The public hospital in the 14th arrondissement where George Orwell spent several weeks with pneumonia in 1929, in a ward of sixty beds. He wrote it up seventeen years later as "How the Poor Die" — one of the harshest things he ever published — and disguised the hospital as the Hôpital X in the fifteenth arrondissement.
In the winter of 1928–29 George Orwell was living at 6 rue du Pot de Fer in the fifth arrondissement, in the poverty he would describe in Down and Out in Paris and London. He fell ill, and because he had no money he went where the poor of Paris went. Accounts of what he had do not agree: one line of the scholarship has him admitted with bronchitis that turned into pneumonia, while the archival work that identified his fellow patient records the admission as influenza, in March 1929. The record keeps both rather than choosing.
He spent several weeks here, in a public ward with about sixty other patients. The essay he eventually wrote about it opens with a flat statement of fact and then never softens: "In the year 1929 I spent several weeks in the Hôpital X, in the fifteenth arrondissement of Paris. The clerks put me through the usual third-degree at the reception desk, and indeed I was kept answering questions for some twenty minutes before they would let me in."
The disguise is worth noticing, because it is the reason this page exists rather than a straightforward hospital page. Orwell calls the place Hôpital X and puts it in the fifteenth arrondissement. Cochin is in the fourteenth. He moved it one arrondissement over and refused it a name — a writer covering his tracks over an institution he was about to describe in terms no hospital would want attached to it. The fifteenth is not a random choice, either: it is where 72 rue Fondary stood, the restaurant he was working in and would also disguise.
What he described was medicine practised on the poor as a spectacle. Students were walked round the beds and allowed to examine patients as teaching material, with no particular attention paid to whether the patient minded or even noticed. He wrote of "people just dying like animals, for instance, with nobody standing by, nobody interested, the death not even noticed till the morning" — and made the point that this was not how it went in an English hospital, which was the comparison the essay was built to force.
One thing did come out of the ward besides the essay. Orwell met a Russian patient here, in for arthritis of the knee, who became Boris in the book — the ex-officer who walks through the Paris chapters with him, pawning coats and chasing kitchen work. Archival research published in 2024 names him as Anatole Kupper, born 1896, a former captain in the Russian expeditionary force sent to Marseille in 1916. The friendship that carries half of Down and Out began in this hospital.
He did not stay to the end of the treatment. He left before he was discharged.
The essay sat unpublished for seventeen years. "How the Poor Die" appeared in the small magazine Now in November 1946, when Orwell was famous and Animal Farm had already made his name — long after the fact, and by then addressed to a country running an argument about founding a national health service.
The hospital is still here and still working. There is no plaque. The building is the ordinary answer to a question the essay makes unavoidable: where did the people with no money go, and what happened to them when they got there.
Orwell is living at 6 rue du Pot de Fer in the fifth arrondissement, in the poverty of Down and Out in Paris and London.
He is admitted with pneumonia and spends several weeks in a public ward of about sixty beds.
He leaves the hospital before completing treatment.
"How the Poor Die" is published in the magazine Now, seventeen years after the stay.
He was a patient here in 1929, admitted with pneumonia while living in poverty in the fifth arrondissement. He spent several weeks in a public ward of around sixty beds and wrote about it in the essay "How the Poor Die", published in 1946.
He disguised it. The essay opens by placing the Hôpital X in the fifteenth arrondissement; Cochin is in the fourteenth. He shifted it one arrondissement and withheld the name — a reasonable precaution given that he was about to describe the place in terms no hospital would want attached to it.
Medicine practised on the poor as teaching material: students walked round the beds and allowed to examine patients with little regard for whether the patient minded, and deaths going unnoticed until morning. Orwell's comparison throughout is with English hospitals, which is the argument the essay is built to force.
In the magazine Now, in November 1946 — seventeen years after the events. By then Orwell was famous, Animal Farm had been published, and Britain was arguing about founding a national health service.
It is a working teaching hospital in the 14th arrondissement, not a site to tour, and there is no plaque marking Orwell's stay. It is worth knowing about rather than visiting — the address is 27 rue du Faubourg Saint-Jacques, below the Val-de-Grâce.
Visited by · 1929
Orwell was admitted with pneumonia in 1929 and spent several weeks in a public ward of about sixty beds, leaving before he was discharged. He wrote it up as "How the Poor Die", disguising the hospital as the "Hôpital X" in the fifteenth arrondissement — Cochin is in the fourteenth.
The students' dance hall behind the mock-oriental façade opposite the Closerie des Lilas — where the Latin Quarter danced for a century, and Robert and Sonia Delaunay painted the dancers.
Visit the place
The Paris apartment where Blaise Cendrars and Raymone Duchâteau settled in 1950 after their marriage — his home for almost nine years, facing the rear wall of La Santé prison.
Visit the place
Ernest Hemingway's favorite writing spot, where he drafted much of The Sun Also Rises. Quieter than the other cafés, which was the point.
Visit the placeA long boulevard along the southern edge of the Latin Quarter. In Down and Out in Paris and London it holds the pawnshop where George Orwell took his overcoats — and found it shut, on the day he had gone sixty hours without eating.
Visit the placeThe Friday Letter
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.
