THE VICARIA OF NAPLES
Prisons of the Two Sicilies--Castel Capuano called the
Vicaria--Notorious reputation--Ill-treatment of political
prisoners--British indignation--Mr. Gladstone’s open letter to Lord
Aberdeen--Reforms promised but not carried out--Prison at
Palermo--Island prisons--Nisida--Description of convict life
there--Interior of the prison--The Camorra--Its powerful influence
in the prisons--Details of organisation--Vitality of
Camorrists--Prominent members defy authority--Society makes its own
laws and enforces them rigidly--Still in existence in the south and
especially in the convict colonies.
The most interesting, and undoubtedly the most cruel and oppressive
prisons were those of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and one of the
worst in Naples is described as typical of the rest--the infamous prison
of the Castel Capuano, so called from the district in which it was
situated, and also called the Vicaria, the name it bears to this day,
derived from the viceroy who ruled in the days of the Spanish
domination. This prison gained an unenviable reputation in the time of
King Ferdinand II, when its horrible condition drew down upon it the
unmeasured reproaches of Mr. William E. Gladstone. The Bourbon
government, ever cruel and tyrannical, was indeed rousing the
indignation of the civilised world by its misusage of its political
prisoners. Arbitrary arrests were made wholesale, trial was tardy, often
there was no trial at all; conviction was obtained by perjury or
conspiracy, and worse than all, the victims of these unworthy processes
were thrown into the foulest dens or dungeons mostly unfit for human
occupation.
In 1851 Mr. Gladstone, after a prolonged personal inquiry, addressed an
open letter to the British premier, at that time Lord Aberdeen, in which
he uttered his protest with indignant eloquence. He describes the
prisons of Naples as being the extreme of filth and horror, and declares
that in the Vicaria he saw the doctors, not going to the sick prisoners,
but the sick prisoners, men almost with death upon their faces, toiling
up-stairs to them, because the lower regions of such a place of darkness
were too foul and loathsome to allow it to be expected that professional
men should consent to earn bread by entering them. The diet consisted of
black bread and soup, the first sound, but coarse to the last degree,
the latter so nauseous that nothing but the extreme of hunger could
overcome the repugnance of nature to it. The association was
indiscriminate among a crowd of between three and four hundred
murderers, thieves, all kinds of ordinary criminals, some condemned and
some uncondemned, and the politically accused. They were a self-governed
community, the main authority being that of the _camorristi_, the men of
most celebrity among them for audacious crime. Employment they had
none. This swarm of human beings all slept in a low long vaulted room,
having no light except from a single and very moderate sized grating at
one end. The political prisoners, upon payment, had the privilege of a
separate chamber, but there was no division between them.
These strictures were taken in very bad part by some Neapolitan writers,
who retorted with bitter denials and countercharges, expatiating upon
the imperfections of the British penal system which inflicted the
horrible punishment of the lash and had no reason to be proud of its
prisons. The attack made no great impression, for the humane and
intelligent management of the British prisons was too well known, and
corporal punishment, indefensible no doubt, was but rarely administered.
A better argument by way of denying the charges was to point to another
Neapolitan prison, that of San Francisco, with which no great fault
could be found. Nothing could better its position; it was well lighted,
well ventilated, and it was kept perfectly clean,--a statement presently
contradicted by the amazing admission that the Neapolitans did not mind
a little dirt.
Where so much diversity of opinion prevailed, more evidence of an
independent kind must be brought to bear, and we may quote from another
eye-witness who visited the Vicaria soon after Mr. Gladstone and whose
account was strongly corroborative. This was written by another member
of Parliament, Mr. Alexander Baillie-Cochrane, who was given full
permission in 1851 to inspect the prisons of Naples, and published a
book, “Young Italy,” in which he relates:
“It is situated in the worst part of Naples, near the filthy, debauched
quarter called the Porta Capuana. When we arrived there a sleety rain
was falling and the outside, with its massive walls, triple bars and
dirty aspect, conveyed most painful sensations of misery and
wretchedness. From the upper stories, where the prisoners were confined
for minor offences, they were leaning against the bars, their features
distorted, indulging in foul and brutal observations. On entering we
were met by the authorities, who at once proceeded to open those tiers
of dungeons where, up to this time, no Englishman had ever penetrated.
The large court into which we drove was surrounded by a portico, which
must, at one time, have been handsome; but it all seemed to have caught
the contagion of vice and infamy; it smelled of crime. The staircase was
wide but reeking with dirt--a fitting approach to the apartments we were
about to enter. At the top of the stairs a mob of tattered, decrepit,
loathsome figures were collected; they were the relations of some of the
prisoners, who were permitted to see them from time to time, and were
admitted one by one through a small wicket, a man sitting at the desk
and calling out their names; the man, wicket desk and all being in
momentary danger of being carried away, from the struggles of the mob.
It was with difficulty that the officers cleared a way for us; but at
last the huge bars were withdrawn and we entered the outer room, which
was separated from the long gallery in which the prisoners were confined
by iron gates, to which they all pressed with eager curiosity: some of
them with a vicious expression of countenance which made me rather wish
to remain on the outside of the bars. The officers, by driving the men
back, were at last able to open the gates. We entered, and they were
carefully locked and barred behind us. It was a gallery perhaps some two
hundred feet long by twenty wide, with small rooms branching off it, and
in this gallery from two hundred to three hundred were lodged. It would
be difficult to convey an idea of the horrors of the place. A damp,
fetid, noxious vapour filled every cell; many of the windows by which
the light entered had no glass, and the wet mist penetrated through the
close bars.
“The mass of the prisoners were dressed in the most filthy rags and
their features were fearfully degraded. But mingling with these were men
of far different character and appearance. Hustled by the crowd of
vagrants and scoundrels might be seen men who, at one time, swayed the
destinies of the kingdom, and were honoured by the royal confidence.
These men withdrew into their rooms where some ten or twelve slept
together, and there they told me the tales of their misery. Most of
them, as at the Santa Maria, had been eight months in prison without the
least appearance of trial; and some did not know of what they were
accused. It was distressing beyond expression to see gentlemen of
education compelled to mix with the refuse, the foul refuse of the
galleys. As we moved from cell to cell the crowd moved on and pressed
around us. They could not at all comprehend the cause of this sudden and
unexpected visit. After we had walked down the whole length of the
gallery, the officers inquired whether we wished to see the lower part
of the prisons in which the worst description of offenders were
confined. I thought it was almost impossible that anything could well be
worse than what I had seen; but anxious to have a clear knowledge of the
actual state of the prisons, I assented. When we approached the gates
the people pressed on us so roughly that it was with great difficulty
the officers could compel them to retire; and when they saw that we were
going without giving them any hope that their condition would be
ameliorated, their looks of regret and disappointment would have touched
any heart. We passed again through the crowd waiting outside, and then
went down a steep flight of filthy steps till we came to the lower range
of the building which was below the level of the ground, where we had to
pass through two or three gates before we entered the place where some
four to five hundred were confined. A much greater number of officers
were here in attendance, as some of the prisoners were very dangerous.
“The moment the last gate was unbarred we found ourselves in a place
which it would require the imagination of a Dante to paint. I could
understand that if this had been visited first, I should have considered
the upper floor a comfortable residence. Some were lying on the floor;
others crowded together on the miserable truckle beds, howling and
blaspheming and evidently always addressed and treated as brutes. Some
had climbed up to the open bars and were jeering at the people in the
street. It was vice in all its degradation and horror; human life in a
living tomb assisting at the spectacle of its own decay, its own
rottenness. The atmosphere was thick as a London fog from the horrible
exhalations. The men here were wild to tell me their stories; some
caught hold of my clothes, others scribbled their names on pieces of
paper and thrust them into my hand, which they seized and covered with
their pestilential kisses. I spoke to one old man who had been confined
there twenty-five years--twenty-five years in such a place!--and he
pretended, I know not with what truth, that to that day he had never
been tried. I asked the officers if this was the case, but it was so
long since his arrival that they could not give me any definite
information. When the wretched beings were told that I could do nothing
for them, their expressions of sorrow were loud and bitter. I was not
sorry when, after quite forcing a way through the crowd, we reached the
gates and I heard the last bar drawn which shut the poor creatures out
from all hope.”
Before he left the prison, Mr. Baillie-Cochrane examined the registers
and ascertained that there were 614 political prisoners in custody. What
could he do for these poor sufferers for their conscience’s sake? He
made up his mind to approach the king himself and put before him the
whole painful story. Ferdinand graciously received him and listened with
great patience and concern. The Englishman spoke out fearlessly and
urged the king to freely use the prerogative of pardon, and release all
who had been imprisoned, often without the semblance of a trial and on
the most unfounded accusations. The king was much impressed. “I am
delighted to hear the truth,” he said, “and very grateful to you for
telling it. No one is more anxious than I am to do what is right. I have
been shamefully traduced and calumniated, most unjustly so.” The reader
will not perhaps be inclined to absolve the despotic ruler who allows
such things to be done. The wished-for result was hardly achieved. In a
few days the political prisoners were separated from the general
population of the Vicaria, and some few were set at liberty. “So far so
good,” was Mr. Cochrane’s commentary, “but, to my very deep regret, I
have heard that the political prisoners were sent to a much worse place,
where communication with their families was much more restricted, and
that the few who were released were very unimportant people and who
would under ordinary circumstances have gone out.”
Let us follow some of those who went elsewhere. One of them, Baron
Porcari, was committed to the island prison of Ischia and confined in a
dungeon called the Maschio, a dungeon without light and four feet below
the level of the sea. He was never allowed to quit it day or night and
no one was permitted to visit him there except his wife, who could see
him once a fortnight.
There were others who fared still worse: Carlo Poerio, the eminent
Neapolitan whose name and fame are precious possessions in Naples, was
imprisoned with sixteen others in another island prison, that of Nisida,
and under the most deplorable conditions. All sixteen were crowded into
a single room, thirteen feet by ten. “When the beds were let down at
night there was no space between them; they (the prisoners) could only
get out at the foot, and, being chained two and two, only in pairs. In
this room they had to cook or prepare what was sent them by the kindness
of their friends.” The room on one side was below the overhanging ground
and therefore reeked with dampness. There was only one window, too high
to look through, unglazed and freely permitting unhealthful air to enter
and at times the intense cold. The chains were very ponderous; every man
wore two sets, one of cross-irons fastened to each ankle and to a waist
leather; the other, half a coupling chain, sixteen feet in length,
carried jointly between the two prisoners. The weight of all these
chains exceeded thirty pounds. They were never taken off, and the
trousers were made to button all the way down the legs so that they must
be put on over the irons. The use of double irons was not common to the
Neapolitan gaols but they were especially introduced just before the
arrival of the political prisoners. As a further refinement of cruelty,
frequently the most opposite of individuals were chained together, a
political prisoner, for instance, with the informer who had sent him to
gaol, or with the lowest and most ferocious criminal.
The prisons of Sicily were equally disgraceful. At Palermo the inmates
were herded like cattle, exposed to the sun in the open yards or buried
in underground dungeons. These _dammusi_ were sufficient to cause a
shudder; excavated far out under the Porta Carbone, but so limited in
size that a man could not stand erect or lie at full length on the only
bed provided, of hard stone. Complete darkness, dripping damp, and
vermin innumerable, make up the horrible picture, drawn by an Italian
who afterward visited the prison, escorted by Professor Pasquale Pacini,
who pointed out the _dammuso_ he had himself occupied, and cut out the
very iron ring to which he had been chained to carry away with him. In
this prison there was a torture chamber in which the nails and rings
once used still remained. There were many such underground prisons on
the mainland. I have myself seen those of the castle of St. Elmo at
Naples, now thrown open and dismantled, but which are still very much
like dry wells or the mouth of a coal mine, deep pits too dark and foul
even for the reception of wild beasts. The male prison of Aversa was a
by-word; at the gateway as late as 1830 it was the custom to hang iron
baskets in which were kept the shrivelling heads of decapitated
criminals. At the prison of Santa Maria, there were caverns hollowed out
of the rock behind the criminal prison, the only admission to which was
through an aperture like a window and inside which the unhappy occupant
lay heaped up, hermetically sealed. The old fortress of the Castel dell’
Ovo at Naples contained dungeons as bad as any of those just mentioned.
Italy has largely utilised the islands that surround her shores as
prisons or penal colonies. Nisida just opposite Baiæ, established under
the Bourbons, is one of these, and is typical of many. The building
which, seen from a short distance, looks little bigger than a martello
tower, crowns the summit of a sea-girt hill and is sufficiently
commodious for five hundred inmates on the “congregate” or barrack-room
system. Its situation is unrivalled, commanding as it does the Bay of
Naples on one side, and that of Baiæ on the other, with Cape Misenum and
the islands of Ischia and Procida beyond. Its lodgers do not care as
much for the view as for the privilege of purchasing wine, fruit or
tobacco at the canteen; the means for which they can procure by their
industry. The present writer when he visited it found all pretty busily
employed; a large contingent on shoes and slippers; others were
tailoring, weaving at quaint old-fashioned looms or spinning-wheels, and
turning out an excellent cloth-like canvas. A few specially
well-conducted convicts were employed beyond the walls in the gardens,
olive grove and farm. Nisida is famous for its oil. Its lemons grow to a
gigantic size; its cows give excellent milk which is churned into
excellent butter. All these operations are entrusted to the prisoners.
Over the outer gateway is an inscription, “_Sine Pecunia_,” purporting
to explain that the prison was built at no cost, the expenses having
been defrayed by the sale of rabbits with which the island was formerly
over-run. They were caught in large quantities by the prisoners and
their skins sold. Much of the farm work at one time was performed by the
Abyssinian prisoners, who with their Prince Dejeac were here expiating a
charge of conspiracy against the Italian government. They were very
mild-eyed, harmless looking men--nearly all black Africans of the pure
negro type--and they shrieked with delight at the coppers given them to
spend for cigarettes. One of them, a convalescent in the hospital,
attached exaggerated importance to our visit and plumped down on his
knees with his hands raised in supplication, hoping we would pardon him
then and there.
The interior of the prison is like that of a castle or tower, a winding
staircase giving upon rooms floor after floor, the windows of which look
out on the sea. The centre is an open courtyard used for exercise, and I
saw a large number there mingling freely and not walking round and round
in Indian file. They were rather desperate looking men and would
assuredly have satisfied Professor Lombroso as to their possessing the
characteristics of the criminal type. All wore chains, leg irons hanging
to a waist belt and a red uniform, somewhat startling to English eyes
accustomed to connect that colour with an honourable profession or a
royal livery, and not with crime. These chains at night are made fast to
the foot of the bedstead. In cases of misconduct, when the prisoner is
relegated to the punishment cell, this chain is attached to a ring in
the cell wall, and its wearer can move only its length through the open
cell door into the central court. But the prisoners were orderly and
gave but little trouble, as I was told. Serious insubordination was very
rare and escape from such a sea-girt fortress all but impossible. If a
fugitive could elude the military sentries, there were the shark-haunted
waters at the base of the rocks.
The prison was clean,--obviously it was often swept and
garnished,--although fresh water is a scarce commodity in this elevated
position and every drop must be brought over from the mainland. There
is the sea below available for scrubbing purposes, and all the stone
floors and passages are washed daily--a very necessary operation in that
climate. All the economic arrangements were of the simplest, most
rough-and-ready character. The kitchen was a dark, dirty looking den;
the soup of cabbage very poor and thin; the bread coarse and black; but
the bedding was ample, the clothing good and the physical condition of
the prisoners excellent. All utensils were of quaint shape; some coppers
of classical form might have come straight from Pompeii. In the
bakehouse the bread was being prepared in a primitive sort of trough,
kneaded by a patient donkey in a roundabout, turning a wheel.