This book is a case study, based on the Montpellier region in southern France, which analyses charity and poor relief from 1750 to the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, and the effect of the French Revolution on the treatment of the poor. The breadth of the book's timescale is one of its most notable features; so too is the way in which the changing treatment of the problem of poverty is seen not only in its political and administrative context, but also in terms of police forces, charitable benefactors, the administrators of charitable institutions, and the poor themselves.