3-011-348 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Refuge for the aged at Auteuil, near Paris, 1864. Engraving from a sketch by M. Felix Thorigny. 'The institution of St. Périne...is "an asylum where misfortune meets at the same time with assistance and consideration - where the hand of benevolence offers not only to succour but to raise"...each inmate pays annually the sum of 700 f., receiving in return an amount of ease and comfort which five times that outlay could certainly not otherwise procure...The institution has apartments for 296 pensioners, comprising therein the thirty-six beds of the infirmary, which is a perfect model of cleanliness and comfort...The pensioners enjoy entire liberty, the establishment being open from six in the morning till eleven at night. They take their meals in a beautiful refectory...the spoons and forks are of silver and the glasses and decanters...are of crystal...The establishment as seen from the Court of Honour presents almost a palatial appearance. The women's habitations are on the right hand, the men's on the left. Each block of building, or pavilion, is distinguished by a letter, except that in the centre, the Pavillon Joséphine, so named in honour of the wife on Napoleon I, who took great interest in this institution'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.