Death in Paris 1795-1801. The Records of the Basse-Geôle de la Seine October 1795-September 1801. Vendémiaire Year IV-Fructidor Year IX

Inbunden bok. Oxford University Press. 1978. 134 sidor.

Nära nyskick. Skyddsomslag i mycket gott skick. Ägarsignatur på försättsbladet. Språk: Engelska. "'Death in Paris' is an evocation of the dead, those who committed suicide or died a sudden death, usually without any political connections, whose bodies were brought to the Basse-Geôle de la Seine, the predecessor of the Paris morgue. There, after identification if possible by three or four répondants, and the precise recording of the manner, time,and place of death, the clothing on the corpse, even items in pocket, burials was arranged, in most cases at the municipality's expense. From those archival sources, seemingly intact for the period October 1795-September 1801, supplemented from the records of the juges de paix and commissaires de police, Richard Cobb has once again performed a feat of historical reconstruction, not merely charting patterns of morality or analysing the habits of bureaucracy, but repeopling the narrow streets and densely occupied six-storey buildings of Paris during the Directory. Imaginatively and vividly, he and we get up with the inhabitants, most of them very poor, dress with them, go out with them to the crowded banks of the Seine to do the laundry, to water the horses, to bathe, or tragically to jump off a bridge. We retrace the last footsteps of the suicides, the victims of accidents, the drowned, even the murdered. Out of the paltry dossiers, the author has rescued the living workmates, neighbourhoods, their habits of labour and leisure so that, although the book is based entirely on death, it is the irrepressible variety and dignity of human life that Professor Cobb celebrates in his writing".