Boire à l’hospice. Morales, tensions et contestations autour de la consommation de vin chez les vieillards parisiens dans la deuxième moitié du XIXe siècle

Wine consumption, authorised or prohibited, diverges from hospices to retirement homes managed by public welfare. Thus it reveals the diversity of the publics assisted in reason of their age in the second part of the 19th century. Though this consumption is cultural, it also results from medical prescription and all the more a moral concern. This article explores the building of a wine consumption standard regarding old age. Inebriation is besides viewed by their directors as the main reason for violences taking place in hospices, wine consumption thus being the moral characteristic of the good or bad elderly. Finally, if wine is central in analysing the defects of the aided old, it also occupies a large place in their grievances. The right to wine consumption has an important role in the resistance opposed by the old to those who supervise their last days. This analysis questions the leeway allowed residents of homes managed by public welfare.