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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

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[{330}] 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,[{331}] ‘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[{332}] 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.