French Beggars.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 143, 18 June 1887, Page 3 (Supplement)

French Beggars.

We hear a good deal in these days of depression about the increase in mendicancy, but from various Parisian records of two centuries or so ago it would appear that mendicants were as numerous and as importunate then as now,' arid that the devices and means they adopted fqr extorting charity have scarcely changed in character from that time to this. The usual number of beggars resident in Paris was greatly increased at this period by bands of peasants and villages whose dwellings had been devastated and crops destroyed by the Fronde quarrels. Oppressed alternately by the opposing and victorious party, when little short of starvation remained for them in the country, they came, a motley crowd, to join the company of Paris mendicants, in harassing and waylaying street passengers by night and ' day. "Ruined farmers, day labourers, needy old nien, unpaid soldiers, country bandits, v T orkmev> possessing nothing but'their souls, which they couldnot sell, flocked : into the capital, where hunger awaited them,still." Such is the description given; by ; the eyewitness Falon, in his Memoires of these events: :

i Another authority, Douet' de llomp Croissant, states that in the course of the j|ear 1642 three hundred and forty-men were assassinated by night in Paris ; and Boileau affirms that after sunset any wood was a place of safety compared with the streets. Some of these beggars demanded alms sword in-hand ; and in theCour dcs Miracles not only were they au fait in the matter of simulating deformity—loss of limbs, &c.—bufc lessons in the art of feigning epileptic jits, with the assistance of a pieceof soap in the mouth, were given then,as they.now are, in many a court- of less imposing name. This sudden affiuence .of beggar,s induced Bellievre, President of the Parliament, to solicit earnestly ■ the! taking ■of mendicants into custody. Mazarjn, was . pleased. with the project, and the king signed an edict to that effect in April, 1656. They were not, however,, to, be kept , under riecessarily as. offenders against the law; but as homeless.qutcasts in need of temporal and spiritual assistance. ; .. , ■> ■ -. : , ■.