"The streets of Paris at the time were full of beggars, and the Sun King could not tolerate their presence diminishing his radiance. Some 5,000 of the city’s poor, primarily women, were soon forced to stay in the hospital. In time, the General Hospital became the hospital for women. At the end of the 17th century, according to the uses of the era, four categories of women were placed there. “Bad” adolescents were kept enclosed in the “Correction” section, with the idea that they could be rehabilitated. Women labeled as prostitutes filled the “Common” section. Women who had been imprisoned with or without sentences were quartered in the “Jail,” and inhabitants within the “Quarter of the Insane” were those who usually had been sent there by their families."
Ivan Berlin, The Salpêtrière Hospital: From Confining the Poor to Freeing the Insane
