The “cannonballs” that follow women in the street, such an old story

Beautifully crafted, carefully illustrated, the work that Juliette Rennes devotes to street trades in the 1900s in Paris is innovative. Far from the nostalgic gaze we have on the “small trades of yesteryear” represented on old postcards and genre paintings, his work highlights the harshness of these professions: coachmen, market gardeners, booksellers, merchants four seasons, but also dog poo pickers, quilters, itinerant flower sellers…

Although familiar, these “low-income” professions are little known, for lack of having nourished among researchers a curiosity comparable to that aroused by working-class worlds. Juliette Rennes, director of studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales (EHESS), scrutinizes these working classes in line with her work on the pioneers (“Merit and nature. A republican controversy: the access of women in prestigious professions, 1880-1940 », Fayard, 2007), through the prism of class, gender and age.

By leafing through its introduction, we discover how much this life on the street was a source of hassle for the workers. Today we say