Police Stories: Building the French State, 1815-1851 by John Merriman

Author:John Merriman [Merriman, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Police, Politics and government, France, Law enforcement
ISBN: 0195072537
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2005-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Beggars

Beggars were omnipresent in the urban landscape in French cities during the nineteenth century, particularly during the first half, because cyclical harvest failures brought enormous hardship. Through every town a veritable procession of destitute people passed, old and young, crippled and healthy. It was not only Paris, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Toulouse, and Rouen that seemed overwhelmed, but much smaller towns, as well as mere bourgs. Villages of course also had beggars, both those familiar to other residents because they lived there or those passing through, their presence anything but reassuring because they were not known, and therefore suspect. Although part of urban life, beggars stood to many as a symbol of urban disorder, pure and simple.

Harvest failures thus quickly swelled the number of beggars, whether they were the local downtrodden or outsiders arriving from the countryside or other towns to try their luck at surviving in a new place. Local officials estimated the number of poor in Aurillac during the winter of 1828–29 at 1,500 and predicted that the figure might well double during the coming winter. Everywhere it was the same story. The police tolerated beggars, but most of the time such toleration was restricted to those known to be from town. 61. Mendiants étrangers were required to carry their passports with them, on which at least their place of birth had to be marked (but not, obviously, a place of residence for many). Instructions in 1817 from the ministry of the interior reminded mayors that they should know the people under their jurisdiction, rich and poor, and that the law of July 13, 1791, required them to keep a register on which information about the poor was to be entered. 62 Outsiders could face the full brunt of the law.

Travelers not carrying a valid passport (including an appropriate stamp permitting travel in France) were in principle to be led to a municipal official to be interrogated and arrested. They could be held until their legal residence could be determined, and then escorted “from brigade to brigade” by gendarmes until reaching what had once passed for home. 63 After twenty days, anyone in that infamous French situation— une situation irrégulière—could be held as a vagabond.

Yet the reality could at times be different. The arrival of destitute compagnards who came to beg in towns was sometimes tolerated. When the CP of Voiron interrogated eight people from the Ain in a cabaret, not one had a passport. But as none had done anything “reprehensible” such as begging, he simply let them go. 64 In any case, local authorities believed that the force of law should fall on the able-bodied, who were able to work—when work could be found. No law ordered that gendarmes or the police were obliged to turn over those traveling without passports to the judicial branch. They could simply be sent away, in the hope that they would not return. 65

Records for Poitiers provide some idea of the numbers of passports given to indigent travelers: 1,497 during the

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