THE DWELLINGS OF THE POOR IN PARIS.
In view of the possible approach of cholera, and the sanitary
precautions that even the most neglectful of authorities are constrained
to take, it is of some interest to us, says the _Building News_, to know
how the poor are housed in the city of Paris, which contains, more than
any city in the world, the opposite poles of luxurious magnificence
and of sordid, bestial poverty. The statistics of the Parisian working
classes in the way of lodgings are not of an encouraging nature, and
reflect great discredit on the powers that be, who can be stern enough
in the case of any political question, but are blind to the spectacle
of fellow creatures living the life of beasts under their very eyes. In
1880, the Prefect of Police gave licenses to 21,219 arrivals in the city
of French origin, and to 7,344 foreigners. In the succeeding year,
the former had increased to 22,061, while the latter had somewhat
diminished, being only 5,493. There was a census taken in 1881, from
which it appeared that Paris contained 677,253 operatives and 255,604
employes and clerks, while out of every 1,000 inhabitants, 322 only
were born in the city, and 565 came from the departments or the French
colonies. The foreign element in the working classes has increased
very rapidly, numbering 119,349 in 1876, to which by 1881 there was an
addition of 44,689. To every 1,000 inhabitants, Paris now numbers 75
foreigners, though in 1876 the proportion was only 60. It may not be
amiss to state that the annual increase of the Paris population is at
the rate of 56,043 persons, and that in the five years 1876-81, the city
received 280,217 additional mouths. The total population of the capital
is 2,239,928, of whom 1,113,326 are males.
Returning to the poorer classes, we find that in 1872 they were
estimated at 100,000; but that in 1873 they had risen to 113,733, and
in 1880 to 123,735. It is unfortunate to be obliged to say that the
majority of these people are housed worse in Paris than in almost any
other great city in the world. There are two classes of lodgings for the
poor--the one where the workman rents one or more rooms for his family,
and, perhaps, owns a little furniture; the other, a single room tenanted
for the night only by the unmarried man who pays for his bed in the
morning and gets his meals anywhere that he can. Readers will remember
how, under the auspices of M. Haussmann, western Paris was almost pulled
down and transformed into a series of palatial boulevards and avenues.
While the work lasted the Paris workman was well pleased; but he did
not like it quite so much when the demon of restoration and renovation
invaded his own quarters, such as the Butte des Moulins, and all that
densely populated district through which the splendid Avenue de l'Opera
now runs. The effect of all this was to drive the workman into the
already crowded quarters at the barriers, such as La Gare, St. Lambert,
Javel, and Charonne, where, according to the last statistics of the
_Annuaire_, the increase was at the rate of 415 per 1,000. Of course the
ill health that always pervaded these quarters increased also; and, from
the reports of Dr. Brouardel and M. Muller, the number of deaths from
typhoid and diphtheria were doubled in ten years. Dr. Du Mesnil, in
making his returns for 1881 of convalescents from typhoid, remarked that
the most unsanitary arrondissements were the 4th, 11th, 15th, 18th, and
19th--precisely those to which the principal migrations of laborers had
taken place. The 18th arrondissement, which in 1876 had only 601 lodging
houses with 8,933 lodgers, had, in 1882, over 850, with 20,816 inmates.
In the 19th arrondissement there were 517 houses in 1876, with 9,074
lodgers, and 752 in 1882, with 17,662 inhabitants.