Young , Male and Disabled

The urban geography of thirteenthand fourteenth-century Paris suggests that propertied Parisians placed poor young men who needed help in crossing the threshold to adulthood near the top of their list of poor people who were in need of charitable assistance. Indeed, only widows and other elderly unattached women outranked such boys. By 1342 Paris had ten shelters for poor unattached women and at least five colleges, or hospices, for poor school boys 2 • After 1363, moreover, the city included the Hospital ofSt.-Espriten-Greve, a bourgeois foundation that provided lodging, nourishment and