Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how Parisians responded to episodes of extreme heat in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces contemporaries’ experiences in newspapers to consider the effects that hot weather had on their bodies and the coping strategies that they put in place.

Paper long abstract:

Across France, thermometers have risen to record-high levels: summer 2023 has been announced as the fourth hottest summer since 1900. In Paris, the effects of the hot weather have prompted the creation of initiatives to help urbanites: swimming pools and parks have longer opening hours, and a map of “cool islands” – indicating the locations of water fountains, green spaces, fresh indoor spaces – has been published by the council. How did Parisians live through summer hot weather in the past? This paper explores the ways in which urban dwellers in Paris experienced heat and focuses on specific episodes of extreme hot weather in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (1898, 1900, 1911). Parisians were hot and their experiences were recorded and circulated across a range of media. Drawing on newspaper articles and photographs, this paper examines the bodily sensations that heat provoked (e.g. perspiration, dehydration, fatigue) and the strategies that were devised to deal with those undesirable effects within the city. Looking at human interactions with the urban environment through the lens of heat sheds light on, and reasserts the importance of, the sensory dimensions of contemporaries’ experiences of cities and has potential to inform future responses to heatwaves in urban settings, both individual and institutional.