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

CHAPTER XLV.
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.

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.’”