DISEASE, CRIME AND REVOLT

THE SHAME OF PARIS, CITÉ JEANNE D'ARC WAS CALLED

(BUILT IN 1884)

"The modern Court of Miracles... those who live there have fallen 

to the last rung of misery."

-- Belinda Carter, Paris treizième

Rue Jeanne d'Arc seen from the church steps (toward 1900) 

The posthumous account of a man who
 spent his youth among the most indigent
of the capital — notably of Cité Jeanne d'Arc — 
and tells what he has seen...

Disease  

...in its dark, funereal corridors, among the stairs, corners and sordid recesses and in the midst of its shadow, the infection lurks and prowls, always in search of prey, the devouring specter: tuberculosis.

 -- A Kid, autobiographical novel by Auguste Brepson, 1927

Crime: 

The young man

in the postcard below

wears the cummerbund

of the "apaches,"*

the first modern street gangs

*From the frightening reputation of the American West's Apaches 

The cummerbund, often red

Zoom (please scroll down)

It was often worn by métro diggers who won major strikes in 1901. The apaches appropriated it for its prestige and by evoking strikers, to show that they did not work.

Revolt: Strikers make the cité a bastion (in May 1934), part of the turbulence that leads to the victory of the Socialist Popular Front:*

(In power, 1936-1939)

* Wikipedia and this blook

The besieged of Cité Jeanne d'Arc surrendered this morning  (in French) / zoom

When a Communist deputy from the 13th urges workers to vote, he is assaulted and arrested. Residents build barricades at both entrances to the cité and light fires in front of them (surely remembering La Commune), throw everything the can get their hands on at the police (as in the early 1830's and 1848), and push them back twice. 

The whole neighborhood has risen up, acclaiming the defenders of the cité who sing the Internationale and acclaim the soviets.

-- Paul Vaillant-Couturier, editor of l'Humanité (the Communist daily),

cited in Histoire et histoires du 13e, n° 6, winter 2011.

Remains of the cité: this plaque... 

On the corner of rues Jeanne d'Arc / Docteur Victor Hutinel

 [...] hovels in a neighborhood that undergoes rapid industrialization [...] A center of revolt as much as of squalor and delinquency, the Cité Jeanne d'Arc brings muscular repression, but also philanthropy.

In 1934 a movement that announces the Popular Front appears: the insurgents raise barricades [...].

And the name "Résidence Jeanne d'Arc," for this City-run housing for the elderly:

That is the sole trace.

*     *     *

Next,

Vanished industry