page_title: Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir
section_title: Other measures
hierarchical_section_title: Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir / Second term as head of Paris police / Other measures
caption_attribution_description: English: Jean-Charles-Pierre Lenoir, head of the Paris police. Engraving made for Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans, then King of France
context_page_description: Jean Charles Pierre Lenoir was a French lawyer who headed the Paris police in the period immediately before the French Revolution of 1789–99.
  He had broad responsibility for maintaining public order, reducing dirt and disease and ensuring that the population received adequate supplies of food.
  He introduced many reforms into the administration of the city.
context_section_description: Lenoir ensured that many improvements were made to security, lighting, fire control and public assistance in the city
  He founded the Mont-de-Piété pawnbroking institution and took measures against begging, gambling and prostitution.
  Lenoir's appointment resulted in a slackening in the enforcement of restrictions against public entertainment.
  Lenoir had a more tolerant attitude toward the theaters on the boulevard and at the fairs, since he regarded them as a necessary and comparatively innocuous amusement for the continually increasing working-class population of the capital. In fact, it became a requirement for the entrepreneurs of the boulevard to maintain their fairground operations, otherwise the crowds at the fairs would significantly decrease.
  Prostitution was widespread and practiced openly in Paris.
  In 1778 Lenoir published an Ordonnance that imposed harsher fines on women who solicited and those who rented rooms to prostitutes. 
  It was hoped that the result would be greater registration and control of prostitutes working in licensed brothels.
  The Ordonnance was not effective and clandestine arrangements continued to be widespread. The police employed spies to discover them.
  The police made much use of prostitutes in brothels as informants.
  Mercier's Tableau de Paris describes the squalid conditions and says, "Yes, there are beings lower than these women on ill repute, and these beings are men of the police."
  In 1777 Lenoir created the Bureau de la filature (Spinning Office) near the Porte Saint-Denis, in an area where cloth was manufactured.
  The purpose was "improving the quality of the workers' spun thread, finding outlets for the thread, supervising the choice of workers in order to employ those capable of carrying out other types of work.
  Lenoir appointed the administrators and chaired their meetings.
  The bureau was subsidized by the crown. In the winter of 1783–84 Lenoir increased the subsidy.
  Of the 20,000 Parisians assisted by the government at this time, 7,000–8,000 were women employed by the Bureau. It was described as a charity of the king, but it was also seen as a way to prevent idleness and social disturbances due to extreme poverty.
  It also let manufacturers bypass the guilds and experiment with new techniques.
  After 1737 the only place in Paris where French Protestants could be buried was a wood yard on the river bank beside the Faubourg Saint-Antoine.
  In 1777 Lenoir accepted a suggestion from the Dutch ambassador and allowed the burial of French Protestants in the courtyard of the cemetery for foreign Protestants.
  The first public Protestant funeral was held in Paris that year without causing any disturbances.
caption: Portrait of Lenoir engraved by Juste Chevillet after a painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze
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