The number of deaths in 1832 was 11,999; the number under one year old, 1970, or one in 6¹²⁄₁₉₇. Chateauneuf states, _for all France_, 33 deaths, under one year old, out of every hundred births, which is nearly double the number of deaths of that description for this department; but the mortality is much greater amongst the orphans, foundlings, and deserted children of this city received at the hospital. An account, made up to the year 1828, gave an average of 52 deaths, under one year old, of every hundred children received there; and since that date it has increased considerably. There are women in the city who make it their business to place infants in the “tour,” and who afterwards attend the delivery of them to the country nurses, and thus, knowing where certain children are placed, give notice to the parents, who can visit them without being discovered. Children thus recognised are frequently demanded by their parents for servants, in the ordinary way; and by this plan they screen themselves from the payment of the child’s support. [Sidenote: Effects of these institutions.] There can be no doubt that the prospect of an asylum for the indigent creates amongst the working class a disposition to idleness and debauchery, whilst at the same time there are those who look down with disgust on their miserable brothers who are compelled to accept a public charitable support; and the shame which they consider attaches to a man who does it stimulates them to avoid the doors of an hospital by industry and sobriety. The number of these, however, is very small, whilst the applications for admittance to the Sanitat and to St. Joseph’s are so very numerous, so far beyond the accommodation that can be granted, that after the name of an applicant is registered he has (frequently) to wait 18 to 24 months for his turn. For the sick, however, at the Hôtel Dieu it is not so; for arrangements are made that no delay takes place with any case requiring immediate relief or treatment. The shades between the healthy labourers of the lowest class that support themselves, and those who obtain relief from charitable institutions, are so slight, that it is almost impossible to state the difference in their conditions. _No man_ has a _legal claim_ upon any of the charities; in the distribution of which, however, there is but one fixed rule that governs the distributors, and that is, to compel the applicants for relief to work to their utmost power, and to give such relief only in each individual case as they suppose to be necessary with the wages he can or ought to earn, according to the demand for labourers at the time.