Paris: With Pen and Pencil: Its People and Literature, Its Life and BusinessBartlett, D. W. (David W.)
History
Paris: With Pen and Pencil: Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business
Bartlett, D. W. (David W.)
Paris (France) -- Description and travel; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs
The population of Paris is considerably more than a million. The number
of births in a year is a little more than thirty thousand, and of these,
ten thousand are illegitimate. This fact speaks volumes in reference to
the morals of Paris. The deaths usually fall short of the births by
about four thousand. The increase of population in France is great,
though it is now a very populous country.
The increase in forty years is more than nine millions. The births in
France in one year are about eight hundred and ninety-seven thousand,
and the deaths eight hundred and sixty-five thousand. Of the births,
more than seventy thousand are illegitimate. This fact shows that the
morals of Paris, in one respect, are worse than those of the provinces.
It is calculated that one-half of the inhabitants of Paris are _working_
men; the rest are men who live by some trade or profession, or have
property and live upon it. Paris has more than eighty thousand servants,
and at least seventy thousand paupers. The latter class, as a matter of
course, varies with the character of the times; sometimes, a bad season
enlarging the number by many thousands. There is an average population
of fifteen thousand in the hospitals; five thousand in the jails; and at
least, twenty thousand foundlings are constantly supported in the city.
The annual number of suicides in France is nearly six thousand. Yet the
French are a very gay people!
The police regulations of Paris are very good, but not so good as those
of London, though New York might learn from her many useful lessons.
Rogues thrive better in Paris than in London. The Paris policeman wears
no distinctive dress, and there are streets in which if you are attacked
by night, your cries will call no officer to the rescue. The police have
been proved often to be in league with bad men and bad women, and these
cases are occurring from day to day. I should not like to walk alone on
a winter's night, after midnight, anywhere for half a mile on the
southern side of the Seine. Some of the streets are exceedingly narrow,
and are tenanted by strange people. Still, one might have many curious
adventures in them, and escape safely--but _La Morgue_ tells a
mysterious tale every day of some dark deed--a suicide or a murder,
perhaps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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