[1] Formed by a royal edict during the reign of Louis XIV, it aimed to address the recurring problem of begging and the Cour des miracles, as well as to house invalids.
[5] This increase fueled anxiety about maintaining social stability and motivated the creation of more severe penalties for begging, such as branding, whipping, and forced labor.
[8] To alleviate such destitution, in 1652 the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, an active French Catholic secret society, started relief efforts centered around the development of a charitable storehouse.
For instance, from 1612 to 1618, the Hôpital des Pauvres Enfermés—an early attempt at building a Parisian general hospital—locked up local beggars and subjected them to a system of forced labor.
[11] Consequently, the idea of confinement had already been introduced when Christophe du Plessis-Montbard, a devoted member of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament, began to work with the Parliament in 1653 on developing plans for a new Parisian general hospital.
[7] Also instrumental in shaping these plans were Les Dames de la Charité, an organization of wealthy lay women led at the time by Marie Madeleine d’Aiguillon.
[4] Michel Foucault identifies the founding of the Parisian General Hospital as a key moment in the continent-wide trend towards confining the poor.
[22] The board's membership consisted of key governmental figures ranging from the President of the Parliament and the Archbishop of Paris to the Lieutenant General of Police.
[23] After the French Revolution begun, a December 1789 decree of the National Constituent Assembly charged relevant governmental departments with the oversight of Parisian hospitals, charitable houses, prisons, and related institutions, consolidating their administrations under a single authority.
[26] Even though the founding committee was opposed to involving religious orders in the hospital's administration, ultimately the Daughters of Charity received their positions.
[32] To help reduce strain on the capital, a royal edict was issued instructing all French towns and villages to create their own general hospitals.
[38] By the latter half of that century, the population had grown substantially: in 1786, the hospital's constituent institutions held 12,000 individuals, and oversaw an additional 15,000 foundlings not housed within its walls.
[38] Before the revolution, Salpêtrière's population had grown to 10,000, divided among fifteen separate buildings including prisons for criminals and prostitutes, a madhouse, a girl's reformatory, and a poorhouse.
A 1790 committee from the National Constituent Assembly found Salpêtrière and Pitié to be overcrowded and foul-smelling, with many inmates suffering from conditions such as ringworm and itch.
[44] However, the administration of the General Hospital unsuccessfully tried on many occasions to make the establishment more profitable by turning buildings such as Pitié and Bicêtre into factories for tasks such as lace manufacturing and mirror polishing.
[33] If they returned, girls would learn housekeeping skills and boys would be afforded apprenticeships with Paris' guilds and corporations, an arrangement dating from the hospital's founding.
[47] The General Hospital of Paris is a major point of analysis in Michel Foucault's seminal work Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason.