Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

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[{326}] 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[{327}] 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.”