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Dans la deuxième partie du XIXe siècle la prostitution à Paris se concentre essentiellement dans le quartier Saint-Georges, plus précisément dans la partie appelée Breda-Street. Les dictionnaires d’argot et / ou de langue populaire de l’époque recensent un certain nombre de termes et d’expressions, plus particulièrement le Dictionnaire de la langue verte d’Alfred Delvau dans son édition de 1867. Même si le classement en différents argots proposé par l’auteur pose des problèmes (validité linguistique ?), il est possible d’utiliser ce dictionnaire comme point de départ d’une étude du vocabulaire de la prostitution des années 1850-1900, car certaines catégories proposées sont intéressantes. La presse des décennies de fin de siècle témoigne de l’utilisation de certains des termes notés par Alfred Delvau, tout comme le font des grands auteurs de la littérature, tels Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo et Émile Zola.

Some survivors of the Parisian St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre delivered a testimony of the event in their Memoirs: Jean Mergey; Charlotte Arbaleste, wife of Philippe Duplessis-Mornay; the Duke of La Force, Jacques Nompar de Caumont; Jacques Pape de Saint-Auban; the Duke of Sully, Maximilien de Béthune. Beyond the diversity of situations they reported, their narratives all highlight the same ethical ideal of fidelity, which guides their behaviours as actors, as much as it founds their credibility as witnesses. After demonstrating how the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre represents a crisis of faith, this paper first sheds light on the compensatory virtue of Memoirs, whose redaction is motivated by a concern for memory and an imperative for justice. It goes on to show how the testimonies these Memoirs rely upon, be they direct or indirect, take the form of narratives seeking to guarantee their authenticity. All of them place a survivor of the massacre at the center of attention and offer this person the possibility of a propitious presentation of himself or herself. Distinguishing themselves as diligent servants, careful dissimulators, or prodigious teenagers, the survivors all recount and defend a course of action that enabled them to survive without denying themselves in the long term, while acknowledging their debts to others and what they owe to God’s Will.

Did the populations around Paris in the 18th century entrust the settlement of their disputes to the justice system or did they settle them alone, before a notary? In other words, what was the relationship between justice as a virtue and the courts of first instance as an administration?

This article looks at the houses built in the early 1920s by architect Jacques Bonnier for the Société anonyme coopérative d’habitations à bon marché du parc de Montsouris, a low-cost housing cooperative. Taking advantage of the many administrative and architectural sources available on this project, the aim is to examine the degree of agency the future users had in the design process of their own homes. After a brief historical contextualization, the article goes on to look at the identity of the purchasers of the low-cost houses in the square de Montsouris. In the light of this information, it analyses the way in which the project was run — between the architect's pre-design of the dwellings and the adaptations to the residents’ needs. This leads us to reflect on the singular place of this housing estate in the landscape of social and popular housing during the interwar period.

The operational activities, the studies, the expertise of the Parisian environmental health unit presented here bring to light the innovative character of the involvement of the city of Paris in the field of environmental health initiated a few years ago. Following the Paris plan for environmental health, they bear witness to the investment of the Paris administration in this new field, through the creation of a dedicated structure. The plurality of actors concerned by the transversal actions led, rooted in an ecological vision, diverging from a more classical functioning operating through narrowly separated and independent entities, entail a renewal of the decision-making process, even of the governance approach. This implementation testifies to a long evolution of sanitary stakes since hygienism. Set in the Parisian context and its long heritage, the Parisian example comes forth as a laboratory opening a more comprehensive way towards meeting the aspirations of residents and their desire to live in a more inclusive, human and pleasant city.

With more than 60,000 active outlets, Parisian retail is simultaneously wide-ranging, very dense (an average of 28 stores per 1,000 inhabitants) and very dynamic, with a constant renewal of activities. The Covid-19 health crisis has hit it hard, though: new types of businesses have appeared to accommodate the new trends and uses sought after by customers in lockdown. This research note aims to reveal the changes in the Parisian retail landscape and in customer purchasing behaviour induced by the constraints that emerged during this unprecedented period. Based on original data produced by Apur (Atelier parisien d’urbanisme, the Paris metropolis urban planning agency), this report shows the evolution of retail trade under the double effect of mobility restrictions and the ICT revolution. It also explores the long-term nature of the changes in shopping behaviour, the innovations that appeared during the crisis and the adaptive strategies of traditional retailers.

The so-called Macron law of August 6th 2015 introduced the notion of “evening work” to the French Labor Code, as something distinct from daytime work and night work, that were previously the two legally defined types of working hours. Based on an in-depth analysis of working-time practices in the Parisian retail sector, the article studies the emergence of this new legal category in order to gauge its significance and scope. It shows that this category of working-time contributes to the colonization of the night, since it allows the legalization of salaried work beyond 9pm in the retail sector, a growing practice that was previously illegal and judged as such in the courts. However, unsocial hours are more or less acceptable to retail workers. This innovation is the result of intense conflicts around working-time issues between trade unions and the management of the major retailers in the tourist areas of Paris. At present, trade union actions have been successful in obtaining compensation for “evening work” beyond what is usually granted to night-shift workers.