[Losing one's life giving birth: maternal mortality at Port-Royal 1815-1826]

In this paper, we have studied the "Hospice de la Maternité", created in 1795 to replace the "Office des acouchées of the Paris "Hôtel-Dieu". Our objectives were first to conduct a demographic study of the pregnant women coming to the maternity and second, to evaluate the patterns of maternal mortality. Our data are constituted individual medical reports between 1815 and 1826. 4086 women issued from a quest at the letter B have been observed. Because of the relative low number of deaths in this population (192), we decided to investigate four other years (1817, 1818, 1819 and 1821), where the deaths were exhaustively recorded. Unwed mothers represented 80.4% of the population and their mean age was 25, whereas married women were more than 30 years old. Nearly all these women came from the working class, especially three sectors, sewing (35.4%), servants (31.8%) and workers (20%). More than three quarters dwelled in Paris; among them, less than 20% were born in the city. Mortality was very high, it reached 6%. Forsaking was more prominent for unwed women (81.7%) than for married mothers (58.3%). The stay at the Maternity was rather long, mean 23 days. Maternal mortality was high, 47 for thousand, but we noted important fluctuations amongst years and seasons. The demographic analysis of the population showed that the Maternity appears as a transition structure between the ancient "hospices" and the modern hospital. The poor economic and physiological status of women explained that, despite the noticeable improvement in care, the mortality rate will remain elevated during all the century, and even increase.