The period covered is from 1 Floréal Year III (Monday, 20 April 1795) to 26 Fructidor Year IX (Sunday, 13 September 1801); but there are only scattered minutes for the Year III, a year in which mortality rates reached, for the second year in succession, a record figure of 30,000 for Paris, and in which suicides are said to have been particularly numerous, especially among women of the very poor, so that the documentation can only be taken as fully representative for the period October 1795 to mid-September 1801, a span of six years. (...)" - Richard Cobb