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    268 PROM PARISH

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    - No. Ii. I Came Here For The Express Pu...

    and these are not what we should call charwomen , but highly " respectable female domestics of the better sort . There is one in this

    very house , who rejoices in the romantic name of . Zoe , a handsome woman about thirtywhose husband is a froiteurand polishes the

    , , floors in gentlemen ' s houses . She comes at seven in the morning " , and goes away about seven in the evening , and her wages are a franc

    a day and her food . If the reader asks with astonishment where are the children , the

    answer is simple enoug \ h , they are sent out to nurse . The wife of the well-to-do shopkeeper sends her little ones to foster-mothers in

    the country , the poorer mother sends hers to the creche , sometimes they are even put temporarily into the Enfants Trouves , or Foundling

    Hospital . The mortality of the children who are sent out to nurse in the

    country is one item in the stationary state of population in France , for the country air does not make amends for the want of the care

    of their own mothers , and they are said to die with cruel frequency fromthis cause . I have been assured that , as a general rule _^ the

    wife , of the Parisian shopkeeper very rarely retains her infants under her own eye , they come back , if they do come back , at two or three

    years Of of course age . it is impossible to make sweeping assertions about

    such matters . If the wife of the poor man must work , it is better for her children to be in a creche tlian locked up in a room at

    home , or running the risk of the streets ; and I have seen a large creche at the Maison de Secours in the Rue St . Dominique where

    the children looked healthy and happy enough , and where their mothers regularly attended to them . Sixty children were inscribed

    on the books , but the actual attendance was about forty ; the babies were in one roomlying in little cots ranged round the -walls ,

    or sitting on a carpet spread , out purposely for them , one side of which was bordered by a long pillow . The infants able to walk were

    congregated in an adjoining apartment , under the care of a hired nursebut a Sister appears always to be present in one or other of

    the rooms , . A little girl of eight years old was helping to take care of the she was shown with pride as " one of our children ; "

    that a day nursery is -scholar to say , , she in regular had once attendance been a bab , y but in the as the creche ext , ernes and was were now at

    recreation at that hour she had run upstairs to help with the babies .

    With these few memoranda , I conclude my desultory letter . Many other valuable institutions require separate papers to develope

    their full scope . . XV . X . *

    268 Prom Parish

    268 PROM _PARISH

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1860, page 268, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061860/page/52/