Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day. Volume 2

Even the very imperfect sanitary science of the Middle Ages recognized this cemetery as a centre of infection, and innumerable complaints were addressed to the civic authorities from reign to reign. Toward the middle of the eighteenth century, these protestations became more frequent, and various reports were made upon the subject. In 1737, the Parlement, by a decree dated July 9th, appointed a committee of experts, consisting of MM. Lemery and Hunault, physicians of the Hôtel-Dieu, and Geoffroy, médécin chimiste, all three of them members of the Académie des Sciences, to report "upon the grounds for the complaints which have been made for more than forty years, perhaps for more than a century, upon the infection caused by the Cimetière des Innocents." The report of this commission, dated May 22, 1738, gives some lively details concerning the manners and customs of the times that may be sought for in vain in other and less candid records. "Two causes of these evil odors may be observed,—the fecal matter which the inhabitants of the neighboring houses throw into the cemetery, partly in a trench that has been made along the sides of the houses that are on the Rue de la Ferronnerie, and the infection from the graves during the time that they are open and being refilled. The first cause is the most obvious; the second does not seem to exercise any injurious effect on the health of the neighborhood.... Do the exhalations from the cemetery augment in time of epidemics?… The experience of the past does not seem to furnish any grounds for these slight suspicions.... The soil is not exhausted, but it is less fit to bring about the dissolution of the dead bodies."

Various remedies were proposed in the conclusion of the report: "Prevent the lodgers in the neighboring houses from throwing their water, urine, and filth into the cemetery, and, to this end, increase the number of lunettes in the closets and close the windows up with gratings." This particularly concerned the row of houses along the Rue de la Ferronnerie, which formed one of the long sides of the cemetery; they were five stories in height, and had been reconstructed under Louis XIV, eighty years before. A typical detail of the period may be found in the fact that there were "lunettes" only on the first floor; the dwellers in the upper stories found it more convenient to throw their refuse out of the windows than to carry it down-stairs. In fact,—says MM. Firmin-Didot's editor, from whom we gather these details,—had the private individuals any right to complain when, in building the palace of Versailles, only one thing had been forgotten,—the closets? "And yet these were the good old times, and Monsieur Purgon [of Molière's Malade Imaginaire] was then held in great honor!"

The commission also made several recommendations concerning the cemetery, which to-day would be thought to be very insufficient. It was proposed to level the ground, to divide it into squares, to dig graves in a diagonal direction opposite to the one formerly followed, to oblige the grave-digger to take out the bones each time, to have only one common grave open all the time—instead of three, to double the size of the graves, to cover the bodies with eight inches or a foot of earth—according to the season, to open the graves by preference only in the winter, to burn the bones or transport them to the new grounds of the Porcherons, acquired by the chapter of Saint-Germain, and to exchange part of the soil taken from the graves for new soil from this locality. Another report, made by the commissioner Laumônier in 1780, advised the establishment of a provisional cemetery under the charge of the Capuchins,—"it were better," said the commissioner, "to have monks for a guardian rather than a drunkard, like that of the Innocents."

This was Maître Poutrain, who had been fossoyeur here for thirty years, and who made application to be transferred to the new cemetery as soon as he heard that his old one was to be suppressed. It was not suppressed, however, till six years later, and in 1785 we find another commission from the Académie des Sciences taking testimony and adopting the recommendations of the grave-digger Poutrain as though he had been a member of their own learned body. They even accepted this statement from him:—there was a square tomb in the cemetery, near the church, then only some three feet high, and which, when he commenced his labors in the grounds, had been so high that he could scarcely reach the top with his hands. That the soil had risen, however, cannot be doubted. There were two thousand or three thousand burials a year; Poutrain said he had officiated at ninety thousand himself during his term of office; and M. Héricart de Thury has estimated the number of inhumations in the course of six centuries as high as one million two hundred thousand. This has even been considered as below the probable number, on a basis of three thousand a year, and not allowing for famines, pestilences, epidemics, and wars,—all in a space estimated at nine thousand six hundred square feet.

Another account says that the cemetery was closed on the 1st of December, 1780, in consequence of the following incident: In July of that year, a shoemaker of the Rue de la Lingerie, having occasion to go down into his cellar to get some leather, was driven back by an insupportable odor. His neighbors having been called in and due investigation made, it was discovered that the foundation wall had yielded to the pressure of the earth of the cemetery, and that the cellar was half full of decomposing bodies, mostly from a trench that had been opened on that side of the grounds in the latter part of the preceding year, for the reception of some two thousand corpses. The police forbade the gazettes and journals to give any publicity to this incident, and a commission was appointed to investigate. A decree of the Archbishop of Paris, June 10, 1786, definitely closed the cemetery, the earth was screened, the bones placed in sacks and transported in covered carts to the old quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality called the Tombe-Issoire, as has been stated. Those which it had been intended to transport to the cemetery of the Faubourg Montmartre were, for want of space, taken to Montrouge.

The vegetable market which had been held in the Rue de la Ferronnerie was transferred to the site of the old cemetery, and for a number of years this Marché des Innocents, with its four or five hundred immense red parasols, under which the vendors sheltered themselves, was one of the sights of Paris. In 1813, galleries of wood were constructed around the enclosure for this purpose. In the centre was placed the old fountain from the corner of the Rues Aux Fers and Saint-Denis, with the five naiads in relief sculptured by Jean Goujon supplemented by three more, more or less in the same style, by Pajou. Since the reconstruction of the Halles Centrales, the Marché des Innocents has been transformed into a public garden, surrounding this monumental fountain.

As early as 1766, the Parlement of Paris had taken up the very important reform of suppressing all interments within the city, "a custom which had its origin only in the growth of the city which, in extending its limits, had gradually taken into its enclosure the cemeteries originally outside its walls." A municipal decree, in nineteen articles, forbade any further burials in the cemeteries then within the city walls, after the first day of January, 1766, or in churches, chapels, or vaults, excepting under certain limitations. This sanitary measure was, however, so vehemently opposed by all the curés of Paris that it was never enforced; the question of compelling all interments to take place in suburban cemeteries was not seriously taken up till 1804, when the grounds of Père-Lachaise were purchased by the city, and, to this day, the only interments that are forbidden within the built-up limits of the capital are the temporary ones, and the common ones for the poor,—the fosses temporaires, and the fosses communes.

By a grotesque arrangement, the funeral arrangements in Paris were formerly in charge of the town-criers, the crieurs de corps et de vins, the crieurs-jurés, who held a monopoly of these public announcements, and who bawled through the streets, indifferently, the proclamation of choses estranges which were lost, mules, children, horses, and the like, of wine to sell—when they carried a gilded drinking-cup, and of deaths—when they wore a sort of dalmatic sown with black "tears" and death's-heads. Their number was at first fixed at twenty-four, then at thirty, and an edict of January, 1690, raised it to fifty. They had a reprehensible fashion of announcing deaths and ringing their bell through the streets at all hours of the night: "Pray to God for the soul of Messire Suchaone, who has just died! Awake, all ye who sleep, and pray God for the dead!" The Parisian bourgeois, suddenly aroused from slumber by this hoarse appeal under his windows, entered into a state of fright, or of fury, according to his temperament. These crieurs and clocheteurs des trépassés, moreover, formed a wealthy and influential corporation which held the monopoly of what is to-day the Pompes funèbres,—they furnished the serge, the robes, the mantles, the chaperons or hoods, the hangings, and the torches for the funerals, they even furnished the hired mourners when required, who preceded the cortège to the graves in black garments, "ringing their bells, drawing lugubrious sounds from grotesque instruments, appealing to the people to pray for the defunct, making an infernal uproar, and, in order to honor the dead, nearly killing the living." This corporation was in existence after 1789, but the hospitals and hospices had obtained the right of furnishing hangings for funeral ceremonies, and a decree of the year XII transferred it to churches and consistories.

The arrangements for interments, generally, were in harmony with the condition of the overcrowded and reeking cemeteries,—the bodies were usually transported to their last resting-places on men's backs or by their arms, the poor enjoyed the luxury of a bier only during this journey and were thrown half-naked into the common grave. From this period of the Revolution, these summary processes were forbidden; the bodies were obliged to be carried in wagons or cars, excepting those of children, though sometimes several coffins were placed in the same vehicle. For more seemly processions, the cars were drawn by two horses, walking, accompanied by an ordonnateur and three porters in costume, or even by four aumôniers on horseback supporting the canopy. In the latter case, the hearse would be furnished with no less than eight horses. For these sumptuous occasions, however, the jurés-crieurs would deem it necessary to accompany the funeral cortége with a convoy of saddle-makers, harness-makers, and wheelwrights, in case the heavy funeral car should happen to upset or to become stalled in the mud. The presence of these auxiliaries in their working costumes was concealed as much as possible; they were placed in the hearse, sitting on the coffin itself, and concealed from view by the heavy black curtains of the vehicle,—here they amused themselves by playing at dice on the bier, drinking, if they had had the forethought to bring a bottle along, or sometimes by showing their faces through the openings of the black curtains and making grimaces at the four mounted aumôniers, whose dignity forbade them to reply in kind.

A certain contractor, a Sieur Bobée, was authorized by the Préfet of the Seine, M. Frochot, in 1801, to furnish to wealthy families the means necessary to give their interments the desired pomp, and he was, in fact, the first organizer of the Pompes funèbres. He collected, at his own cost and risk, all the requisite material, and drew from his wealthy clients a sufficient recompense to reimburse him for the gratuitous burial of the poor, which was required of him. He received, also, the proceeds of the funerary tax, which provided the indigent with a shroud, a coffin, and the necessary transportation to the grave. Under his successors, the business gradually enlarged till, in 1869, the municipal administration judged it expedient to purchase a site and erect buildings that should assure a sufficient establishment for the future. The war with Germany delayed the completion of this undertaking, but the new buildings of the Pompes funèbres, offices, stables, store-rooms, etc., all complete, were finally inaugurated in 1873. They were constructed in the name, and at the cost, of the city of Paris, and the funerary establishment pays a rent of two hundred thousand francs. These buildings are situated on the site of the former abattoirs de la Villette, on the Rues Curial and d'Aubervilliers. In the manufactory is kept a large stock of coffins and caskets of all kinds, and a reserve stock is always on hand in case of epidemics; in the carriage-houses are nearly three hundred and fifty vehicles of all kinds, and in the stables, three hundred and sixty-four horses,—two hundred and ninety-one black ones.

The service of the Pompes funèbres is placed under the surveillance of the Préfet of the Seine. The administration centrale may be addressed directly by telephone, to 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers, when required, or application may be made to the bureau of the Pompes funèbres in each Mairie, or to their agents in each arrondissement. There is a conseil d'administration of thirteen members, elected, ten by the city churches, one by the consistory of the Reformed Church, one by the consistory of the Confession d'Augsbourg, and one by the Israelite consistory. This conseil represents the fabriques—that is to say, the revenues and property—of the parochial churches, divided into ten circonscriptions, and the consistories of the non-Catholic churches of the city. There is also a vicar-general, delegated by the Archbishop of Paris, who is a member of the conseil, and ranks next to the president.

The expense of a funeral, of course, varies very greatly. An ordinary coffin costs from eight francs to forty-four. The municipal tax, which brings in to the city treasury annually some eight hundred and sixty thousand francs, is included in the cost of each class of funeral, and varies from forty francs for the first and second classes to six francs for the ninth. For the convois catholiques, the expense is from eight thousand to ten thousand francs for the first class; for the convois protestants, four thousand two hundred to seven thousand five hundred for first class; for the enterrements israelites, two thousand nine hundred at the most. The ninth, or cheapest, class of funeral, of all these may be had for eighteen francs seventy-five centimes for the Catholic, nine francs for the Protestant, and three francs for the Israelite. These figures vary according to the parish, the size of the church or temple, etc., but they generally include the decoration of the residence, the draping of the place of worship in which the service is held, the payment for this religious service, etc., but not the cost of the coffin, of the land in the cemetery, of the tickets of invitation or notices of death, and other details. In the Jewish service, there is an item of a thousand francs for the choir, either at the dwelling or in the cemetery. For the convois civils, where there is no official religious service, the price varies from eighteen hundred and fifty to twenty-four hundred francs for the first class to nine francs for the ninth. For incinerations, the cost is about the same, adding the tax to be paid the city,—three hundred francs for the first class, and fifty for the sixth, seventh, and eighth. A permit for a gratuitous interment may be obtained by presenting at the Mairie a certificate of indigence obtained from the Commissaire de Police upon application sustained by two witnesses in good standing.

As in every other important event of his life, the Parisian is obliged in this—the last—to occupy himself with the official procès-verbaux of his état civil. At his decease, an acte must be drawn up, upon the declaration of two witnesses, if possible the nearest relatives, or neighbors, giving his name, Christian name, profession, age, place of birth, domicile, those of his father and mother, and those of the attestors, with an indication of their relationship if they are relations; stating whether the deceased was married or widowed, and, in either case, the name and Christian name of his spouse. No operation upon the corpse, such as autopsy, embalming, or taking a cast, can be performed before the expiration of twenty-four hours after death, and then only upon the authorization of the Préfecture de Police, and in the presence of the Commissaire de Police of the quarter. This authorization is granted only upon the statements of two doctors,—one of the official Médecins de l'État Civil, and another physician, sworn and delegated for the occasion. The family must preserve and produce upon the demand of the Médecin de l'État Civil all the prescriptions of the doctor who had attended the deceased in his last illness; they must also give the name and address of the doctor and of the druggist who prepared the prescriptions. It is also forbidden to clothe the body or place it in the coffin, or to cover the face, before the expiration of twenty-four hours,—a light veil of very thin gauze alone is permitted. It cannot be denied that these are all very intelligent precautions.

In these funeral processions, the public authority is represented by the ordonnateur des Pompes funèbres; "it is he who, from the residence of the defunct to his last resting-place, never quits him, watching over him like a faithful friend." His official costume has been modified of late years,—he now wears a red and blue scarf, a cockade with the two colors, and his insignia is embroidered on the collar of his coat. The Napoleonic cocked hats, black garments, and high boots of the drivers of the hearses are familiar sights in the streets of the capital, especially in the neighborhood of the cemeteries, driving slowly at the head of their mournful processions, or, in their moments of relaxation, descended from the heights of their sable chariots and drinking familiarly at the zinc bar of a workman's wine-shop, side by side, it may be, with the white blouses of masons and plasterers. The four hundred porteurs of the Pompes funèbres still retain their ancient familiar designation of croque-morts, concerning the derivation of which there is much uncertainty. A number of the Revue des traditions populaires suggests that it may come from the mediæval custom of biting the little finger of the deceased at the moment of placing in the coffin, in order to obtain a final assurance of death. At the masked balls of the Opéra, these personages are represented by the traditional Père Bazouge and the cheerful Clodoche,—shedding their decorum with their official costumes.

By the decree of 1804, which forbade all inhumations within the walls of the capital, it was provided that there should be established cemeteries outside the city limits, and at a distance of not less than thirty-five or forty mètres. Four such enclosures were ordained: the Cimetière du Nord, or of Montmartre, on the north; that de l'Est, or of Père-Lachaise, on the east; that du Sud, or of Vaugirard, on the south, and that of Sainte-Catherine. The first of these was already in existence, having been established in 1798 by the municipal administration, to replace that in the plain of Clichy, comparatively new, which had replaced the old one of Saint-Roch. The Montmartre cemetery occupied the site of an abandoned and very extensive plaster quarry, whence it took its popular name of Cimetière des Grandes-Carrières, and it was also known, more poetically, as the Champ de repos, while the Montparnasse, later, was given that of Champ d'asile. When the city limits were enlarged, in 1859, Montmartre, in common with other communes of the suburbs, was brought within the enclosure, and, after the creation of the new cemetery of Saint-Ouen, called by the people Cayenne, the only interments in Montmartre were those made in the vaults of certain private families.

Père-Lachaise, the most important and most picturesque of these enclosures in Paris, takes its name from the confessor of Louis XIV, to whom it was presented by his royal penitent. The Cimetière de l'Est was inaugurated, in 1804, in a locality which originally bore the name of Champ l'Évêque, because it had been the property of the Bishop of Paris. The Jesuits purchased it, in 1626, under cover of a private individual, and established there a country house, surrounded by trees and shrubbery, the site of which is indicated to-day very nearly by the central rond-point of the cemetery. Popular report ascribed to this pleasure-house a character in keeping with the hypocrisy and luxury of the order as painted by its enemies; and young Louis XIV visited it, in consequence of which it became known as Mont-Louis. Afterward, when in the possession of the royal confessor,—who said, himself, of his office: "Bon Dieu! quel rôle!"—it was still further enlarged, and the grounds handsomely laid out around his little villa, two stories in height, overlooking Paris. At his death, it came again into the possession of the fathers of his order, and at their suppression, in 1763, it was sold to pay their creditors. The Préfet of the Seine purchased it for its conversion into a municipal cemetery in 1804.

That of Vaugirard was situated near the ancient barrière and at the entrance of what was then the village of Vaugirard; it had in nowise the importance of the two just mentioned, and was much more the burial-ground of the poor than of the rich. As early as 1810, its insufficience was recognized, and in 1824 it was closed, and replaced by that of Montparnasse. The Cimetière Sainte-Catherine was in the quarter Saint-Marcel, by the side of the old cemetery of Clamart, which was full of bodies and closed in 1793; Sainte-Catherine was also replaced by Montparnasse in 1824. The latter, the necropolis of the left bank of the Seine, is the least interesting and least visited of any of the Parisian cemeteries. The ground is quite level, and the enclosure so crowded with tombs that there is very little space left for verdure or shade. The number of distinguished dead who rest here is also less than in either Père-Lachaise or Montmartre. Previous to 1824, it received only the human débris from the hospitals and the bodies of criminals from the neighboring scaffold. Vaugirard and Sainte-Catherine have since been completely removed, and the sites devoted to other uses; and the number of ancient urban cemeteries that have thus disappeared is very considerable. That of the old church of Saint-Roch is now traversed by the narrow streets which enclose the church; that of Saint-Gervais is buried under the caserne Lobau, back of the Hôtel de Ville; Sainte-Marguerite-Saint-Antoine, in which were placed the remains of the young dauphin, is now a waste land; Saint-Joseph, and the little Cimetière de la Chapelle Marcadet which was used during the siege of 1871, are now occupied by commercial or secular establishments. Among those the sites of which are still recognizable are Saint-Vincent and Saint-Pierre at Montmartre; Saint-Médard—so famous in the last century as the scene of the extravagances of the convulsionnaires and the alleged miracles on the tomb of the Jansenist deacon, Paris—has been only partially destroyed by the opening of the Avenue des Gobelins; and on the old Cimetière de la Madeleine now rises the Chapelle Expiatoire to the memory of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.

Each of the great cemeteries, both within and without the walls, is under the charge of a conservateur, having under him a receiver or steward, a surveyor, clerks, guardians, and grave-diggers. The guards, who number in all a hundred and thirty-five, including five brigadiers and fifteen sous-brigadiers, have all been sworn into office and are empowered to draw up procès-verbaux. The landscape-gardening of the cemeteries is all under the direction of the service des promenades, and the municipal administration of the city of Paris takes a laudable pride in maintaining the picturesqueness and attractiveness of these places of sepulchre. Many of the tombs, or funerary monuments, are preserved through legacies or donations, and the city assumes the care of others possessing an historical or patriotic interest, as those of Abélard and Héloïse, of Molière, of La Fontaine, of Casimir Périer, and the "four sergeants of La Rochelle." Consequently, the cemeteries of the capital are, distinctly, one of the features of the city,—Père-Lachaise, particularly, is a most curious, picturesque, original, and characteristic "sight," and, alike on the day of Toussaints when they are visited by the populace almost en masse, and when they receive the solitary funeral procession winding slowly through the streets, the carriages followed by a long train of mourners on foot, they may be said to be truly representative institutions of this people with whom we are for the moment concerned.