to their consuls in order to enforce the terms of the contract against
their victims when these prove refractory.
“This industry has its agents and its travellers. Some go to Italy in
search of the children and, bringing them to Paris, place them in the
hands of the patron, who is expecting them and pays for them at so much
a head. Others supply information as to the villages where children who
are good musicians or who have agreeable physiognomies are to be found;
while, again, others--nor are these the least dangerous--when they learn
that a ‘patron’ has been expelled by some administrative measure,
collect together the poor little creatures belonging to his band and
work them on their own account.
“The trade is not a bad one. One patron was recently living in London
with a fortune of 200,000 francs, gained by this frightful traffic.
Formerly the patrons defended their pretended rights to the bitter end,
but to-day, rendered more circumspect by adverse verdicts, they take
flight as soon as they feel uneasy, and abandon the children to their
fate. Some five-and-twenty years ago the constantly increasing number of
little Italians caused the Government to adopt severe measures, and the
_patroni_ were all and separately informed that unless they abandoned
their cruel trade they would, in virtue of a law passed in 1849, be
conducted to the frontier. The effect of this notification was somewhat
droll. Instead of making a complaint, either to their own Minister, to
the Minister of the Interior, or the Prefect of Police, they drew up an
address to the French nation, and, in a document full of sound and
rhetoric and commonplace, took farewell of ‘that hospitable land,
Italy’s own sister.’”
The _patroni_ in charge of the children are far from irreproachable.
Some of them possess musical talent; and these not only seek but know
how to turn the abilities of their little slaves to the best account.
Others are retired brigands, or loafers on a large scale, who wish to
see the world and to make money during the process.
The courts have sometimes had to deal with great cruelties on the part
of the _patroni_. On one occasion a man named Pellitieri was convicted
for having kept a child for four days and nights fastened beneath his
own bed with a harp-string, which could be tightened by means of a key.
The culprit was sentenced, in default, to four months’ imprisonment. The
life to which the poor little Italian children are condemned is of the
most sordid, hateful, and demoralising kind. They suffer in health, and
it has been calculated that out of a hundred children brought from Italy
into France, twenty return home, thirty remain abroad, and fifty die of
privation and hunger.
The streets in which they are chiefly to be found are the Rue Simon le
Franc, the Rue de la Clef, the Rue des Boulangers, and the Place St.
Victor. Here they live crowded together in such a manner that there are
often five, six, and even seven beds in the same room, with three, four,
five, and it may be six children in each bed. There is a bolster at each
end of the bed, and the curious visitor is surprised on entering the
room to see heads spring up in every direction.
[Illustration: A L’ASILE POUR FEMMES, RUE FESSART, LE RÉFECTOIRE.]
Along the walls hang harps, which, in the hands of the unfortunate
children, are less instruments of music than of mendicancy. On the floor
lie the children’s clothes--their rags, that is to say--together with
sacks of coarse cloth containing the macaroni and vermicelli that they
have brought or had sent to them from Italy.
The children earn from a franc and a half to three francs a day, all of
which goes into the pocket of the patron, who has, on his side, to feed,
dress, and lodge the members of his band. The little musicians pick up
food wherever they can get it: often from charitable persons, and in the
kitchens of restaurants or of private houses; and this fare is doubtless
preferable to that provided for them by their master, whose only
invariable contribution towards their support is a basin of questionable
soup, doled out to them in the morning before the beginning of the day’s
work. The children’s rags have been tied or stitched together, their
harps have been tuned and perhaps re-stringed, and at nine o’clock they
go out into the street to carry out the instructions of the patron, who
has told them to bring back as much money as possible, and not to allow
themselves to be arrested. Some five or six hundred of these children
are, in fact, arrested every year for begging. As a rule, they solicit
alms only in the way of business, but at times they beg directly and
exclusively for their own account, as when the patron abandons them and
leaves them to shift for themselves. Then the unhappy ones take refuge
in some half-built house, and, having nothing else to depend on,
continue to beg until at last they fall inevitably into the hands of the
police, who imprison them and announce the fact to the Italian consul.
If the consul sends them back to Italy, they return to France under the
care of some new patron, who, to keep out of difficulties, thinks it
prudent to describe himself as their uncle or some other near relative.
They may be sent back fifty times, but for the fifty-first they will
return to Paris--a sign, it would seem, that, however miserable their
life may be, they do not find it intolerable. It must be preferable, one
would think, to their life in Italy, or they would remain at home. It is
to be remembered, on the other hand, that their parents sell them or let
them out at the rate of from a hundred to a hundred and twenty francs a
year to the slave-drivers called _patroni_.
The beggar in Paris who falls into the hands of the police is
imprisoned--not, however, as an offender, but as an unfortunate man. An
article in the penal code sets forth, in fact, that “the beggar is sent
to the station-house for mendicants not as a punishment but as a measure
of police, to be exercised at the discretion of the administrative
authority.” In the first place, the man who begs is presumably without
resources. Nor is it in prison that he will be able to create new ones
for himself. To throw him into prison, then, and afterwards set him free
in the same condition as before, would be to expose him once more to the
commission of the very act for which he had been incarcerated. Instead
of doing this, the administration places the beggar, after a brief
period of confinement, in a house where he is fed, clothed, and
comfortably lodged, but is at the same time required to do a measure of
work in proportion to his strength. For this work he is paid; not
largely, but sufficiently to enable him to amass a little sum for his
immediate needs on being liberated. He will now be able to seek for
work, and may perhaps manage to obtain it. This system seems admirable,
and would be so as a matter of fact, were not beggars as a rule so
perverse as to prefer begging to all other means of gaining a
subsistence. When a beggar is arrested in the streets of Paris, he is
taken to a department of the Préfecture, where he is generally
recognised as an old acquaintance.
Many of those who, at large, left to themselves, are intolerably idle,
become, as soon as they are imprisoned, industrious, skilful,
indefatigable workmen. Some of them will earn in confinement a hundred
or two hundred francs--even more. They claim their liberty, and though
everyone knows what use they will make of it, there would be no
justification for keeping under lock and key a man provided with enough
money to enable him to seek employment. Three days afterwards the newly
liberated one is again taken up for begging; he is reminded of the sum
of money he had about him when he was set free--enough to have enabled
him to live quietly and respectably for at least a month or two. “Yes,”
he replies, “but I have been amusing myself with my friends.” This sort
of thing reproduces itself again and again. It is more easy to improve
the moral tone of a thief than of a professional beggar. The chief
occupation of the beggars kept in confinement is tearing up linen to
make charpie, the French equivalent for lint. According to M. Maxime
Ducamp, the incarcerated beggars work as they like and when they like.
“They talk, read, and in the courtyards smoke. Once a week--every
Tuesday for the men, every Wednesday for the women--they are taken out
for a walk, and often come back intoxicated. They dress as they please,
and are allowed to wear moustaches and beards.... Among the crowds of
poor wretches more than one is in a desperate condition. I recognised a
man of sixty whose history was known to me. It so happened that he wrote
a five-act tragedy in verse, which was neither better nor worse than
many others. The author presented his piece at the Odéon, where it was
refused. He had it printed, and this was the beginning of his
misfortunes. He offered a copy to the French Academy, which, according
to custom, acknowledged its reception through the secretary. The letter
set forth that the piece would be placed in the library of the
Institute, and it was signed ‘Villemain.’ The unfortunate author
thought, and persisted in thinking, that his work had appeared so
remarkable that it had been found worthy of being preserved in the
archives of the Academy. He now dreamed of other poetical works,
abandoned his ordinary occupation, and allowed poverty to approach him
without seeing that it was at hand. ‘How do you find yourself here?’ I
said to him, as he ate his bread with some preparation of haricot beans.
‘Well,’ he replied, ‘I have not to trouble myself about my material
existence, and can now go on writing.’”
It will be seen that France, though in a less degree than England,
suffers from the plague of mendicancy. It has been proposed that
agricultural colonies be established (as they are in Holland) where
mendicants may be kept permanently at work. France, it is said,
possesses 5,147,862 hectares of uncultivated land to which, by the
railways and canals, manure might easily be brought. Artesian wells,
too, may be sunk everywhere, even beneath the most sterile soil. In
exchange for the labour required from the mendicants employed in tilling
the land, bread would be given to them, a certain remuneration, and, it
might be, a portion of the field cultivated by them. Such a system would
be beneficial in more than one way. The agricultural resources of the
country would be increased, and the towns would be freed from a
parasitic race which often lends to crime its most redoubtable
auxiliaries.
There is no poor-law in Paris. Yet the French, like other nations, have
the poor always with them; and means have had to be found for preventing
the most unfortunate class of the population from dying of hunger. Now,
as in the time of Chamfort, society consists of two great classes--those
who have more appetite than dinner, and those who have more dinner than
appetite; and prudence, as well as charity, imposes the necessity of
preventing the unsatisfied appetites from becoming too acute. It is only
just to add that at Paris the most ancient of the asylums for the
indigent owe their establishment to charity alone. Take, for example,
the Hospice des Petits Ménages, founded in 1557 on the site of a leper
hospital, closed for want of funds in 1544. Certain conditions, however,
were required for admission into the almshouses, known first as Les
Petits Ménages, and afterwards as Les Petites Maisons. Admission to the
establishment, by an order from the Préfecture, issued in 1801, was
limited exclusively to widowers and widows of sixty whose married life
had extended over at least ten years; and to married couples whose
united ages amounted to 130, of which fifteen had been passed in common.
This asylum, however, is not, under present conditions, open to the
indigent, but only to those whose poverty is relative. Each inmate,
besides supplying furniture of a certain specified kind, must pay 200
francs a year for a bedroom, or 300 for a bedroom and sitting-room.
There were in this asylum, according to the latest returns, some 1,300
persons, from sixty to ninety-five years of age. Another asylum of the
same kind is the La Rochefoucauld Retreat, installed at Montrouge, on
the road to Orleans, founded by the noble and generous woman whose name
it bears. Here, also, there is no admission to anyone beneath the age of
sixty, except only in the case of persons suffering from incurable
illnesses which are neither epilepsy, nor insanity, nor cancer. The
annual payment is fixed at 250 francs for old people in good health, and
312·50 francs for incurable patients. A charge, moreover, is made in
either case of 100 francs, as representing the value of the furniture
supplied.
The Hospice de la Reconnaissance, opened at Garches in 1833, was
founded, 1829, by Michael Brezin, a blacksmith and mechanical engineer,
who had made his fortune under the Republic and the Empire. Here there
is nothing to pay. Admission is given, by preference, to men of sixty
who have been employed in some kind of metal-work. The establishment
contains 300 beds. At another asylum, close to Auteuil, in the Bois de
Boulogne, there is a charge of 400 francs for single persons and 250
francs for married couples. A moderate sum has to be paid for the use of
furniture, and no one is admitted below the age of sixty.
At the Maison de Villas, founded some sixty years ago in the Rue du
Regard by a retired merchant, old people of seventy, or indigent
invalids of any age, are received to the number of fifty. In 1825, the
house known as St. Michel, close to the wood of Vincennes, was founded
by a retired carpet-maker named Boular, who reserved its gratuitous
privileges for twelve old men of the age of at least seventy.
Among the various asylums there is one which is almost celebrated, and
which is luxurious compared with the others. It is more like a very
comfortable boarding-house than an establishment reserved for the
disinherited of this world. Everything has been done to deprive it of
the sad aspect that belongs to most institutions of the kind. It was
founded by Chamousset, whose name is associated with nearly all the
charitable works as with all the most useful inventions of the 18th
century, including, in the latter category, the Paris letter-post. The
benevolent establishment founded by Chamousset was called neither
hospice nor asile, but simply l’Institution Sainte-Périne. No advantage
was at first taken of it until the beginning of the present century,
when it was turned to a purpose little dreamed of by its benevolent
author. Two speculators, Gloux and Duchaylar, discovered in a
charitable enterprise a means of making their fortune. They interested
the Emperor and the Empress Josephine in their project, and organised
the Institution Sainte-Périne (established in the former convent of
Sainte-Périne at Chaillot) as a place of retreat for a number of
unfortunate persons who had been ruined by the Revolution but had still
preserved sufficient resources to be able to pay an annual charge, out
of which the enterprising Gloux and Duchaylar contrived to make a
handsome profit. Such was the carelessness of, or more probably the
rapacity of, the administrators, that in 1807 the Emperor found it
necessary to send the inmates provisions prepared specially for them in
the kitchen of the Tuileries. The direction of Sainte-Périne was at the
same time taken from the two shameless speculators and entrusted to the
Prefect of the Seine.
[Illustration: A BUREAU DE BIENFAISANCE.]
The old convent has since been pulled down; and it was replaced in 1862
by a spacious house constructed at Auteuil in the midst of a large and
picturesque park. The privileges of the establishment are reserved for
state functionaries or their widows, who are admissible from the age of
sixty. The charges are 850 francs for board and lodging, and 100 for the
use of furniture. There is accommodation for 268 inmates.
But the almshouses, asylums, and “retreats” founded by a few benevolent
persons could have but little effect in mitigating the distress of the
Paris poor as a class. Up to the time of the Revolution, poverty was
relieved by the Church, and especially by the religious houses. Private
charity, moreover, was largely practised--somewhat on the principle of
the benevolent St. Vincent de Paul, whose maxim it was that charity
should “open its arms and shut its eyes.” In less than two years after
the taking of the Bastille, on the 25th of May, 1791, a law was passed
confiding the duty of relieving the wants of the poor to the
municipality of Paris; which, after long deliberations, appointed
“bureaux of beneficence” in each of the twenty arrondissements into
which Paris had been divided. In each arrondissement a council of twelve
administrators was named; and each of the twelve administrators had
entrusted to him one of twelve “zones,” into which each arrondissement
was divided. To each of the “zone” bureaux, doctors and midwives, chosen
by the Prefect of the Seine, were attached.
[Illustration: A NIGHT REFUGE.]
Then, if an indigent person sought relief, he was visited by the
administrator, by a commissary, or lady of charity, and by a doctor; and
a detailed report as to his position was presented at one of the
sittings held by the Council of Administration twice a month. Temporary
and immediate assistance is of course given; but only, as a rule, to the
sick and wounded, to women in labour, to women who are nursing and who
have no means of subsistence, to deserted children, to orphans who have
not yet reached the age of sixteen, to heads of families who have at
least three children below the age of fourteen under their care, and to
widows and widowers who have two children of tender years to support.
After a certain age the assistance given by the bureaux is permanent,
but not excessive. Thus, from seventy to seventy-nine, indigent old men
receive 5 francs a month; from seventy-nine to eighty-two, 8 francs,
from eighty-two to eighty-four, 10 francs, and 12 francs from
eighty-four to the end of their lives. This small allowance does not
exclude orders from the bureau for bread, meat, and clothes.
The “bureaux of beneficence” are not maintained by the Government nor by
local taxation; they are supported by private gifts and legacies, and by
sums which the commissioners and ladies of charity periodically collect
on the pressing invitation of the mayor of the arrondissement. The sum
placed annually at the disposal of the charitable offices scarcely
exceeds one million francs--£40,000, that is to say. Under this system
it necessarily follows that the sums contributed in the richer districts
or arrondissements are proportionately larger than those contributed in
the smaller ones; so that the bureaux have plenty of money to distribute
where there is but little poverty, and scarcely any where the pain of
poverty is severely felt. Thus, in the opulent quarters of the Louvre,
the Bourse, the Opéra, and Faubourg Poissonnière, the annual revenue of
each charitable office ranges from ninety to a hundred thousand francs,
whereas, in the arrondissements of Belleville, Vaugirard, La Glacière,
and La Villette, the average sum collected varies from 16,000 to 18,000
francs. To remedy these inequalities, the municipality draws upon its
own resources; so that, although there is no poor-law in France, the
poor are relieved partially, at least, through local taxation. It would
be impossible for the charitable offices to do their work without
assistance from the authorities, and the Administration of Public Aid
helps the offices with contributions which may be put down at 500,000
francs in money and 700,000 francs in bread, besides another 500,000
francs, called the _subvention extraordinaire_, which enables the
central administration to establish something like a balance between the
resources of the different bureaux. Every year the average is fixed of
the amount of succour to be given to each indigent household--generally
something over fifty francs, and to each charitable office a
complementary sum is given, so as to enable it to distribute the minimum
amount of relief fixed upon.
In spite of endeavours made by the central administration to equalise
the resources of the different arrondissements, the position of the
indigent person is much better in a rich than in a poor arrondissement.
Instead of the regulation fifty francs fixed as the minimum of relief to
be granted to a family in distress, there are quarters where the value
of the relief granted amounts to 130 francs per household.
An allowance at the rate of 130 francs a year is little enough, it will
be said, for a starving family. But the object of the charitable offices
is not to grant annuities for the poor. They only propose to help
persons in temporary difficulties, such as workmen thrown out of
employment by sickness, or some other external cause. As it is, the
kindly intentions of the administrators are often abused. Orders for
bread, begged for in the most importunate manner, are in many cases
surrendered to the baker for a smaller value in money, which is promptly
spent in drink.
Each charitable office has under its immediate direction several houses
of relief, the number of which varies according to the richness of each
particular quarter. There are altogether fifty-seven of these houses in
which immediate relief may be obtained. Of such asylums, one of the
poorest arrondissements, the thirteenth, possesses four, while the
ninth, that of the Opéra, has only one. Each house of refuge is
indicated by a flag hanging out from one of the windows. As first
instituted, they were all directed by those devoted sisters of charity
who, by an unjust law passed a few years ago, and which may, from one
year to another, be repealed, were excluded from hospital services. The
argument on the other side must, in fairness, however, be stated. Some
of the doctors complained that their patients were troubled, and at
times thrown into great excitement, by religious exhortations, when it
was necessary to keep them in a state of absolute calm. The houses of
refuge are amply supplied with linen, bed-linen, as well as shirts,
which are lent to the necessitous, and returned for exchange (unless,
meanwhile, they happen to be carried to the pawnbroker’s) once a month
in the case of the bed-linen, once a week in that of the shirts. Flannel
waistcoats and drawers, woollen stockings and warm under-clothes
generally, are kept in the houses of relief, where, if absolutely
necessary, the indigent are also supplied with shoes. The principal room
in the house is furnished with benches, and in winter warmed by a stove,
which is protected by a grating. Here the patients and the paupers
assemble two or three times a week, when the divisional physician visits
them and gives them consultations. The doctors arrive very punctually,
making it a point of honour not to keep waiting unhappy men and women
who have often quitted their work to seek relief. One by one they
exhibit their certificates of indigence, to show that they are entitled
to gratuitous drugs. Even if they possess no such certificate, they
receive advice; and as medical advice without medicine would in most
cases be useless, the drugs follow, even without formal authorisation.
There are but few pathological cases. Wounds (the result of accident),
rheumatism and anæmia, are what the unfortunate applicants generally
suffer from. Occasionally some old hand will present himself whose
complaint is easily found by the experienced physician. He complains of
a general feeling of lassitude, and by reason of previous excesses,
followed by the inevitable reaction, is really, perhaps, in want of a
stimulant. All he can do is to suggest a tonic, and, in case the doctor
should make no sympathetic response, ask boldly for quinine. Bitter as
all preparations of quinine must be, the drunkard below par prefers
every one of them to cold water. The quinine of the relief houses is
composed of some alcoholate of quinine mixed with a strong southern
wine, which gives it strength without depriving it of its intolerable
bitterness. This preparation is so much in demand that in one particular
year 4,000 litres of it were distributed among the applicants for
relief.
Camphorated spirits of wine shares with quinine its disastrous
popularity. There are men and women among the indigent poor who give
themselves bumps and contusions simply that they may be able to obtain
camphorated spirits of wine at the local relief-house. Having obtained
the desired stimulant, they dilute it with water, sweeten it with sugar,
and drink it as a liqueur. Of some 2,000 litres given away in one
particular year, not more than one half is said to have been employed
for external use.
Women, many of them accompanied by children, are much more numerous in
the waiting-rooms of the relief-houses than the men. They are for the
most part, especially the aged ones, insatiable in their demands.
Something they must have to make them sleep; camomile for their poor
stomachs; barley-water for their poor throats; but, above all, quinine
to make them strong.
The unfortunate applicants are treated with much generosity. The doctors
supply them with spectacles, knee-caps, elastic stockings, crutches: all
kinds of things rendered necessary for our working population by the
difficult labours they have to undertake. Often, alas! the spectacles,
the elastic stockings, the crutches, are sold and the proceeds spent in
drink.
In connection with the charitable offices, two very ingenious and
beneficial measures were introduced at the time of the Restoration: one
to promote the bodily, the other the mental, health of the Paris
population. It was enacted that no father or mother should be held
entitled to relief unless the children had been vaccinated and sent to
school. This legislation was in every way beneficial to the working
classes; for the teaching was gratuitous, while the vaccination was
profitable. An indigent person who causes his child to be efficaciously
vaccinated receives a present of three francs from the authorities.
Systematic inquiries into the matter have proved beyond doubt that most
applicants for relief have brought poverty upon themselves by
intemperance and debauchery, and, moreover, that whatever be given to
them will at the earliest opportunity be converted into drink. In one
official report on the subject the following passage occurs: “However
much may be given, nothing will be remedied; it will at once be spent in
dissipation.”
The Public Aid Department, deriving nothing from taxation, owes a
portion of its revenue to the payments made by well-to-do patients in
the different hospitals; to the public Burial Office, to the Mont de
Piété, or Government pawnbroking office; and to the theatres, which
contribute to the support of the poor a certain percentage on their
receipts. The poor-tax, levied on the money received by the proprietors
of theatres, concert and public halls, yields nearly two million francs
a year.
[Illustration: A PENSIONER OF “L’ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE.”]
[Illustration: A PENSIONER OF “L’ASSISTANCE PUBLIQUE.”]
The _droit des pauvres_, as the impost in question is called, has often
been protested against by the Paris managers, though in taking a theatre
they know perfectly well what liabilities they incur. It is not the
manager who is taxed for the support of the poor, but the people who go
to his theatre, and who, paying money for their own amusement, are
presumably able to spare a trifle towards the maintenance of the
starving poor. The _droit des pauvres_ dates from 1699, in which year
Louis XIV. declared that a sixth part of all theatrical receipts should
be made over to the general hospitals. The managers did not fail to
protest; on which it was explained to them that the poor-tax was an
impost levied on the spectator, not on the manager. The manager might,
of course, have replied that to increase the price of theatre tickets
was to diminish his chances of having a full house. The tax was all the
same, maintained. At the time of the Revolution, when, on the 14th of
August, 1789, all privileges were abolished, the right of the poor to a
portion of all theatrical receipts was suppressed. It was
re-established, however, the year afterwards, when it was laid down by
law that one décime (two sous) in every franc should for the benefit of
the poor be charged on each theatre ticket; and this regulation was
renewed from year to year until, by an imperial decree of the year 1809,
the proportion to be levied was fixed permanently at one-tenth. This
harmless, beneficial tithe continued to be paid until the year 1864,
when the Paris theatres were, for the first time, empowered to play
whatever suited them, without any of the ancient restrictions which
accorded to one theatre the exclusive right of playing grand opera, to
another that of playing comic opera or opera with spoken dialogue, to a
third tragedy of the classical pattern, and so on. In the vestibule of
the theatres there were formerly two pay-places--one for seats in the
theatre, the other for the poor-tax. In the early part of the century,
the tariff at the entrance to the Comédie Française set forth the prices
of admission in the following terms: “First boxes, 6 francs 60 centimes:
6 francs for the theatre, 60 centimes for the poor; pit, 2 francs 20
centimes: 2 francs for the theatre, 20 centimes for the poor.” No one at
that time thought of protesting against this sumptuary impost. Then, to
facilitate matters and to save theatre-goers the trouble of making
payments first at one window, then at another, the two payments were
combined in one. Before many years had passed, managers easily persuaded
themselves that it was they who, out of their own pockets, paid the
theatrical poor-tax. Some of them demanded that the impost should be
levied not on receipts, but on profits; and one director, on becoming
bankrupt, said to his creditors as he submitted to them his accounts of
profit and loss: “I owe you 300,000 francs. If I had not been forced to
give 400,000 francs to the poor, you would have been paid in full, and I
should have had 100,000 to the good.”
Putting together the receipts from all sources which come into the hands
of the Public Aid Department, the entire sum amounts to some fourteen or
fifteen million francs. This is far from sufficient, since the
expenditure in aiding and relieving the indigent and the sick is
reckoned at some twenty-five millions of francs. The deficit is made up
by the city of Paris, which contributes some eleven million or twelve
million francs a year from its own resources.
[Illustration]