3-021-483 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Elections in Paris: a meeting in a low quarter, 1869. 'For the past fortnight Paris has been in a fever of excitement over the pretensions of the many candidates seeking election to the Corps Législatif...the indoor meetings...present a strong contrast in the different arrondissements...a meeting held in the low quarters of the city, the 9th Circumscription, for instance, which includes the arrondissement of the Gobelins, the poorest in all Paris, where one inhabitant out of every five receives public relief...The place of meeting is a huge, barnlike building, with vaulted roof and dingy, bare walls, dimly lighted with oil-lamps. The speakers are, for the most part, men in blouses, who ascend the tribune to attack all candidates not of their own precise way of thinking, and who declaim vehemently against the rights of property and in favour of the claims of labour amidst the plaudits of the auditory...the watchful Commissary of Police will call one speaker after another to order, and in many instances, in despair of keeping the orators within the prescribed bounds, will dissolve the meeting, at which the prohibited spirit-stirring strains of the "Marseillaise" will burst forth from the lusty throats of hundreds of indignant working men'. From "Illustrated London News", 1869.