Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1888-10-11
THE BEGGARS OF PARIS.
A LIVELY DESCRIPTION OF THEIR
HAUNTS AND HABITS.

| Taking a Census of the MendicantS OF
| Paris-Peculiar Characteristics of the
Besgars' Special Ouarter-In Eygone
Times-Heavy Penalties.
To take census Of beggars-an opera
tion which. more probably for the fiftieth
than for the first time, has just been per-
formed by the Paris prefecture of police
must in many respects be regarded as a
task about as thankless. if not as useless,
as that Of weaving rope of sand. To
ascertain the aggregate of professional
mendicancy in q great metropolis like
Paris is by no means trustworthy critic
rion of the amount of poverty existing
AS in London, the vast ma jority of the
beggars in Lutetia are the professional
ones-that is to say, rank impostors-and
their numbers will probably show a ten
dency to increase rather than to diminish
with the improvement in trade and the
augmentation of affluence among the
classes who are begged from but do not
beg.
Our Paris correspondent tells us, in
deed, that the "gueuX." or habitual beg
gars, are at present in an exceptionally
thriving condition, and are making money
more easily in consequence of the more
largely developed iberality of the aims
giving public. 1t is even stated that
these professional paupers have two di-
rectories of their own, in which the names
and addresses of Good Samaritans with
plenty Of money are duly entered, to-
gether with description of the strata
gems which experience has shown to be
most etiicacious in extracting cash from
the unwary. The first directory is called
the Guide of the Grand Jeu," or big
Came" and costs no less than six francs
There is smaller "Guide of the Petit
Jeu." which only costs half the money,
and gives the addresses of more middle
class philanthropists. These red boks for
rogues contain full instructions to the
'gueux" as to what shall be their de-
meanor in the presence of people who are
likely to unloose their purse strings when
pitiful tale is told.
Whatever may be the statistical worth
of the census of vagrancy just compiled,
there can be little doubt that the returns
obtained by the patient enumerators Of
the prefecture of police have considerable
social value, inasmuch as they denote
changes in national manners and prove
that, although the Partisan beggars are
numerically still formidable folk, they
have almost ceased to be picturesque.
The ''Cour des Miracles" which Victor
Hugo has immortalized in "Notre Dame
de Paris, still nominally exists in a
peaceable passage near the Rue Monitor
gueil; but it is a vastly different place
from the filthy area, surrounded by tum-
bic down tenements, which throughout
the Middle Ages was at once the st. Giles
and the Alsatia of the French capital.
The beggars' special quarter enjoyed the |
privilege of sanctuary, and was ruled |
over by an elective king, who was as
sisted by a council including sundry |
dukes of Egypt" and mobiles of the en-
pire OF Galilee-all beggars.
One of the peculiar characteristics Of |
the place was it's utter silence and aban-
donment in the day time; not even the
lame, the halt or the blind fingered in it's
precincts. They were all abroad cadging.
The paralytics. beds and all, had been re-
moved and laid down at the street cor
ners, there to excite the pity of the
oassers by. The dogs, of course, were
on business leading the blind
nen about the streets; the very babies
lad been taken out begging. But at
hight this mute and deserted Cour des
Miracles became Gehenna, a carnival Of
loise, drunkenness and profigacy; and it
vas seldom that the carousals of the
'francsmitous, or beggars, and the
'refodes;" or tramps, terminated without
'loodshed
The beggars of bygone times in France
nay not have had their directories, which,
ven had they possessed them, would
ave been questionably beneficial, mas
nuch as the bulk of the vagabond COM
1unity were unable to read or write.
nevertheless, it is worthy of remark that,
o long ago as 1861, when kind of pauper
ensus was taken, by order of Henry II, |
he impostors therein unmasked answered |
lmost exactly to the character of the
Professional mendicants who in modern
ines have infested, and who continue to
lfest society, not only in Paris but in
ondon. Shivering beggars and epileptic
eggars-so far as epilepsy can be simu-
tied by chewing soap-varlets who pre-
ended to be dropsical or who exhibited
ores, bogus cripples and spurious hunch-
acks-ln fact, nearly all the unworthy
,cipients of aims whose malpractices are
zposed in the periodical reports of our {
lendlcity society-may be found in the {
Ill of rapscallion drawn up in Paris more |
IAN three hundred years ago ,
1t may be said that ever since the de. 6
ruction of the Cour des Miracles there 6
IS been one protracted and almost in
,ssant militant effort of successive gov
nments in France to redress, if not to g
lnish, professional mendicity. Over c
I'd over again the blind, the cripples and Z
10 sufferers from incurable ailments, +
I'VE been forbidden, under heavy penal
IS, to beg in the public thoroughfares; S
I'd the police have often made raids upon e
e beggars en- masse, and, without sub t
citing them to any form of trial, have c
nsigned them to criminal prisons or de- IL
ts.-London Telegraph.