"Improvements of Paris " have been
gradually depriving the very poor of shelter for a
family. In the fifteen years ending in 'fifty-six,
the number of poor lodged in garrets for less
than two pounds a year had decreased by more
than one half; the number of those paying
between four and eight pounds had doubled; and
the number of those paying between eight and
twelve pounds, had risen from one hundred and
eighty-seven to one thousand and sixteen. In
five years more, in 'sixty-one, the lodgings of
two pounds and under no longer existed; and
the number of poor compelled to pay rents of
between four and eight pounds, has trebled
during the last twenty years.

To receive any help from the bureau of his
arrondissement, the applicant for regular relief
must, if a Frenchman, have lived for a year in
Paris; if a foreigner, have lived for ten years in
France. The blind, the palsied, the crippled,
and those infirm with age who have reached
threescore and ten, receive, after five years'
residence in Paris (including two years on the out-
door list, or ten years' residence and one year on
the out-door list), annual and regular relief. The
oldest men—men of eighty-four or more—
receive, when destitute, nine and sixpence a month;
and the scale descends to the four shillings
a month paid to men of seventy, and to those of
the paralytic and the blind who do not add
great age to their other infirmity. To others,
when sick, or wounded, or otherwise in want,
occasional relief is given, and this may be
claimed by heads of poor families where there
are three children all under fourteen years of
age. But no relief is given to a poor family of
which the children are untaught and unvaccinated.
So much of this rule as applies to non-
vaccination might be adopted, with advantage,
in our own country. It would be hardly fair to
visit the restriction upon the parents of
untaught children until education becomes as
accessible here as vaccination is. The
committee of the district bureau in Paris decides
upon all applications, entering those admitted
into a book for itself, and into another book for
the divisional administrator, and into a third for
the central bureau of the Quai Pelletier. The
relief given is also documentary, being as much
in kind as possible. Tickets for meat and bread
are taken to the central butchery and bakery
connected with this scheme of poor relief; so
with fuel, &c. Clothing is distributed by the
secretary, or by the sisters of a maison de
secours, on the authority of an administrator.
Money, when given, must be given by the hands
of the secretary into the hands of the person
for whose relief it is intended, except when it is
paid through a curé or the superior of a maison
de secours, to buy clothes tor the first
communion of a pauper's child.

On the reports of administrators,
miscellaneous gifts are distributed of wooden legs,
bandages, mechanical stays, and so forth, to
poor persons who need them, without asking
whether their names are otherwise on the books
of the bureau. The bureau also gives tickets
of relief as a viaticum for poor persons upon a
journey, licenses hawkers, grants exemption from
taxes, and sees that the clothes of persons
dying in hospital are delivered to their relatives.
It also lends, in urgent cases, shirts and bedding,
and will sometimes help a widow to apprentice
her boy, or to pay her rent.

A certain number of pensions, each of them
a little over ten pounds a year for men, and
a little under eight pounds for women, are
distributed by the Assistance Publique among
the twenty bureaus of the twenty arrondissements
for the help of the poor. They are paid
monthly, but the winter instalments are made
larger than those paid in summer. But these
pensions are paid in each case with the bureau's
special regard to the wants of the receiver, in
money when necessary, in kind when possible,
and with careful regard to the sort of assistance
wanted. The receivers of these pensions get
also medical advice, medicine, and baths gratuitously,
and lose their grant if they are caught
begging or found guilty of misconduct. The
doctors of the bureau attend like our dispensary
doctors, in certain places and at certain times,
to prescribe for the poor who come there. As
a check upon the doctors, an official from the
bureau goes round among the sick poor of the
district to see that they are properly attended
at their homes, this official filling up a document
in the sick-room as evidence on his own
account that he has paid his visit of inspection.
When the sick poor are convalescent, the bureau
sends them, if necessary, to the convalescent
hospital of Vincennes or to the Vesinet, and the
convalescents from the hospitals get from their
bureaus, under certain conditions, Montyon's
bounty of twenty francs, in money or in kind.

At a Bureau of Benevolence most of the
business with applicants is transacted on the
ground floor. On the first floor are the secretary's
offices, and at the top is the great collection of
clothes of all sorts, from baby-linen upwards,
ready made, packed, and sorted. An infinite
variety of tickets of all colours represents the
French taste for organisation. Say, it is the
doctor who is wanted. A clerk is applied to,
who sends Galen a printed letter of direction to
attend, with a printed reminder that he will
find at the patient's house a printed form on
which he will be good enough to make entries
at every visit, that he will find also a printed
letter, of which he must at once fill up the
blanks, describing the probabilities of the case
at first sight. This letter he is to seal up and
leave for the visitor or administrator from the
bureau, who has in his turn to fill up a form
showing his own name, the doctor's name, the
name, age, address, calling, and floor of the
patient, how many children he has, and how old
they are, what trades any of them follow, the
family's means, individually and generally;
whether the patient has been in the hospital,
what rent he pays; whether he is in arrears, how
many rooms he lives in; whether he can afford
a fire, and has one; whether there is any tit
person connected with him to act as nurse;