CLEAN-UP IN PARIS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXXIV, Issue 13945, 24 December 1945, Page 3

CLEAN-UP IN PARIS

ACTION OF MUNICIPAL COUNCIL London. Dec. 22. At a meeting of the Paris Municipal Council, the Police Chief, M. Charles Luizet, announced that he had decided to close down all the city’s “maisons speciales” ('licensed brothels). A resolution proposing such action was moved last week by a woman councillor, and was strongly supported by M. Luizet. who announced his decision yesterday without waiting for a vote. The Paris correspondent of The Times says that a similar decision is almost certain to be taken by other large French towns, thus ending the system which has given France a special reputation among the nations of Western Europe. Powerful and openly organised, vested interests have fought for the system since the proposal to end it was mooted, and the proposer of the resolution and Us supporters received both threatening letters and offers of bribery. The woman councillor who moved for the closure, Marthe Richard, was offered a bribe of 1,000,000 francs (£5000), but she told representatives of the interests who approached her; “This seems a rather modest price for my conscience.” The council’s decision means that 178 houses and COO 0 hotel rooms will be set free for normal occupation. The reasons which caused a change in public feeling on this subject were a gradual realisation that the system was not satisfactory on mjedical grounds, that those who kept the houses served the Vichy regime and the Germans, and the morality and the uprightness which developed in the Resistance Movement.