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
I cannot even mention a tenth part of the hospitals or charitable
institutions of Paris, and will only allude to one or two more which are
a little peculiar. There are, for example, _nurseries_, where poor women
who must leave home for work in factories or similar places, can in the
morning leave their babies, return occasionally to nurse them, and take
them away at night. If a child is weaned, it has a little basket of his
own. A very small sum of money is paid for this care, and as the
nurseries have the best of medical attention, some mothers bring them
for that purpose alone. There are public soup establishments to which
any person with a soup-ticket can go and demand food. The tickets are
dispensed with some care to persons in needy circumstances. In each of
the twelve arrondissements of Paris there is a bureau for the relief of
poor women having large families. When proper representations are made
by such females struggling to keep from the alms-house, an allowance is
made of bread, firing, meat, and clothing, and sometimes money is given.
There are sometimes as many as thirty thousand dependent in this manner
for a part of their income upon the state. Hence, bureaus are excellent
institutions, inasmuch as prevention is always easier than cure. To save
struggling families from the humiliation of a complete downfall to the
poor-house, small weekly allowances are made, and in such a way that
their pride need not be touched, for it is often done with such secrecy
that even the intimate friends of the recipients are unaware of the
relation existing between them and the state. Such an arrangement as
this is needed in all the great cities of the world. London suffers from
the want of it. In some places the parish authorities are at liberty to
make grants to poor families, but it is nowhere done with such a system
and with such a delicacy as in Paris.
Another of the charitable institutions of Paris lends money upon movable
effects, the interest charged being very low. This is an excellent
provision for emergencies in the lives of poor persons. There are at
least a million and a half of articles pledged at this institution
yearly, and its receipts are from twenty-six to twenty-eight millions a
year. In winters of famine the public are sometimes allowed to pledge
property without paying any interest upon it when redeemed. The Mont de
Pietie, is the name of this institution, and it has branches all over
Paris, and has in its employ, as clerks and otherwise, three hundred
persons.
There are savings' banks in Paris specially adapted to the wants of the
poor, and to encourage in them the habit of accumulating property,
though in very small sums. A deposit of one franc is received, and one
person cannot hold but two thousand francs at one time in one bank of
the kind. This institution, however, is not superior to those of its
kind in many other countries.
* * * * *
LA MORGUE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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