The soup conferences were a series of individualist anarchist meetings and food distributions held at the Favier hall, 13 rue de Belleville, in Paris, during the autumns and winters of the 1890s. They were conceived by Pierre Martinet in 1891 as a way to reach a poor and disadvantaged population, particularly women, the unemployed, sex workers, or criminals, and the anarchist activist Séverine quickly joined him. According to the historian Jean Maitron, they illustrate the anarchist movement’s openness to the most disadvantaged members of society. They distributed between 1,000 and 5,000 servings at each meeting.
From 1892 onwards, the soup conferences were organized by a Comité féminin, which took charge of the food management and the conferences. A notable member of this committee was Eugénie Collot. Male activists such as Jules Rousset were also involved in organizing them from this period onward. They received financial support from several artistic and intellectual figures of the time, including among others: Sarah Bernhardt, Alphonse Daudet, Émile Zola, Anatole France and Stéphane Mallarmé.
