:Vivre la ville: Les classes populaires à Paris (1ère moitié du XIXe siècle)

Abstract

Nineteenth-century Paris has attracted the attention of talented urban historians such as Adeline Daumard, Jeanne Gaillard, and Gérard Jacquemet. The work of Barrie M. Ratcliffe and Christine Piette belongs to this august company. For those with the patience to read a book interlaced with lengthy discussions of obscure sources and abstruse social indicators, the reward is a remarkable portrait of the Parisian popular classes in the first half of the nineteenth century. All serious researchers of this period confront the destruction of many records during the repression of the Commune. Recalling the “new social history” of the 1960s and 1970s, Ratcliffe and Piette are deeply suspicious that elite literature can tell us much about popular life. To fill this gap, they employ a staggering variety of systematic records from hospitals, poor houses, parishes, charitable societies, criminal courts, and government pawnshops as well as family councils and the odd social survey. They alternate thematic surveys of Parisian life with topical chapters on particular groups such as domestic servants, ragpickers, and aged, impoverished women.