Estimates of the female population of Paris, 1911 to 1921

The uncertain and the unknown

Establishing reliable estimates of civilian populations in urban districts during the Great War is an onerous, and probably impossible, task. We concentrate here only on the female population, but even eliminating the outflow of men due to military mobilization hardly solves the problem of presenting sound population estimates of females who remained.

The benchmarks of census enumeration occur well outside the period of the Great War, in 1911 and 1921. We have no alternative other than to make some effort to approximate age-structure and aggregate movements of population in the intervening years.

First let us consider the problem of aggregates. We simply do not know with any authority the number of civilians who lived in Paris during the Great War. The primary problem is that migratory flows were both very substantial and unquantified not only during but before and after the war.