Assistance and repression: rural exodus, vagabondage and social crisis in France, 1880-1914.

Vous croyez expier les fautes de la France en me faisant mourir; cela ne suffira pas; vous commettrez un crime de plus; je suis la grande victime fin de siecle.

Joseph Vacher, Bourg, France, 31 December 1897, on his way to the guillotine.(1)

In 1894-97, a series of brutal murders (and several more rapes and attempted murders) was committed in various parts of rural France, in a bloody arc stretching from the Ain to the Haute-Loire to the Var. The eleven killed were, for the most part, shepherds and farm hands, both male and female, in their teens. They were invariably strangled, mutilated, their lifeless bodies sometimes defiled. The killer may have murdered up to twenty more people going back to 1888. Had he not been captured, he would be as notorious as Jack The Ripper is today. When the author of these crimes, Joseph Vacher, a 28 year-old vagabond born in the Isere, was apprehended in Tournon (Ardeche) in August 1897, it seemed to confirm the fear that had been widespread in France since the early 1880s: that the nation was suffering from an alarming social crisis, widespread vagabondage. Accordingly, French criminologists, eager to prove the relevance and legitimacy of their new profession, descended on Bourg, where Vacher had been transferred, to study the man and his crimes (and eventually, his severed head). Several of the people involved in the case, such as the chief medical experts, Drs. Alexandre Berard and Alexandre Lacassagne as well as the investigating judge, Emile Fourquet, wrote widely read books (the originals have virtually disintegrated at the Bibliotheque Nationale and in provincial libraries) and articles in the influential Revue des deux mondes shortly after the trial in which they warned of the lessons to be learned from the case.(2) Vacher's heinous crimes impressed themselves into the popular imagination, becoming the subject of children's rhymes.

The Vacher Affair was a cause celebre in fin-de-siecle France, but one long forgotten.(3) The public's interest in the case was of course rooted in the sensationalistic way in which the media - yellow newspapers and respectable ones alike - reported the crimes, but the Vacher affair also symbolizes the fear of and fascination with vagabonds and marginals in general that was so common in France before the war. As I argue in this article, this fear was, for the most part, grounded in reality, and was not primarily, as some have claimed, the product of some sort of national hysteria, fuelled by an irresponsible press. Indeed, here was one of France's most serious social problems. Scarcely one decade before the outbreak of the First World War, the problem of vagabondage and mendicity was so widespread in many parts of rural France that social commentators often likened the situation to the explosive one of the 1780s.

Vacher had twice been committed to an asylum a few years before his arrest and he was clearly suffering from paranoia, a persecution complex, and delusional episodes. He left his mark on those he met, and there were several witnesses at his trial who attested to his mad rages. He was clearly insane. This had been the verdict passed by the doctor who had evaluated him at the Dole asylum, and by several others, including his superiors in the military. At his trial it was revealed that as a child, Vacher had mutilated animals and had once fired a shot in the direction of some peers. He was sent to the freres maristes at Saint-Genis-Laval as a postulant, but was thrown out after it was discovered that "il avait masturbe ses camarades.(4) During his military service, he was feared as a loner with a volcanic temper. During the investigation and trial, he suffered frequent delusional episodes, but he was nevertheless declared responsible.

The problem, if not from the perspective of his victims' relatives then at least from that of Vacher, who wished to remain living, was that he was an incorrigible vagabond: this sealed his fate. Led by Dr. Lacassagne, the medical experts at his trial observed:

Vacher is not an epileptic nor is he an impulsif. He is a violent, immoral man who was temporarily overcome by delirious melancoly with his ideas of persecution and suicide. . . . Vacher, cured, was responsible when he left the Saint-Robert asylum. His crimes are those of an anti-social, a bloody sadist, who believed in his invincibility. . . . At the present time, Vacher is not insane: he fakes madness. Vacher is therefore a criminal and he should be considered responsible, this responsibility being scarcely attenuated by his previous psychological problems.(5)

Vacher was executed for his crimes, eerily, on New Year's eve 1898 to the cheers of would-be spectators gathered outside the prison walls. In a sense Vacher was partially right when, as he was being led to the guillotine, he shouted, "Look, the victim of the asylums" (Ah voila! La victime des fautes des asiles). Partially right, since he had escaped from an asylum and had taken to the road, and, it could be argued, since his doctors failed to appreciate his danger to society. But now France had an opportunity to strike out in the most visible way against an alarming social problem which had long terrified the nation: vagabondage, and Vacher was presented by the media as the living embodiment of all that was wrong with this social scourge.

As a semi-educated lunatic, Vacher was by no means representative of the hundreds of thousands of vagabonds who still roamed French roads at the turn of the century, but this did not stop the press from exaggerating the general relevance of this one very sick individual. As we shall see, elite opinion of the day generally presented vagabondage as a problem of poor behavior or eugenics, not as the result of a socio-economic crisis. In fact, the persistence of ancien regime-like socio-economic conditions in much of rural France, well documented by Eugen Weber, coupled with the rural exodus and the lack of public assistance resources to assist people in distress, conspired to create an alarming social crisis.(6) This, in turn, proved to be immeasurably embarrassing to French republicans, embarked as they were on an ambitious program of modernization and cultural assimilation, symbolized by educational reform, the economic and linguistic integration of the country, social reform legislation for the 'worthy poor,' anticlerical measures, and efforts to trumpet the virtues of science and technology (at Parisian world fairs, for instance). How, then, did the French come to terms with the crisis of vagabondage and rural misery? For the most part, by simply blaming the victim and engaging, as we shall see, in remarkably repressive measures to wipe the problem out.

A little-discussed but important counter-current to republican solidarisme flourished in the three decades before the First World War: it cannot be overlooked in any analysis of the social question, for it too would set the parameters of the debate, limiting those reforms which did emerge to the 'worthy poor' - that is, to almost every group except the able-bodied adult. Indeed, the harsh intellectual current discussed below should be considered as a serious counterweight to the social reform movement of the time. If, during the period 1880-1914 the nation increasingly devoted its energies toward assisting more women, children and elderly persons, it also engaged in a ruthless crackdown on beggars and vagabonds, sometimes confusing them with the floating unemployed urban population and with rural migrants to large cities. For every step forward the French took at this time, they took one step back, perhaps in order to justify the reforms they were seeking to put in place for the 'worthy poor.' In an 1888 report to the Minister of the Interior on the nation's depots de mendicite (prisons for beggars and vagabonds), the deputy from the Haute-Loire department (and two-time prime minister) Charles Dupuy argued that the Revolution had got it right: "The more generous assistance became, the more rigorous were the laws of repression."(7) Dupuy noted in a parliamentary report on vagabondage ten years later: "The Constituent Assembly understood the necessity of 'balancing assistance with repression.' The more real needs were addressed, the more proper it was to demask and to punish idleness, vice, and fake misery."(8) And as Camille Ferdinand-Dreyfus addressed the Congres de patronage des liberes in 1894 on the topic of vagabondage, he cited La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt's famous dictum: "If man has the right to ask of society: 'Help me to live,' society in turn has the right to ask of him: 'Give us your labor.'"(9) This type of language was commonplace, even among the most 'solidaristic' of radical republicans, and it constitutes a strong counter-current to republican 'solidarite.' The concern over balancing the new laws of assistance that were being introduced at this time (free medical assistance for indigents in 1893, accident insurance in 1898, pensions for the elderly indigent in 1905, maternity benefits in 1913, etc.), with repressive means appears with remarkable frequency in the nation's social policy forums and in parliament,(10) Newspaper articles, journal articles and books containing the phrase "assistance and repression" appeared in the dozens during this period.

I.

As a vagabond roaming the Midi during the 1890s, Vacher would have had ample opportunity to team up with the veritable army of vagabonds and beggars that was circulating on French roads at this time. Indeed, at his trial several men who had come to know him on his tour de France vagabond testified against him. Estimates of the number of vagabonds in early and mid-nineteenth century France range from 75,000 to 200,000. There were an average of 2,910 convictions each year for vagrancy and begging in 1826-30 yet 10,429 in 1876-80 and 19,723 (and over 51,000 arrests) in the early 1890s.(11) Estimates for the 1890s reached the figure of 400,000, even 500,000. One third to one half of all arrests in Paris in the 1880s were for vagabondage. Jules de Crisenoy, in his sweeping study based on the records and reports of the nation's 90-plus departmental councils, Questions d'assistance et d'hygiene publiques traites dans les conseils generaux (13 vols., 1885-1900), reported on the problem. Dozens of departments complained throughout the 1880s and 1890s that vagabondage was the most pressing social problem facing rural populations. The problem was so great in the Ardennes that the prefect instructed all the mayors to set aside an abandoned building in their commune where vagabonds and beggars might take shelter. The general council distributed 25,000 francs to help out with the conversion of empty buildings into night shelters.(12) An 1891 report from the department of the Seine-Inferieure noted that "there isn't a single commune in the Seine-Inferieure which is not bitterly complaining about the considerable growth in mendicity in the last few years."(13) In 1890, there were an estimated seven to eight times more beggars in Poitou than fifty years earlier.(14)

The prosperity of the 1860s saw the problem recede into the background of the nation's concerns. In the generation following 1848 there were no serious efforts to tackle the problem, and the vagabond population seems to have stabilized. Few studies of vagabondage appeared between the 1840s and the late 1870s. Yet from the late 1870s right to the outbreak of the First World War, the nation was consumed with fear of the vagabond. The popular press, academic journals, social policy journals and university publications devoted inordinate amounts of space to the topic. Prison societies, agricultural societies, municipal and general councils, charities, social policy forums, and parliament itself were obsessed with the problem of vagabondage. National conferences were held almost every year on the topic during the period 1880-1910 (and international ones, too, for the Italians and Belgians, in particular, were also obsessed with the issue, for they too had to cope with a rapid rural exodus and their social services were also poorly developed). At least three dozen theses were written on the topic in France. Arrests for begging and vagrancy rose sharply; the fear of the vagabond, the beggar, the 'apache,' consumed the nation.

The French, Gordon Wright reminds us in his important study of crime in France, were deeply concerned with crime throughout the nineteenth century, but from the 1880s to the Great War, the concern over vagrancy was, he concludes, particularly "obsessive." In this atmosphere, vagrants and beggars were usually lumped together "as a single locution."(15) Wright attributes this rise in repression and in popular concern to a periodic wave of irrational fear, which, he argues, is characteristic of the way French society has perceived crime during the last two centuries: "there are times when popular beliefs outrun facts, and this was probably the case with respect to the vagrancy panic of the 1880s."(16) To be sure, the obsession with vagrancy was to an extent a figment of the population's imagination and was fuelled by a lurid press - Le Petit parisien, Le Petit journal and even the Revue des deux mondes, for example, regularly contained sensationalistic illustrations and stories of marauding tribes of vagabonds and "apaches," to the fascination of Parisian readers.(17) Others, such as Guy de Maupassant in his Le horla. Le vagabond (1887), provided a more sympathetic (and fictional) account of the problem.(18) The obsession with vagrancy, as well as the tendency to medicalize the problem, was rooted, to an extent, in a pervasive and profound sense of national demographic and military decline, born of the defeat to the Prussians. But the obsession with degenerate beggars and vagrants was also an indication that vagrancy and mendicity were actually on the rise since mid-century.(19)

The decline in French agriculture over the course of the second half of the nineteenth century lay at the root of the problem: the value of agricultural properties, for instance, declined by one-third between 1881 and 1913 and grain prices fell from 38 francs per quintal in 1855 to 20 in the early 1890s.(20) As prices fell, many smallholders could no longer support their families. Whole families took to the road in search of work in the cities; conscripts turned to the road (an oft-cited cause of vagabondage); youth struck out in search of greater opportunity than their villages offered, leaving behind their parents and grandparents, who sometimes fell into destitution as a result. In the Midi, the phylloxera epidemic hit the vineyards "like an economic bubonic plague," reaching catastrophic proportions by the 1880s, pushing waves of impoverished families into the cities, which could not absorb them.(21) As rural migrants were shunted from town to town, they frequently were forced to beg or steal. Jules Meline estimated in his widely read book of 1905, Le Retour a la terre (The Return to the Land) that France's rural roads and farmland was being prowled by an army of 400,000 vagabonds - more than 1% of the population.(22) This was a figure which was commonly tossed about in the contemporary press and in parliament during the 1880s, 1890s and 1900s, even if there was no reliable basis to it. Some observers suggested that 200,000 or 300,000 was a more accurate figure. Whatever the exact figure, here was a social problem of the first magnitude. An 1895 inquiry found that 466,000 people had been sheltered by night shelters during the previous year.(23) Over 168,000 people stayed in the night shelters of Paris alone in 1894 (to be sure, many were repeat guests).(24)

France was on the move as never before in the nineteenth century, and here was part of the problem, for many arrested 'vagabonds' were in fact destitute rural migrants. The Conseil superieur de l'assistance publique (the Superior Council of Public Assistance, a government-named council of social policy experts - and amateurs - founded in 1888) noted in 1899 that the "involuntarily unemployed" who took to the road in search of work were too often arrested for vagabondage.(25) Between 1872 and 1911, the population of the department of the Rhone increased by 246,000, almost entirely due to migration from the Massif Central, the Savoie and other poor regions. During the period 18721896, roughly six to eight thousand people arrived in the Rhone each year; between 1906 and 1911, 14,000 arrived each year.(26) Most of these people settled in the Lyon area. Nationwide, over three million people left agriculture between 1876 and 1911 (in contrast, only 790,000 had left the countryside between 1831 and 1851 and 1,715,000 had left during the thirty year period 1851-1881).(27) Between 1881 and 1891, 55 departments suffered from net population losses due to migration; 58 suffered the same fate during the next decade, and 62 in the first decade of the twentieth century. French towns, but especially villages (those with a population of less than 2,000), were emptying at an alarming rate. Above all it was the rural marginals who left during the crisis of the 1880s. Those who stayed were the lucky ones still capable of eking out an existence, and many who stayed behind in fact saw their fortunes rise.(28)

In the short five year period 1906-1911, the rural population of France decreased by 618,000 and the urban population increased by 866,000 people. Some 70,000 people arrived in the Rhone (mostly in Lyon), and some 303,000 arrived in the Seine in this five year period. The poorest parts of France were throwing forth their most impoverished inhabitants: 22,400 left the western department of the Finistere, many arriving at the Gare Montparnasse in search of work, only to fall into deeper misery than that they had fled. Over 18,700 people left the Cotes-du-Nord, 17,000 departed the Morbihan, 14,500 left the Vendee, 13,000 moved from the Correze (Massif Central) and 14,200 fled the Ardeche.(29) In 1903, 62 departments (two-thirds the total) were losing population due to the rural exodus and the low birth rate. The people fleeing the countryside invariably set out for a few large and medium-sized cities, like Paris, Lyon, Rouen, Le Havre and Grenoble.(30) As they made their way to the cities, many were confused with vagabonds and arrested. Many no doubt fell into vagabondage. Of course widespread begging was nothing new to Paris and other cities - in the 1866 census, 37,854 Parisians admitted to being full-time beggars - but what was new was the scale on which it now occurred and authorities' increasing lack of tolerance for it.(31) Although many towns and villages increased their commitment to public relief to help the victims of the rural crisis - during the 1880s, for instance, a village of 700 in the Indre-et-Loire gave nightime refuge and public assistance to over 1,400 vagabonds in a six month period - most of France's largest cities did not.(32)

II.

Vagabondage was an offence (Articles 269-273 of the Penal Code) punishable by three to six months imprisonment and, in certain cases, five to ten years of police surveillance. Children under 16 could not be sent to prison for vagabondage. Mendicity was punishable under Articles 274-282 of the Penal Code. All those found to be begging in areas where "there exists a public establishment organized to obviate begging" (a depot de mendicite) could be punished by prison terms of three to six months. The penalties increased with threat of violence, violence, the use of arms, the use of false passports and certificates of indigence, recidivism, the feigning of injury, and trespassing. The principal institutions used to combat begging and vagrancy were the prison-like depots de mendicite. They were first introduced in 1612 and later expanded early in the eighteenth-century and again in the 1760s. Resurrected by Napoleon in 1808, there were 96 by the end of the Empire. By 1850 there were about 20, by 1870, about 40. By 1900, there were around 50.(33) By 1930, however, there were only a dozen in operation. The depots, of course, treated the symptoms, not the roots of the problem. France was iii prepared for the social by-products associated with the rural exodus.

The remarkable backwardness, inadequacy and inaccessibility of French hospitals as well as the general lack of public assistance institutions served to exacerbate the problems of begging and vagrancy and to speed up the rural exodus. The elderly, epileptics and those suffering from incurable skin diseases, in particular, often took to the road when they could find neither family nor neighborhood support, or a bed in a hospice. In 1886, 43 departments still had no medical service in their rural areas.(34) Only 193 hospitals were located in rural communes - France had 36,000 communes. In 1870, 15 million people (40% of the population), lived in communes without a local welfare bureau (no commune was required by law to establish them).(35) By 1900, the situation was only marginally better: now only around 10 million people had no access to a bureau, but most bureaus were in any case ineffective, starved of monies. Most of them received no public subventions. In 1903, of France's 36,000 communes, 29,000 (81%) still had no public officier de sante or doctor.(36) Resources were spread unevenly around the nation, concentrated to the north and east of the notorious Saint Malo-Geneva line.

Tables 1 and 2 help in part to explain the geography of vagabondage. Many vagabonds, like Vacher, suffered from mental illness and others often had serious medical problems such as epilepsy. A disproportionate number came from the poorer departments which had few relief facilities and they most often headed towards those departments which, by virtue of their wealth, were better equipped with relief networks and night shelters. Throughout the nineteenth century, city officials in Paris and Lyon complained that the mayors of poor rural communes regularly gave marginals and people with medical problems travel money (secours de route) to facilitate their passage to large cities, to shovel the problem to another jurisdiction. Access to hospital care varied enormously, even at the turn of the century. Indeed, by the late 1890s, many cities provided even fewer beds as a percent of the population than they had in the 1820s. Table 3 illustrates this trend.

Table 1

No. of Hospitals/
Hospices (1886)                Department

80                              Nord
60                              Vaucluse
40                              Var
9                               Haute-Vienne
9                               Aude
9                               Creuse
8                               Tarn
3                               Haute-Alpes
3                               Corse
Table 2

No. of Bureaux de
Bienfaisance (1886)            Department

640                             Nord
407                             Calvados
406                             Aisne
42                              Allier
38                              Finistere
32                              Creuse
32                              Haute-Vienne
15                              Pyrenees-Orientales
6                               Corse

Due to rapid urban growth, many urban hospitals, like those of Reims, could no longer take in the wayfarers (passants) and provide them with sustenance. The city had grown from 69,000 in 1870, at which point there were 1,430 hospital beds, to 94,000 in 1880, when there were 1,700 beds. Whereas population grew by 36%, hospital capacity grew by only 19%, but this, as Table 3 illustrates, was a rather positive situation in light of other cities' problems. Many elderly men and women in Reims now were forced to seek charity, and, failing that, to beg. As Dr. Henri Henrot noted, it was well known that it was common for rural migrants who had been refused care at the Reims hospital to turn to begging?

A particularly worrisome problem was that of the elderly indigent. According to the Minister of the Interior in his 1 August 1888 circular, 19,111 of France's 36,000 communes had no facilities to care for the elderly. Here was another 'push' factor which added the elderly to the floating population. Most of the communes lacking support systems for the elderly were rural, and most of these were located in the West and the Center. Typically, rural departments' public relief bureaus (bureaux de bienfaisance) only assisted less than 1% of their population aged 60 and over.(38) Due to the deficiencies of the public sector, it was largely to private hands that the elderly turned for relief when their families could not or would not support them. As Francis Sabran noted at the Conseil superieur de l'assistance publique, "in many places the elderly and the incurables would be left without care and food if they were not assisted by private charities like the Petites-Soeurs des pauvres, who now assist more than 18,000 elderly indigents."(40) Of course in many places, like the poorer departments of the Center, the elderly were "left without care."

Table 3

The Decline in Hospital Beds in Major Cities(39)

City             Year, Hospital Bed/Resident ratio

Angers             1825: 1/32      1894: 1/50
Bordeaux           1825: 1/65      1894: 1/148
Dijon              1825: 1/77      1894: 1/128
Grenoble           1850: 1/38      1894: 1/82
Le Havre           1828: 1/55      1894: 1/73
Lille              1825: 1/34      1894: 1/79
Lyon               1825: 1/70      1894: 1/98
Marseille          1835: 1/77      1894: 1/220
St.-Etienne        1860: 1/94      1894: 1/109

The general council of the department of the Puy-de-Dome, in the Center, noted in 1894 that "the majority of invalids are beggars." A disproportionate number of the nation's beggars and vagrants were elderly epileptics and sufferers of incurable skin diseases. For example, of the 21 beggars arrested in Nice in 1861, seven were aged 50-60 and seven were over 80 years old. Six were blind, eleven were invalid, one was mute, and only two were able-bodied.(41) One-half of the 1,748 men sheltered by the night shelter of Le Havre in 1895-96 were over 50 years old, and one-third were casual farm hands (journaliers).(42) In Marseille, the mean age of convicted beggars "was much higher than that of other criminals: 41.3." Whereas most crimes were committed by the young, begging was a crime of the old, and of men.(43) (Young vagabonds were not, however, unheard of: one of Vacher's victims was a fourteen year-old vagabond.) Typically, elderly vagrants and beggars in the Paris basin hailed from the poorest departments in the Center and West, where nineteen departments had fewer than 5 beds per 10,000 people earmarked for the incurable.(44) In 1886, the depot de mendicite of the Aisne contained 200 elderly indigent or infirm, 102 idiots, 33 epileptics, 23 blind, and 43 children under the age of 16.(45) The problem of old age poverty was not helped by the fact that no hospital or hospice was required by law to admit anyone. It was to private authorities that the elderly poor had to turn, in the event that there was an institution to which they could apply, and of course this meant that some were luckier than others, for there were many holes in the nation's charitable net, especially in the poorer parts of the Massif Central.

Far too often, the author of a 1905 study of old age poverty concluded, it was to begging that the elderly indigent turned to survive? Vagabondage and mendicity were, if not male practices, male crimes. The vast majority of those arrested and convicted of vagabondage and mendicity were men - 14,972 of the 16,773 people arrested for vagrancy and 2,076 of the 2,853 people arrested for mendicity in Paris in 1882, for instance.(47) In Paris in 1886, there were 5,995 arrests for mendicity. Of these, 4,660 were men and 1,295 were women. The number of people imprisoned in the depots de mendicite increased from 3,654 in 1892 to 4,865 in 1902. The vast majority were men. Convictions nationwide for vagabondage totalled 14,685, of which 13,579 were men and only 1,106 were women. In any given year during this period, one-third to one-half of all arrests in Paris were for vagabondage or mendicity.(48)

It is no exaggeration, then, to say that vagabondage was a far more serious problem during the late nineteenth century than it was in mid-century or even during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Unlike traditional seasonal migrants - for example, the male migrants who annually left Alpine villages during the winter months to work in cities - most of the migrants during the late nineteenth century had no firm contacts waiting for them in a regional center. They left with no money in their pockets, and many ended up in cities which were themselves in the grips of economic stagnation. "Unfortunately for those victims of agricultural stagnation," writes Robert Nye, "their plight coincided with a highly publicized increase in the rates of criminal recidivism."(49) It was in this context that the Vacher affair exploded onto the front pages of French newspapers and journals.

III.

The Vacher case seemed to highlight the urgency of the problem of vagabondage, but it was also seized upon by some of the critics of public assistance for the able-bodied adult, such as Marcel Lecoq, who had been arguing since the 1880s that the bureaux de bienfaisance (local poor relief committees or welfare bureaus) and other forms of public relief and charity were only serving to exacerbate the problems of vagabondage and mendicity. As Lecoq warned in his diatribe against public assistance (and argument in favor of work-relief), L'Assistance par le travail en France (Work Relief in France), public assistance was dangerous because it consisted of something for nothing, as did the fruits of begging. Assisting the poor in this fashion was also dangerous since "the needy class and the criminal class are but a step apart; the slope is slippery and it is easy to fall to the other side. Most of the great criminals have been habituated [to their lives of crime] at an early age through begging or through vagrancy. . . . Vacher, whose series of atrocious crimes everyone knows, was a vagabond who, unable to settle down anywhere, obtained the large part of his resources from begging."(50) The Vacher case inspired several Ministry of Interior reports on the problem of vagabondage in the three years following his arrest, and of course articles abounded on the larger lessons to be drawn from Vacher's acts.(51) Even before Vacher's arrest and trial, many agreed with Camille Ferdinand-Dreyfus' statement that "the reform of our legislation governing vagabondage and mendicity is the most urgent of the social questions."(52)

As begging and vagrancy increased, so too did criticisms of the principal public institution that was designed to deal with people with inadequate resources, the local bureaux de bienfaisance. Indeed, during the 1890s, for the first time in several decades, criticisms of the bureaux were legion. Books were published calling for the complete abolition of all the bureaux, since, it was believed, they only encouraged idleness among the able-bodied and fuelled the problem of vagabondage, as beggars and vagabonds roamed the country, stopping periodically in cities to steal, to beg and to request public charity.(53) Employing a questionable but all-too-common logic, Charles Dupuy argued in an 1888 report he presented to both the Conseil superieur de l'assistance publique and to parliament, that there was a direct link between the expansion of the welfare bureaus throughout the century and the rise in vagabondage and mendicity. Whereas in 1833 there were only 6,275 bureaus (which assisted 695,932 people), fifty years later there were 14,500 bureaus and 1.4 million people were assisted. If, Dupuy argued, increased access to assistance did indeed reduce vagabondage and mendicity, then there should be no good reason for there to be more vagabonds and beggars in the late 1880s than earlier in the century, since, after all, assistance was now more widely available.(54) The answer to the riddle, in his mind and in the mind of many others at the time, was that assistance provided by the welfare bureaus was itself to blame for the rise in vagabondage and mendicity. Across urban France, in Paris, Nancy, Le Havre, Lille, Lyon, Marseille, Nice, and Montpellier, city officials reduced 300,000 people from the public assistance rolls during the 1890s and 1900s in an effort to weed out the professional cheats who were apparently abusing the system and in an effort to refocus resources on the elderly, mothers and children.(55)

Able-bodied adults were effectively shut off from receiving public assistance in several cities, including those listed above. The principles of 'scientific charity' were embraced as the French reformed their urban outdoor relief systems. Paris eliminated over 60,000 people from the relief rolls in the 1890s-1900s; Lyon removed over 16,000 in one year alone, 1891; Nancy removed 4,000 people from the rolls in the 1890s; Nice assisted 7,000 fewer people in the late 1880s than at the start of the decade, and so on. The pattern was repeated in at least a dozen of France's largest cities.(56) These efforts cannot be understood without reference to the widespread fear that public assistance and indiscriminate almsgiving was helping to fuel the problem of begging and vagrancy. By eliminating or drastically curtailing relief for the able-bodied adult, French cities hoped to send a message to marginal elements: they would not be welcome in town. As the director of Nice's new work-relief center (assistance par le travail) declared: "It is not an oeuvre d'assistance which will clear a city [of vagabonds and beggars], it is the creation of a depot de mendicite, the necessary corollary of work-relief."(57) As urban France curtailed its outdoor relief systems, it introduced work-relief services (which usually put the assisted to work breaking stones, and the like) and depots.

The rich had, of course, always blamed the poor for their poverty, and Europe had a long history of adopting cruel measures toward the poor (consider the branding of vagrants and 'rogues' in the sixteenth century, for instance). But as Barrows and others have shown, the link between poverty and individual failings (in particular, alcohol consumption) gained new currency in the aftermath of the bloody, alarming Commune, and this current of thought gained momentum right into the 1900s.(58) In a lengthy and influential 1874 report to the Minister of the Interior on the situation of the nation's bureaux de bienfaisance, the Inspector General of Public Assistance Paul Bucquet concluded that "moral and individual causes are far more common" than economic causes of poverty. "Drunkenness and the frequenting of cabarets and cafes ruin [workers'] health and cause them to lose the love for work: the enquiry reveals that these are the principal, the essential, causes of pauperism."(59) Here was an accurate encapsulation of elite opinion of the day. It was easier to explain poverty and vagrancy with such devices than it was to ponder their socio-economic roots. The pauper was increasingly portrayed as a sub-human in the popular press. Books like J. Lefort's Intemperance et misere (1875), which equated poverty with alcoholism, were crowned with France's most prestigious writing awards, such as the Academie des sciences morales et politique's annual Felix de Beaujour prize.(60) The Academy had devoted its 1874 prize to a book on the topic: what role does alcohol play in causing misery? As the rural exodus was getting underway, many Frenchmen were increasingly turning to pseudo-scientific explanations for deviancy, criminality, and adult poverty.

The very titles of many of the books which addressed the social question speak volumes. They continue to refer to the "dangerous classes", the "inferior classes", and the "social garbage" right to the end of the century. In 1910, Dr. Armand Pagnier published a widely read book with the title Le dechet social, Le vagabond. Arguably the most influential treatise on poverty during the nineteenth century was Duchatel's De la charite dans ses rapports avec l'etat moral et le bien-etre des classes inferieures de la societe (On Charity and its Relationship to the Moral State and Well-Being of the Inferior Classes of Society) (1836).(61) A nation with a long history of denying the socio-economic roots of poverty could always resort to these timeworn explanations of misery whenever the need arose. But there was a new, disturbing twist to the elite view of the social question at the end of the nineteenth century, as the problem was increasingly cast in medical and/or eugenic terms.

From the 1880s to the 1910s, the study of vagabondage was a veritable industry in France and in other European nations. A cousin of the huge literature on 'degeneration' which Daniel Pick has studied, hundreds and hundreds of articles, books, treatises and theses appeared in several languages, chiefly French, German and Italian, on the medical roots of vagabondage and mendicity.(62) As Nye argues, "the continued and intensified application of medical ideas to new areas of deviance in the decade or so prior to 1905 helped to . . . promote suspicion of marginal elements in French society. During this period vagrancy was thoroughly medicalized."(63) Whereas the increasing medicalization of childbirth and care would spell more concern (and money) for pregnant women and children, the increasing medicalization of begging and vagrancy spelled a harsher attitude towards these groups.(64) Although there were some critics who advocated the rehabilitation of vagabonds, the general climate of opinion tended towards stern repression.

Consider the case of Drs. Armand Marie and Raymond Meunier, an influential team of French 'experts' on the vagabondage problem. In their numerous newspaper and journal articles of the 1890s and 1900s as well as in their widely respected and cited book, Les vagabonds (1908), they argued that "purely economic causes are only of minor importance, whereas the true causes must be sought in the mental state of the vagabond himself." Marie and Meunier, like many before and after them, constructed an elaborate taxonomy of vagabondage, which included the following causes and types of the 'disease:' "temporaires, neurastheniques, hysteriques, epileptiques, degeneres originaux et excentriques, excites, deprimes, mystiques, intoxiques, dements, d'origine ethnique"(65) (Marie and Meunier argued that Vacher was indeed insane, but to no avail.) The medical literature was complemented by the more influential popular novels and yellow journalism of the time. The seamy underworld of Paris spawned a literary industry to chronicle it. Typical were the series of articles published on child vagrants in the Revue des deux mondes in 1876-78, and Felix Platel's Paris-Secret (3rd ed. 1889), which spoke to the fascination with marginals and vagabonds and portrayed Paris as a city overtaken by outcasts and orphans.(66) Louis Paulian's study of begging in Paris, Paris qui mendie: Mal et remade (1st ed. 1893), went into its tenth edition in 1899. Paulian's book was replete with life histories of Parisian beggars, like one Hubert Nicolourdat, a 68 year-old who had been arrested 56 times for begging. Another "aristocrate de la mendicite" was Louis-Rene Pasquer, a 60 year-old with 54 arrests to his credit.(67) The Parisian press, especially the Petit journal, was replete with images of these archetypal figures. The Parisian imagination was further inspired by Maxime Du Camp's portrait of vagabonds and beggars in his Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie (7th ed., vol. 4, 1884) and by Georges Berry's popular La Mendicite (1897). Berry, a deputy from the ninth arrondissement, provided Parisians with a sordid list of vagabonds' tricks, a map of their favorite gathering spots and a list of their preferred types of victims. The Linnaeus of vagabonds, Berry claimed that he approached his studies of Parisian vagabonds with a scientist's empirical vigor (for instance, he dressed up his colleague Louis Paulian as a beggar to get to know their habits). Laziness, he argued, was the cause of mendicity. Severe repression, in the form of mandatory agricultural and industrial work-camps, punitive work-relief institutions in every city, forced emigration to colonial prisons (which was done), and the abolition of alms-giving (and even the bureaux de bienfaisance), was the solution for Berry and for many other authors.(68) In Parliament Berry tried to put his schemes into practice, but failed after a commission he led failed to issue a successful report. Although they did not succeed in realizing most of these goals (apart from deportation for recidivist vagabonds), Berry and the medical 'experts' on vagabondage helped to create an atmosphere which was hostile to relief seekers, for in their work the line between the destitute rural migrant and the professional vagrant was blurred beyond recogni on.ogniti So hostile was public opinion towards vagabonds that even the more levelheaded social critics of the day, like Othenin d'Haussonville, could write in his five-part series of articles on child poverty in Paris appearing in the Revue des deux mondes that: "among the principal causes of vagabondage, perhaps one should place instinct in the first rank. 'Vagabondage is in the blood,' a prison warden told me, and this axiom is no less true for children than it is for adults."(69) Marie and Meunier's work was unabashedly eugenic: vagabondage, they argued, was rooted primarily in one's inherited "psychology."(70) As late as 1910, Deputy Marc Reville, the head of the Chamber of Deputies' commission on vagabondage could write in a committee report on the problem: "I insist on these words: conditions of morality. Experience demonstrates that whether it take place in the country or the city, mendicity practiced by the elderly or the infirm is a racket which does not even aid the wretched poor themselves." Regarding able-bodied adult beggars and vagabonds (whom were often confused), Reville was no more charitable: "experience demonstrates that of the one hundred men to whom one offers work, ninety-seven will refuse it.

So host Despite the fact that the upsurge in vagabondage was generally attributed to personal failings and/or medical and eugenic roots, there were those who saw the real roots of the problem. The Minister of the Interior hit the nail on the head in an 1884 report: "It is the obvious consequence of the agricultural and industrial crisis which has been with us for several years." His successor noted in 1887: "The increase in the number of cases of vagabondage and mendicity, which has taken place in particular since 1883, coincides with the economic crisis from which the continent had suffered since then."(72) This was a view against which Marie, Meunier and many others combatted with great passion, and in the end their view ended up prevai

Despite Indeed, the general court of public opinion was becoming less sympathetic to vagabonds and the marginalized poor (even as it was becoming generally more sympathetic towards women, children and the elderly). Typical of the harsh tone of critics was Theodore Homberg's analysis of the growing problem of vagabondage: "vagabonds are the most dangerous enemies of society."(73) He recommended that they be punished with the utmost severity, and that they be transported to colonial prisons, since they threatened the social fabric, living outside society and its key institution, the family. Homberg's influential Etudes sur le vagabondage (1st ed., 1880), first read to the Academie des sciences morales et politiques, went into several editions before the First World War and served as a sort of bible to the country's growing pool of experts on the problem, like Louis Riviere and Jules de Crisenoy, who cited it ad nauseam. Homberg was influential in having Rouen scale its relief system back in order to discourage Breton migrants from settling there. In the writings of Homberg and other 'experts' on the problem, the line between the professional vagabond and the unemployed migrant was usually blurred beyond recognition. He and his associates spoke of"this leper which threatens the very social order," of a "race of beggars and vagabonds," of "this plague," with its own "rules, bosses and unions."(74) In a widely cited article published in the Revue philanthropique shortly before his influential book Mendiants et vagabonds (1902) was published, Louis Riviere noted that due to scientific advances, "parasites and microbes harboring morbid germs have been expelled" from many French homes. Leprosy, the plague, and even cholera, he noted, had seen their day come and go; yet one social parasite which the French had still not eradicated was the vagabond/beggar.(75) Marius Berge complained in the Revue philanthropique of urban "degeneration" caused by the rural exodus.(76) During the period 1890-1910, the medicine and law faculties of Paris and Lyon produced several dozen theses written from the same viewpoint on the medical/eugenic roots of vagabondage and begging.(77) Throughout the period 1880-1914, the following journals regularly contained articles on vagabondage and mendicity written in the same spirit: the Revue philanthropique, Revue des etablissements de bienfaisance, La reforme sociale, Journal des economistes, Le Temps, Revue d' economie politique, Revue politique et parlementaire, Revue penitentiaire, Revue des prisons, and the Archives de l' Anthropologie criminelle, to name but a

Indeed,

IV.eed, These ideas translated into politics. If the carrot was taken away by several cities, the stick was brought back. The three decades before the First World War witnessed a vigorous campaign to stamp out the problem of vagabondage with repressive means. As during the Revolution, the state's concern with specific, targeted groups deemed worthy of assistance (the elderly, the ill indigent, pregnant women, children) was matched by a cruel and unsympathetic attitude towards the floating unemployed, beggars and vagrants - the "undeserving poor," the "professional poor," the "social garbage." Just as the Jacobins had drawn a sharp distinction between "the reprehensible miserable and the blessed poor," so too did late-nineteenth century republicans.(78) Faithful to their Revolutionary heritage, which, it needs emphasizing, also contained a repressive strain, French republicans took the hard line against the loafer, the beggar and the vagabond. As Georges Berry stood before the Chamber of Deputies in 1899 to introduce a bill which would have sent beggars and vagabonds to work colonies for five years, he stated, referring to Vacher, "in effect, does not the beggar become a thief and a killer ...?

These i In general, larger French cities now went out of their way to make migrants feel unwelcome, they encouraged migrants to return to their home towns, or they simply expelled them. During the last three decades of the century, several French cities, including Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux, Le Havre, Nancy, Nice and Marseille increased and/or strictly enforced their residency requirements for all forms of public assistance (from one year to three in Paris, for example) and engaged in elaborate expulsion schemes to clear the streets of beggars and the casual laboring population. As Louis Riviere, President of the Societe d'economie charitable, and leader of the (punitive) work-relief and scientific charity movement noted, "We achieve our best results by sending provincials, attracted to Paris and to other large cities by the prospect of earning high salaries but who fail and end up in night shelters after having depleted their small savings, back to their pays. In these cases, the railroad companies issue half-fare tickets upon presentation of a certificate of indigence."(80) The Office central des institutions de bienfaisance helped coordinate these deals with railway companies in several cities in order to effect the "repatriation" of the nation's floating urban population. In 1889, for instance Marseille "repatriated" 243 persons, of both French and Italian origin. Bordeaux and Versailles were the two cities most committed to repatriating French provincials, usually males.(81) In its first decade of operation, the Paris Office central repatriated 13,644 persons; Marseille's repatriated 1,272.(82) The Office provided this rationale for repatriation: "Returning these poor people back to their home towns ... this is one of the most important concerns of the Office central, which will thereby clear the pavements of Paris of beggars and quite possibly of some criminals." The Office purchased rail tickets for provincials and saw them off at the train station, fearful that they would hawk their ticket and remain in the city. The Refuge-ouvroir Pauline Roland of Paris, an assistance par le travail institution for women, repatriated 9 provincials in 1897 against their will and helped 127 leave Paris voluntarily.(83) The municipal council enthusiastically supported the repatriation of provincials, and even supported an organization which sent the unemployed able-bodied to the colonies.(84) In Lille, the municipal council gave similar support to the Office central lillois des Institutions sociales et charitables, which was actively involved in repatriating migrants

In gen

V. gene That shameful French institution, the depot de mendicite, got a second life in the 1890s. The decade witnessed yet another round in France's long history of construction of depots, such as the one built in the Eure-et-Loir. Night shelters (asiles de nuit) also sprung up in the 1890s as a means to cope with the problem of vagabondage.(86) In the Seine, the Maison de travail was built at Nanterre, a harsh new institution inspired by the ruthless Belgian national prison-labor camp for vagabonds, Merxplas. Merxplas became a model for France's social policy elite, one which was held in high esteem by many writers on the social question. But the French had an even more repressive solution to the problem

That sh A law passed in 1885 had been designed to purge metropolitan France of vagrants. This "relegation" law provided for the transportation to colonial bagnes (squalid prisons, such as the one on Devil's Island) of all those convicted of "aggravated vagrancy," that is to say, involving physical threat or disguise. During the 1890s, general councils issued several resolutions calling for the strict enforcement and even the extension of the law to include all vagabonds, even children. If some councils still could not countenance a larger state role in the battle against poverty, few had reservations about using the state's powers to expel vagabonds from the country. During the 1890s, no fewer than 5,000 were deported each year, and in 1902 alone, 9,978 vagabonds and beggars were deported to colonial prisons.(88) In 1900, there were over 50,000 arrests and 11,560 convictions for vagabondage. Without doubt, here was one of the nation's most serious social prob

A law p During the 1880s and 1890s, over one-half of the nation's departmental general councils had sent petitions to Paris demanding a draconian law to suppress mendicity and for effective machinery to enforce it. The problem was that most departments could not afford to do this themselves; the state would have to step in. The other problem was that several departments were firmly opposed to this idea for this very reason, as were many advocates of a private solution to the problem, so the issue became deadlocked. Opponents also delayed bills by availing themselves of the almost endless opportunities provided to them by the byzantine labyrinth that was the French parlia

During An 1896 report from the Dordogne, a department regularly invaded by beggars, called for immediate, drastic, national solutions: "the departments, isolated from one another, with no common activity and with no overall supervision ..." are powerless. Only the state had the power to launch a concerted national campaign of repression.(89) The government stood firm with its harsh approach to the problem. In 1894, the Minister of Justice announced that it was official government policy to crack down on mendicity and vagabondage. After news spread that vagabonds had brought typhus to Lille (an unsubstantiated claim), the Ministry of the Interior issued a circular to the nation's night shelters requiring them to hose down and disinfect vagabonds and beggars.(90) That same year, the Ministry of the Interior instructed prefects to encourage departments to set up harsh work-relief programs in order to combat vagabondage and mendicity.(91) The Ministry concluded that there were 400,000 vagabonds circulating on the nation's roads. In a dozen departments within 200 km of Paris, over 400,000 nomads (again, many repeat guests, no doubt) stayed in night shelters that year. That there were many unemployed workers on the road is beyond doubt: the Somme, for instance, sheltered 38,000 people, of which 14,300 were classified as vagabonds, 13,400 as unemployed workers, and 10,200 as infirm or elderly.(92) The inquest concluded that vagabondage should be attacked by spreading work-relief programs, eliminating rural shelters, making better use of police forces, eliminating public assistance fraud, and through the abolition of wine and tobacco. Part of the problem in resolving the situation, the inquest revealed, was that departments were divided, with some in favor and others opposed to shelters, and with some in favor and others opposed to the implementation of national measures and programs

An 1896 The Ministry of the Interior conducted another wide-ranging national survery of vagabondage, mendicity and unemployment in 1895, which was followed up with an 1897 circular recommending (but not requiring), a l'ancien regime, that prefects and mayors put the nation's vagabonds to work reconstructing roads, reforesting denuded areas, and restoring canals.(94) Some cities, like Rouen, briefly took the advice to heart. Most did not. In 1898, inspired by the Vacher affair, the Ministry conducted another wide-ranging survey of the problem of vagabondage, presided by M. de Marcere. The commission adopted the recommendations of the farmers' association, the Societe des agriculteurs de France: assist the infirm, "rigorously suppress" professional vagabonds and mendicants, and reform the nation's welfare bureaus.(95) These instructions were passed along to prefects, who in turn passed them along to the nation's police forces. To be sure, the rise in convictions for vagabondage and mendicity was due in part to this greater emphasis being placed on repression, but it is impossible to determine to what degree this was the

The Min Significantly, later that year, the general councils of several departments, including the Vosges and the Haute-Garonne, issued resolutions calling for a halt to the creation of new assistance institutions, such as the welfare bureaus, and instead the creation, in each department, of work-relief programs in order to wipe out vagabondage and mendicity.(96) Again, we see the tendency to confuse vagabondage with both assistance and repression.(97) In 1899, the Societe nationale d'encouragement a l'agriculture voted to recommend that Parliament draft legislation to combat vagabondage and at the same time recommended that work-relief programs be set up across the nation, which would eventually replace the faulty bureaux de bienfaisance. The bureaus, it was argued, did nothing but dispense alms, and public alms were no better than private.(98) The Societe strongly supported a draconian bill by Deputy Jean Cruppi to punish vagabonds. It was joined by the Societe des agriculteurs de France, a leading advocate of harsh legislation to combat vagabondage which regularly sent the Ministry of the Interior letters requesting swift action

Signifi At the turn of the century, bills calling for the establishment of work-relief institutions in each and every department were frequently brought before parliament.(100) The Conseil superieur de l' assistance publique (CSAP) devoted several sessions to the topic and came up with its own bill to stamp out vagabondage in 1889 and again in 1896.(101) In 1899 Deputy Jean Cruppi introduced his bill to repress vagabondage and mendicity, which basically called for a return to the Napoleonic system of depots de mendicite in each and every department. Cruppi attempted for many years thereafter to have his bill passed, without success.(102) Many general councils vigorously opposed it due to the enormous costs it would have entailed. Next, Etienne Flandin deposited a bill in 1908 which would have introduced harsh measures against vagabonds and which would have organized work-relief services on a national basis, transforming the welfare bureaus into work-relief centers (about 100 work-relief centers existed at this time, but they had combined revenues of slightly more than one million francs - a negligible sum).(103) Most of the half-dozen bills deposited would have increased the prison sentences for first-time offenders and some would have sent children to prison for beg

At the No one symbolized the harsh attitude of the era and the obsession with vagabondage more than the Radical republican Deputy Marc Reville. On 13 June 1910,(104) Reville issued a 90 page report on the various bills floating around the Chamber over the years (those sponsored by Cruppi, Flandin, Berry, Lebrun, and de Pomereu). The Chamber of Deputies had also instructed a commission, headed by Reville, to study the various legislative proposals that were brought to it by provincial agricultural societies, general councils, and prison societies. In his report, Reville called for a hard line to be taken against vagabondage, but leftist deputies stalled his proposals. In Reville's widely cited report there is no evidence of the slightest socio-economic conception of the problem of vagabondage and mendicity; it was presented as the product of 400,000 "social parasites/"

No one Ultimately it was the Left which prevented the dozen or so extremely repressive bills to combat vagabondage and mendicity in the 1890s and 1900s from becoming law. Indeed, in 1900 the socialist Alexandre Millerand deposited a bill which would have legalized the theft of food by the hungry.(106) Jean Jaures, commenting on a weavers' strike in the Nord in 1903, remarked: "Begging is the natural complement of the (low) wage."(107) These debates, parliamentary inquiries, resolutions and bills calling for a crackdown on the nation's vagabonds and beggars (and, often in the same breath, a reduction of public assistance for the able-bodied) are still very important in that they capture the general political climate of the time in much of rural and urban France. Taken together, they constitute a significant counter-current to solidarism, but one which was eventually overcome in small steps. Still, one wonders what might have been achieved if the energies channelled into repressive measures had been directed in a different ma

Ultimat

VI.imat This article has only provided a glimpse of the other half of the era's intellectual climate, one side to the assistance/repression coin. This subject calls out for more research. But it is clear that the French public and political class alike continued to be preoccuppied with the problem of vagabondage right up to the First World War. This concern, even if it manifested itself in sensationalistic ways in the media, was for the most part firmly rooted in reality. In the end, all of the major repressive bills to combat vagabondage and mendicity failed because of quarreling between departments and the state over who would foot the bill, and because the debate got caught up, as did so many other debates over social policy, on the issue of obligation. There were, however, various minor changes to the penalties against vagabondage (as well as changes in the definition of who was a "gens sans aveu" in 1885, 1903 and 1912).

This ar In July 1914, another high profile commission was struck to "study measures for the repression of begging and vagrancy."(109) Before the commission could get down to business, the war broke out and eventually the commission was suspended.(110) During and after the war, the problem subsided considerably, for reasons which have not yet been adequately explored. In all likelihood, many vagabonds were drafted into the war effort, and vagabondage was simply no longer acceptable in light of the nation's wartime suffering. There does indeed seem to have been, to use Gordon Wright's term, an "ebb tide" in public fear of crime and vagabondage between the wars, but this may have been due to the actual decrease in crime, and particularly the sharp drop in the incidence of vagabondage, rather than the result of a "change in mood" independent of socioeconomic conditions.(111) Very few of the renowned criminals, vagabonds and bandits who fill the annals of French criminal history, like Cartouche and Vacher, belong to the post-World War One era. The press mill ceased to grind out the usual stories and images of begging and vagrancy after the war, and the theses stopped rolling off the university presses too. Indeed, a quick perusal of several major French library catalogues reveals that the topic ceased to be of concern to authors during the Interwar years. Symbolically, perhaps, the Revue penitentiaire ceased publishing in 1933, and French criminology as a whole fell into a slumber between the wars, overtaken by the American school. Widespread vagabondage, it could be argued, is a social problem born of ancien regime-like socio-economic conditions. These conditions, as Eugen Weber argues, did not disappear in several parts of France until after the First World War. When they did, the public fear over the problem subsided. By the mid 1920s, the crime rate reached its low point in the Third Republic's history. And as Wright concludes, "it was clear that the old obsession with the 'plague' of vagrancy no longer possessed French minds."

In July After the war, assistance and repression no longer were confused.(113) During the hostilities the state mandated that the departments set up job placement centers and it also took a few small steps towards encouraging the communes and departments to provide unemployment relief to the needy. Something approaching a socio-economic understanding of unemployment was generally visible across the political spectrum after the war, even if a national unemployment system did not follow from it. The war's impact - the blow it dealt to traditional attitudes towards rural migrants and towards marginals in general - cannot be overemphasized. The "social parasites" of the 1880s-1900s gave way to the "unemployed" of the 1920s and 1930s. As in so many other realms of life, the war, it would seem, dealt a death blow to both the attitudes surrounding vagabondage and the practice it

After t Department of History Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7

Departm END

ENDNOTE  I thank David Parker of Queen's University for his helpful comments on this paper. Any remaining shortcomings are of course my own. Queen's University provided financial support, for which I am grat

I thank 1. Quoted in Dr. Armand Marie and Raymond Meunier, Les vagabonds (Paris, 1908), p. 246 and in Jean-Pierre Deloux, Vacher l'assassin: Un 'serial killer' francais au XIXeme siecle (Paris, 1995). The key texts for this story are by Alexandre Berard, Vacher l'Eventreur ou la passion sadique (Paris, 1899) and Vacher l'Eventreur et les crimes sadiques (Paris, 1

1. Quot 2. Emile Fourquet, "Les vagabonds criminels," Revue des deux mondes 152 (15 March 1899): 399

2. Emil 3. The 1976 film of Bertrand Tavernier, Le juge et l'assassin, starring Philippe Noiret as the judge and Michel Galabru as the murderer, was loosely based upon the Vacher affair. In 1995, a French journalist, Jean-Pierre Deloux, produced a short popular history (without adequate footnote documentation) of the topic (cited above) and recently Matt Matsuda devoted a chapter to him in his book, The Memory of the Modern (New York, 1996); otherwise, Vacher has received little attention from historians. It would seem that this story cries out for a micro-his

3. The 4. Quoted in Marie and Meunier, Les vagabonds, p.

4. Quot 5. Quoted in Marie and Meunier, Les vagabonds, pp. 2

5. Quot 6. On the persistence of begging and on the problem of vagabondage, see Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, 1976), pp. 62-66. Earlier periods have been covered by Olwen Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, 1750-1789 (Oxford, 1974), ch. 8; Robert M. Schwartz, Policing the Poor of Eighteenth-Century France (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1988); Thomas McStay Adams, Beggars and Bureaucrats: French Social Policy in the Age of Enlightenment (New York, 1990); and Isser Woloch, The New Regime: Transformations of the French Civic Order, 1789-1820s (New York, 1

6. On t 7. Conseil superieur de l'assistance publique (CSAP) 19 (1888), "Depots de mendicite. Rapport au Conseil superieur de l'Assistance publique ..., " Charles Dupuy, p

7. Cons 8. Archives Nationales, Paris (AN) C 5622, No. 651, Chambre des Deputes, Annexe au proces-verbal de la seance du 25 janvier 1899, Jean Cruppi, "Proposition de loi relative aux moyens d'assistance et de coercion propres a prevenir ou a reprimer le vagabondage et la mendicite," no. 691, 25 janvier (Paris, 1899),

8. Arch 9. "Si celui qui existe ale droit de dire a la societe: 'Fais-moi vivre,' la societe a egalement le droit de lui dire: 'Donne-moi ton travail.'" Quoted in Jules de Crisenoy, Questions d'assistance et d'hygiene publiques traites dans les conseils generaux, 13 vols., (Paris, 1885-1900) (hereafter de Crisenoy, vol. no.), vol. 8 (1894), pp. 1

9. "Si 10. Further explored in my forthcoming article, "The Plight of the Able-Bodied Poor and the Unemployed in France, 1880-1

10. Fur 11. Gordon Wright. Between the Guillotine and Liberty: Two Centuries of the Crime Problem in France (New York, 1983), p. 158; Ministere de la Justice, Compte general de l'administration de la justice criminelle en France (Paris, 1882), pp. 142-3; Bulletin de la Societe des prisons, 1893, p.

11. Gor 12. de Crisenoy, vol. 6 (1892), pp. 1

12. de 13. de Crisenoy, vol. 5 (1891), p.

13. de 14. Pierre Masse, "Disette et mendicite en Poitou (XVIIIe-XIXe siecle)," L'Actualite de l'histoire 27 (1959):

14. Pie 15. Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty, p.

15. Wri 16. Robert A. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics in Modern France: The Medical Concept of National Decline (Princeton, 1984), pp. 171-226; Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty, p.

16. Rob 17. For example, see Le Petit parisien, October and November 1905, for several sensationalistic illustrations depicting marauding "apaches" and "bohemiens." Dominique Kalifa discusses the yellow journalism of the time (and, briefly, the Vacher affair) in L'Encre et le sang (Paris, 1995). My thanks to Jeremy Popkin for this refer

17. For 18. Guy de Maupassant, Le horla. Le vagabond, in Oeuvres completes IX (Paris, 1

18. Guy 19. On the problem of vagrancy in Paris, see Othenin d'Haussonville, "La misere a Paris (II)," Revue des deux mondes 47 (1881): 611-51. On crime in general see Benjamin E Martin, Crime and Justice under the Third Republic: The Shame of Marianne (Baton Rouge, 1

19. On 20. Pierre Sorlin, La societe francaise, 1840-1914 (Paris, 1969), p

20. Pie 21. Leo A. Loubere, Radicalism in Mediterranean France: Its Rise and Decline, 1848-1914 (Albany, N.Y., 1974), p

21. Leo  22. Jules Meline, Le retour a la terre et la surproduction industrielle (Paris, 1905), p

22. Jul 23. Cited in AN C 5622, No. 651, Chambre des Deputes, Annexe au proces-verbal de la seance du 25 janvier 1899, Jean Cruppi, "Proposition de loi relative aux moyens d'assistance et de coercition propres a prevenir ou a reprimer le vagabondage et la mendicite,"

23. Cit 24. "Les asiles de nuit de Paris," Bulletin de l'Office du travail 7 (July 1897):

24. "Le 25. CSAP 73 (1899), "Les depots de mendicite," p

25. CSA  26. Joseph Arminjon, La Population du departement du Rhone: Son evolution depuis le debut du XIXe siecle (Lyon, 1940), p

26. Jos 27. Georges Duby, ed. Histoire de la France rurale, v. 3, De 1789 a 1914 (Paris, 1976), pp. 68,

27. Geo 28. Duby, Histoire de la France rurale, p.

28. Dub 29. Michel Huber, La population de la France pendant la guerre (New Haven, 1931), p

29. Mic 30. Emile Vandervelde, L'Exode rural et le retour aux champs (Paris, 1903), pp. 22, 121; Journal officiel 8 Jan. 1902, p

30. Emi 31. Paul Cere, Les populations dangereuses et les miseres sociales (Paris, 1872), p.

31. Pau 32. P. Hubert-Valleroux, La Charite avant et depuis 1789 dans les campagnes de France (Paris, 1890), p.

32. P. 33. Fernand Charoy, L'Assistance aux vieillards, infirmes et incurables en France de 1789 a 1905 (Paris, 1905), pp. 55-56. Adams, Bureaucrats and Beggars, and Schwartz, Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France, are the two key sources on the t

33. Fer 34. Jules de Crisenoy, Les etablissements hospitaliers dans les campagnes (Paris, 1886),

34. Jul 35. John Weiss, "Origins of the French Welfare State: Poor Relief in the Third Republic, 1871-1914," French Historical Studies XlII (Spring 1983): 73; Timothy B. Smith, "Public Assistance and Labor Supply in Nineteenth-Century Lyon," Journal of Modern History 68 (March 1996):

35. Joh 36. Martha L. Hildreth, Doctors, Bureaucrats and Public Health in France, 1888-1902 (New York, 1987), p

36. Mar 37. Dr. Henri Henrot. Rapport sur l'assistance publique a Reims (Reims, 1883), pp.

37. Dr. 38. Peter Steams, Old Age in European Society: The Case of France (London, 1977), pp.

38. Pet 39. Henri Napias, Budgets municipaux et budgets hospitaliers (Paris, 1

39. Hen 40. CSAP 37 (1892), "Projet de loi sur l'assistance aux vieillards,"

40. CSA 41. Archives de l'Assistance Publique, Paris (AAP), C-1300, Marie-Dominique Augey, "L'Aide sociale a Nice: Assistance et bienfaisance de 1860 a 1914," Memoire de maitrise, Universite de Nice, 1969, p

41. Arc 42. Bibliotheque Nationale (BN) 8.R.14593, Dr. Lausies, Societe centrale havraise de secours, Histoire de l'assistance par le travail au Havre (Le Havre, 1897), p

42. Bib 43. William H. Sewell, Structure and Mobility: The Men and Women of Marseille, 18201870 (Cambridge, 1985), p.

43. Wil 44. de Crisenoy, Les etablissements hospitaliers,

44. de 45. Joseph Viple, La repression penale de la mendicite (Paris, 1905), p. 74. On the mixed populations of the depots, see J. Vallee, Les depots de mendicite: Leur utilisation comme moyen d'assistance (Paris, 1908). In order to provide impoverished elderly with shelter, communities often threw them into the depots, where they were forced to mingle with beggars, vagabonds and hardened crimi

45. Jos 46. An 1892 enquiry by Paul Strauss, presented to the Senate, found that private establishments cared for at least 93,400 individuals, of which 40,000 were elderly and incurable. Of these 40,000, at least 33,000 were assisted by confessional charities; only 7,000 were assisted by ray ones. Usually, the minimum admission age was 60, Charoy, L'Assistance aux vieillards, p

46. An 47. Charles Le Roux, Le vagabondage et la mendicite a Paris et dans le departement de la Seine: Assistance et repression (Paris, 1907), pp.

47. Cha 48. Othenin d'Haussonville, "Le combat contre le vice (I): La repression," Revue des deux mondes 84 (15 Dec. 1887):

48. Oth 49. Nye, Crime, Madness, and Politics, p

49. Nye 50. Marcel Lecoq, L'Assistance par le travail en France (Paris, 1900), p

50. Mar 51. For example, Dr. Paul Brousse, "L'organisation des asiles a propos de l'affaire Vacher," Revue de psychiatrie (1899): 30

51. For 52. Quoted in de Crisenoy, vol. 8 (1894), p.

52. Quo 53. Typical was Albert Marechaux, L'assistance publique. Sa suppression (Paris, 1893

53. Typ 54. Othenin d'Haussonville discussed this phenomenon in "L'assistance par le travail: Faut-il faire la charite?," Revue des deux mondes 122 (1894): 4

54. Oth 54. CSAP 19 (1888), p

54. CSA 55. Ministire du travail et de la prevoyance sociale, Statistique generale de la France, Statistique annuelle des institutions d' assistance. Annie 1910. (Paris, 1912), p. 39. This theme is further explored in my forthcoming article, "The Plight of the Able-Bodied P

55. Min 56. Statistique generale de la France, Statistique annuelle des institutions d'assistance. Annie 1910, p. 7. On Lyon, Smith, "Public Assistance and Labor Supply." On Nancy, Edouard Cormouls-Houleis, L'assistance par le travail (Paris, 1910), p.

56. Sta 57. Quoted in Cormouls-Houles, L'assistance par le travail, p.

57. Quo 58. Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, 1981); Patricia E. Prestwich, Drink and the Politics of Social Reform: Antialcoholism in France since 1870 (Palo Alto, Calif., 1

58. Sus 59. AAPC-368, Ministere de l'Interieur, Enquire sur les bureaux de bienfaisance, by Paul Bucquet (Paris, 1874), p.

59. AAP 60. J. Lefort, Intemperance et misere (Paris, 1

60. J. 61. See Timothy B. Smith, "The Ideology of Charity, the Image of the English Poor Law, and Debates over the Right to Assistance in France, The Historical Journal 40 (Dec. 1997): 997-

61. See 62. For a glimpse of the vastness of the literature, see the bibliography in Dr. Armand Pagnier, Du vagabondage et des vagabonds: Etude psychologique, sociologique et medico-legale (Lyon, 1906), and Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c.1848c.1918 (Cambridge, 1989). See also Jean-Claude Beaune, Le vagabond et la machine: Essai sur l'automatisme ambulatoire, medecine, technique et societe, 1880-1910 (Seyssel, 1

62. For 63. Nye, Crime, Madness and Politics, p.

63. Nye 64. For example, Alexandre Berard, "Le vagabondage en France," Archives de l'Anthropologie criminelle XlII (1898): 60

64. For 65. Marie and Meunier, Les Vagabonds, pp. 32

65. Mar 66. For a critique of some of the more sensationalist literature, see Othenin d'Hausson-linebreak ville, "L'Enfance a Paris (V): La Mendicite, les asiles, les refuges," Revue des deux mondes 27 (15 June 1878):

66. For 67. Louis Paulian, Paris qui mendie: Mal et remade (Paris, 1899), pp. 12,

67. Lou 68. Georges Berry, La Mendicite (Paris, 1897), pp. 178, 200. His dramatic portraits can also be found in AN C 5622, No. 660, Chambre des Deputes, Annexe au proces-verbal de la seance du 25 janvier 1899, Georges Berry, "Proposition de loi tendant a la suppression de la mendic

68. Geo 69. Othenin d'Haussonville, "L'Enfance a Paris (IV): Les vagabonds et les mendians," Revue des deux mondes 27 (1 June 1878): 613. Even the judge who presided in the Vacher case wrote on the topic in the same spirit, Fourquet, "Les vagabonds criminels." Another judge, L. Albanel, wrote "L'Enfance criminelle a Paris," Revue philanthropique IV (189899): 385-99 and 513-42. See also Dr. Victor Parant, "Vagabondage des mineurs," Vile Congres national de Toulouse du patronage des liberis (Toulouse, 1

69. Oth 70. Marie and Meunier, Lex vagabonds,

70. Mar 71. AN C 7487, p

71. AN 72. Quoted in Marie and Meunier, Les vagabonds, p

72. Quo 73. Theodore Homberg, Etudes sur le vagabondage (Paris, 1880),

73. The 74. AAP B-3343, Cour d'Appel de Bordeaux. "Considerations sur les delits de vagabondage et de mendicite." Discours de Paul Pasteau, 16 octobre 1899 (Bordeaux, 1899), pp.

74. AAP 75. Louis Riviere, "Mendiants et vagabonds," Revue philanthropique 11 (1902)

75. Lou 76. Marius Berge, "Hygiene et charite sociale," Revue philanthropique 11 (1902): 69

76. Mar 77. See the bibliography in Pagnier, Du vagabon

77. See 78. Quoted in Woloch, The New Regime, p.

78. Quo 79. AN C 5622, No. 660, Chambre des Deputes, Annexe au proces-verbal de la stance du 25 janvier 1899, Georges Berry, "Proposition de loi tendant a la suppression de la mendicite" pp. 3

79. AN 80. Riviere, "Oeuvres de la bienfaisance privee," p.

80. Riv 81. Congres international d'assistance publique et de bienfaisance privee, Administration et gestion des oeuvres d'assistance par le travail dans les departements, Rapport presente par M. le pasteur Aeschimann (Melun, 1900), p

81. Con 82. AAP B-284/18, Leon Lefebure, L'Organisation de la charite privee en France. Rapport decennal sur les travaux de l'Office central des oeuvres de bienfaisance depuis sa fondation (Paris, 1900), pp. 13

82. AAP 83. BN 8.R.17372, Maurice Jourdan, De l'intervention des pouvoirs publics en matiere d'assistance par le travail (Paris, 1901), p.

83. BN 84. Jourdan, De l'intervention, p.

84. Jou 85. Musee Social, Paris (CEDIAS), Office central lillois des Institutions sociales et charitables, Rapport et Compte-rendu. Octobre 1895 a decembre 1896 (Lille, 1

85. Mus 86. "L'Hospitalite du nuit en France," Revue philanthropique 5 (1899): 6

86. "L' 87. For example, Louis Riviere, La repression du vagabondage et de la mendicite en Belgique et en Allemagne. Rapport a la Societe des agriculteurs de France, 30 avril 1900 (Paris, 1900) and La reforme de la bienfaisance en Belgique (Paris, 1901); G. Batardy, "De la repression du vagabondage et de la mendicite en Belgique," Bulletin de la Societe generale des prisons (1893): 768-69. See also Henri Gaillac, Les maisons de correction, 1830-1945 (Paris, 1

87. For 88. Pagnier, Du vagabondage et des vagabonds, pp. 6, 182; Francois Martineau, Fripons, gueux et loubards: Une histoire de la delinquance de 1750 a nos jours (Paris, 1986), p. 262. A disappointing book. More useful is Joseph Viple, La repression penale de la mendicite (Paris, 1905), pp. 99-100. On relegation, see Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty; Patricia O'Brien, The Promise of Punishment: Prisons in Nineteenth-Century France (Princeton, 1982), pp. 258-68; Michel Pierre, "La Transportation (1848-1938)," in Jean-Guy Petit, et. al., ed., Histoire des galeres, bagnes et prisons (Toulouse, 1

88. Pag 89. de Crisenoy, vol. 10 (1896), p.

89. de 90. G. Drouineau, "Les enquetes sur le vagabondage," Revue philanthropique (1897), p.

90. G. 91. de Crisenoy, vol. 9 (1895), pp. 140-41; "Les enquetes sur le vagabondage," Revue philanthropique (1897): 32

91. de 92. Ibid., p.

92. Ibi 93. Ibid., p. 330; de Crisenoy, pa

93. Ibi 94. Bulletin du Ministere de l'Interieur (1897): 67; Jourdan, De l'intervention, pp. 7

94. Bul 95. Quoted in Cormouls-Houles, L'assistance par le travail, p.

95. Quo 96. Cormouls-Houles, L'assistance par le travail, p.

96. Cor 97. This is a theme briefly mentioned in Christophe Guitton, "Le chomage entre question sociale et question penale en France au tournant du siecle," in M. Mansfield, et. al., eds., Aux sources du chomage, 1880-1914 (Paris, 1

97. Thi 98. Louis Riviere, "Le Delit du mendicite," Revue philanthropique 4 (1898-99): 6

98. Lou 99. For example, "Repression du vagabondage," Bulletin de la Societe des agriculteurs de France (1 June 1898): 202

99. For 100. Jourdan, De l'intervention, pp. 14

100. Jo 101. CSAP 73 (1899), "Rapport sur les depots de mendicite ... par M. Jean Cru

101. CS 102. Jean Cruppi, "Proposition de

102. Je 103. For an excellent discussion of the various bills, see Cormouls-Houlis, L'Assistance par le travail, pp. 629-46. Also useful is F. Dubief, La Question du vagabondage (Paris, 1

103. Fo 104. AN C 7487, No. 87, Chambre des Deputes, Annexe au proces-verbal de la seance du 13 juin 1910, Rapports faits au nom de la commission relative a la repression du vagabondage et de la mendicite ..., by Marc Reville (hereafter AN C 7

104. AN 105. AN C 7487,

105. AN 106. Robert Doucet, "La repression des delits causes par la misere," Revue politique et parlementaire 73 (July 1900): 8

106. Ro 107. Quoted in Cormouls-Houles, L'assistance par le travail, p

107. Qu 108. AN C 7487, p

108. AN 109. Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty, p. 161; Allan Mitchell, The Divided Path: The German Influence on Social Reform in France after 1870 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991), pp. 28

109. Wr 110. AN C 7775, Chambre des Deputes, Commission chargee d'etudier les mesures relatives a la repression de la mendicite et du vagabon

110. AN 111. Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty, p.

111. Wr 112. Wright, Between the Guillotine and Liberty, pp. 178-79,

112. Wr 113. Guitton, "Le chomage."