Historical Summary of the Establishment of the Hospital of Foundlings in Paris

Machine translation from the French original. The period register and ancien-régime terminology has been preserved.

HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE HOSPITAL OF FOUNDLINGS AT PARIS
[ABREGE HISTORIQUE DE L’ETABLISSEMENT DE L’HOPITAL DES ENFANS-TROUVES A PARIS]

Written by Arrault and published in the Mercure de France in 1746
Archives of the Assistance Publique de Paris, reference b 829 16

AT THIBOUST’S, PRINTER TO THE KING Place de Cambray 1746

At all times, exposed children have appeared to merit the attention of the Magistrates; the Parlement has handed down various Decrees to provide for the subsistence of abandoned children; their feeding and their upbringing were, in the City of Paris as throughout the whole Kingdom, one of the charges falling upon the high Justice of the Seigneurs. The Parlement, ever attentive to public order, has many times extended its vigilance to the subsistence of exposed children, and that August Company has made several Regulations on this subject; but notwithstanding all these wise precautions, there was lacking a place of refuge for exposed children, and this establishing of a place to receive them is not very old: it is owed to the charitable care of Saint Vincent de Paul, founder of the Congregation of Saint Lazare. He was moved, as a Christian man and a good Citizen, by the abandonment of exposed children, whose souls were in great danger for want of Baptism, and their natural life by the abandonment of fathers and mothers either inhuman or powerless to feed and raise them. The loss of these young Subjects, for Religion and for the State, touched the heart of Saint Vincent, so disposed to works of Charity.

The date of this seed of the Hospital of Foundlings is the year 1638: a charitable widow lady was touched by their condition; she was willing to take charge of receiving them, and the Commissioners of the Châtelet, after drawing up their Report on the exposed child, would send it to this widow; she dwelt near Saint Landry, and her House was called the House of the Couche, as the House of Foundlings near the Church of Notre-Dame is called today.

This first establishment of the Foundlings did not last long. The charge became too heavy for the person who had been willing to take it on; her servants, wearied and worn out by the cries of the children, made a scandalous trade of them, at which Religion and humanity were alike appalled.

These vile and mercenary souls sold these young children to beggar-women who used them to excite the charity of the Public by deceiving it.

Nurses whose own children had died bought some of them to relieve their milk; several of these gave the children corrupted milk, and instead of procuring life for these young children, they gave them death through the disease they communicated to them. Some of these children were bought to replace and to substitute (sic) others within families, and thence they were used to cause great disorder in society.

Others too were bought to serve in magical operations; the price of these children was fixed at twenty sols, and persons capable of so horrible a trade were not much concerned to have these newborn children baptized; they were sacrificed at once with respect to nature and with respect to Religion.

These abuses and disorders were soon known; children ceased to be sent to a Hospice so dangerous for them.

In that same year 1638, the Hospice for these children was changed, and it was transferred near Saint Victor, under the direction of a person of piety. The funds intended for the subsistence of these children were not sufficient, their number was too great; lots were drawn to determine which would be raised, the others were abandoned; if the lot forestalled the drawback of favoritism, it fulfilled the duties of humanity in a very imperfect manner; a arrangement more worthy of the greatness of the KING and the zeal of his Subjects was needed.

In 1640, Saint Vincent de Paul convened an Assembly of the Ladies of piety who had been willing to take on the care of the Foundlings. The choosing of children to be raised by lot was abolished: life was preserved to all: the KING entered into these charitable views, and HIS MAJESTY had the goodness to grant the Château de Bicêtre for the sheltering of abandoned children.

All great establishments experience difficulties of various kinds; the sharpness of the air at Bicêtre worked against the preservation of the children, they were brought back to the Faubourg Saint Lazare, where they were fed and raised until 1670, when they were transferred to the rue Neuve Notre-Dame.

These first times of the establishment of the Foundlings must be regarded as attempts to arrive at a solid establishment: until then it had been wandering in various places.

In 1670, it was fixed where it still subsists today.

As soon as this new establishment was formed, a House was purchased to receive the exposed children.

The KING placed this new Hospital under his singular protection, HIS MAJESTY bestowed his Alms upon it, He granted it Letters-Patent, and the Queen Marie-Thérèse of Austria was willing to lay the first Stone of the Chapel of the Foundlings.

It is from that time that one may see the usefulness of this Hospital; the more the number of exposed children increased, the more useful their asylum became: one sees this increase from year to year through the Registers held in the depository of the Foundlings from 1670 to the present: to give an idea of it, it suffices to present the table decade by decade over this interval.

Years — Number of Exposed Children

1670 — 312
1680 — 890
1690 — 1504
1700 — 1738
1710 — 1698
1720 — 1441
1730 — 2401
1740 — 3150

1741 — 3388
1742 — 3163
1743 — 3099
1744 — 3034
1745 — 3234
1746 — 3274
1747 — 3369

By the Edict of 1670 establishing the Hospital of Foundlings, a Schedule was fixed of the sums that would be paid to it annually by the High-Justiciar Seigneurs of the City of Paris, for the feeding of the exposed children, as a charge of their High-Justices, and therein were followed the provisions of the Decree of the Parlement of 1667 and that of the Council of 1668.

In 1675, the KING, by his Letters-Patent, having united to the Châtelet of Paris all the Justices of the Seigneurs, had the goodness to order that there should be taken each year from his Domain a sum of twenty thousand livres to help (to the relief of the Seigneurs) toward the subsistence of the Foundlings. The number of the Inhabitants of the City of Paris having multiplied, that of the Foundlings has increased, and this is a first cause of the increase of which an idea has just been given by reporting, decade by decade, the number of exposed children, the High-Justiciar Seigneurs being no longer obliged to take charge of them by means of the sums they paid to the Hospital of Foundlings, or of that which the King paid for them since the union of their High-Justices.

Justice long regarded the exposure of children as a crime, but the rigor of Justice is always tempered by wisdom and by prudence, and the Magistrates soon recognized that their severity in this regard was subject to great drawbacks, and this is a second cause of the increase in the number of Foundlings.

Among these unfortunate children, some—victims of the false honor of their father and their mother—were often sacrificed to a shame just in its origin, it is true, but quite blameworthy in its effect; scarcely had these children received life than they were given death, either because the fathers and mothers feared these innocent witnesses of their misconduct, or because the state of their fortune did not permit them to feed them; the others, born of a legitimate marriage (and even these were not exempt from these drawbacks): the cries of nature could not prevail over misery and destitution, sometimes too over a blameworthy favoritism, whose baleful effects fell upon children who, at their birth, had not yet had either the advantage of pleasing or the misfortune of having displeased.

This indulgence of the Magistrates in closing, in some measure, their eyes to that kind of crime which is the exposure of children, has increased their number in the Hospital of Foundlings: fathers and mothers no longer had any pretext for ridding themselves of them in an inhuman and cruel manner. Nature has resumed its rights in their heart, and they have turned all their attention to preserving for them the life they had given them.

Natural sentiments, Religion, the State, and Society—all have found themselves in agreement to concur in the preservation of the children. Nature always recoils from its own destruction, Religion opposes it by superior views and by more elevated motives, the State cannot have too great a number of Subjects, they are its strength and its glory, and society demands, for its own interest, the preservation of the Citizens: this too is the principal object of the establishment of the Foundlings, and it is to fulfilling it that those charged with taking care of them direct their singular attention.

It is to attain an object so important that, at various times, as the number of Foundlings increased, means had to be sought to enlarge the lodging intended for them, while awaiting the arrival of the country Nurses who undertake to feed and raise them until the age of five.

These Nurses come from the Provinces of Normandy and Picardy, but they are held back by the weather and by the seasons. In Winter the frost and the rain, in Summer the harvest—all these causes delay their arrival, and from day to day the number of children increases.

There are in the Hospital of Foundlings wage-earning Nurses to suckle the children and to make up for the lack of those from the country. The greater the number of children, the more wage-earning Nurses and country Nurses are needed; but the more room is needed both for the children and for the Nurses, the more storerooms are needed for the children’s clothing, the more persons are needed to serve them, and the more room too is needed for provisions.

These motives led the Administrators of the Hôtel-Dieu, who knew better than others the duties of humanity and those of society, to let out to the Hospital of Foundlings three small houses belonging to the Hôtel-Dieu.

These Houses have become insufficient owing to the number of Foundlings, which, since 1739, exceeds three thousand a year.

It has been seen with extreme sorrow how these children perish in very great number: in 1739 they were struck by a disease which they communicated to one another and of which many died after languishing for several days.

The Administrators of the Hospital of Foundlings have sought every means of remedying so great an evil. In concert with their Chiefs, Monsieur the First President and Monsieur the Procurator General, they made a Deliberation to increase the wages of the country Nurses, in order to engage them, through interest, to come and take Foundlings.

They invited several of the Physicians and of the Surgeons most versed in the knowledge of the condition of children to come and visit the Foundlings, and to examine the cause of their disease.

These gentlemen made this examination with all possible charity and attention. All were of the opinion that the cause of the disease of the Foundlings came from the want of air, and from the want of room to lodge them during their stay in the Hospital.

The Administrators of the Hospital of Foundlings, furnished with these respectable endorsements, have sought every means of procuring air and lodging for the Foundlings.

The Hospital of Foundlings is surrounded on all sides by Houses belonging to the Hôtel-Dieu, and it already held several of them on lease: the Administrators of the Hospital of Foundlings could apply only to the Administrators of the Hôtel-Dieu; they first represented that, being only simple Tenants of the Houses of the Hôtel-Dieu, they were not permitted to alter their arrangement, and that if the Hôtel-Dieu would be willing to sell these Houses, then, by the redistribution that would be made of them, more lodging could be procured.

They also set forth all the motives that required more air and more lodging for the preservation of the Foundlings, and they asked the Administrators of the Hôtel-Dieu to be willing to concur with them in the preservation of these young Citizens, by selling them the neighboring Houses.

The Administrators of the Hôtel-Dieu entered into all these considerations of the public interest, and they were willing to sell to the Hospital of Foundlings both the Houses it held on lease and the neighboring Houses, in order to enlarge their lodging.

The price of these acquisitions is not the only expense into which the preservation of the Foundlings obliges the Administrators to enter.

These newly acquired houses are old, and of a construction that cannot suit a Hospital such as that of the Foundlings; one cannot dispense with rebuilding these houses—this will be a second expense as great, and perhaps greater, than that of the acquisition.

The ordinary revenues of the Foundlings, already insufficient in themselves, above all since the increase in the Nurses’ wages, cannot furnish an extraordinary expense so considerable. Borrowing is a resource, but at the same time it is a burden; nevertheless one must either let the children perish, or procure air and lodging for them; and this cannot be done without great expense.

The Administrators of the Hospital of Foundlings feel these difficulties; but they flatter themselves that they will not be treated as reckless for surmounting them; they are too accustomed to the aid that Providence sends them, and they would be ingrates to distrust it: they have experienced on every occasion the effects of the charity of the Public: what may they not hope from it in this instance, which is without doubt the greatest and the most important since the establishment of the Foundlings?

It is a question of the preservation of these Children of the State; they belong to the Public all the more in that they belong to no one in particular: as Children of the State, they must be preserved—it is its strength and its glory; Humanity demands it, Religion requires it, and Society finds its advantage therein.

There is every reason to hope that, by procuring air and lodging for the Foundlings, following the opinion of persons of the Art, who regard the want of air and lodging as the cause of the disease with which the children are stricken, and as that of the death of many, life will be preserved to a greater number.

Last Updated on 08/12/26