3-065-804 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Distress in Paris, distribution of bedding to the poor, 1874. '...the distress...has prevailed more severely than usual during the past winter...was the effect of a stagnation of trade, depriving many poor people of their ordinary employment and wages, together with high prices of food, fuel [etc]...Among the charitable agencies and institutions for the relief of suffering families...was that of a fund benevolently provided to redeem from the Mont de Piété, and the branch pawning establishments, the articles of bedding, and sometimes of clothing, which had been pledged by their owners for small sums of money...Our Illustration shows the scene at the branch office in the Rue Servan, Quartier de la Roquette...The profits of the Mont de Piété go to maintain the Paris hospitals, so that the city poor get the benefit, one way or another, of their payments at the rate of ten per cent, for interest on the money lent them during a year and a day. There are reckoned to be 105,400 persons relieved by the established Paris charities...The list of special beneficent institutions includes those for the care of the sick and wounded, having 8500 beds, almshouses, hospices, orphan schools, blind schools, deaf and dumb schools, lunatic and idiot asylums'. From "Illustrated London News", 1874.