This book offers an absorbing history of the French state’s first attempt to tackle the scourge of poor housing. After decades of concern about workers’ housing in early industrial France, the 1848 Revolution finally provided the catalyst for reform. Legislation in 1850 created municipal housing inspectors who had vast powers and remarkable local agency. This book strikes out from Paris and into the provincial city where public health legislation lived and died in the hands of those tasked with implementing it. Through a comparative study of three different French departments, this book offers an essential insight into the local politics and domestic worlds of nineteenth-century France. With concerns over housing conditions and tenant health pressing once again today, Inspecting the home uncovers the longer history of the conflicts between the central state, local experts, landlords, and tenants.