Abstract
Throughout the 1840s Tocqueville continued to write on the issue of poverty. As in his reports on pauperism, he considered the issue in detail and in its broad relation to social justice and political stability. It was of considerable importance to him. He believed it to be fundamental to France’s political situation,1 and he lamented the established political parties’ lack of interest in it. The issue played a significant part in his leaving the dynastic left and establishing a new political grouping called the ‘young left’;2 and it was for this group that he drafted the outlines of a social policy for France. It is clear from this fragmentary document that he was very sensitive to the plight of the working classes and the poor.
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Notes
For more on these issues see Rachel Fuchs, Abandoned Children, Foundlings and Child Welfare in Nineteenth-Century France (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) and Lynch, Family, Class, and Ideology in Early Industrial France, chapter 4.
Colin Jones, The Charitable Imperative: Hospitals and Nursing in Ancien Regime and Revolutionary France (London: Routledge, 1989), chapter 3.
Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (London: Longman, 1995), p. 92.
Albert Dupoux, Sur les pas de Monsieur Vincent. Trois cents ans d’histoire parisienne de l’enfance abandonnée (Paris: Revue de l’assistance publique, 1958), pp. 183–6.
William Coleman, Death is a Social Disease: Public Health and Political Economy in Early Industrial France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), pp. 35–6.
Bernard-Benoit Remade, Des hospices d’enfants trouvés, en Europe, et principalement en France, depuis leur origine jusqu’d nos jours (Paris: Treutel et Würtz, 1838), p. 167.
Joseph Marie de Gérando, De la bienfaisance publique, II (Paris: Jules Renouard et C1e, 1839), p. 165.
Adolphe-Henri Gaillard, Recherches administratives, statistiques et morales sur les enfants trouvés, les enfants naturels et les orphelins en France et dans plusieurs autres pays de l’Europe (Paris: Leclerc, 1837), p. 105.
A. de Gasparin, Rapport au Roi sur les hopitaux et les hospices et les services de bienfaisance (Paris: Impr. Royale, 1837).
For a typical example of a demand for change made by a Prefect see: F.M. de Bondy, Memoire sur la necessite de reviser la legislation actuelle concernant les enfants trouves et abandonnés et orphelins pauvres (Auxerre: Gallot-Fournier, 1835). For examples of demands for changes made in general departmental council reports see: P.S. Lelong, Rapport sur les enfants trouvés et abandonnés fait au conseil general de la Seine-Inferieure (Rouen: N.Périaux, 1835) and A. Valdruche, Rapport au conseil general des hospices sur le services des enfants-trouves dans le département de la Seine (Paris: Huzard, 1838).
T. Curel, Parti a prendre sur la question des enfants trouves (Paris: Librairie administrative de Paul Dupont et cie., 1845), p. 5. Aries, L’enfant et la vie familiale sous l’ancien regime (Paris: Plon, 1960); Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood Since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992) and Children and Childhood in Western Society Since 1500 (London: Longman, 1995); and Linda Pollock, Forgotten Children: Parent-Child Relations from 1500–1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
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© 2003 Michael Drolet
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Drolet, M. (2003). The Investigations into Abandoned Children. In: Tocqueville, Democracy and Social Reform. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230509641_8
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