Modern Rome.
Mortification of the flesh is one of the first principles of the Romish faith, and a stranger would expect to find any laxity of morals amongst the inhabitants of the eternal city severely punished; but in point of fact prostitution is tolerated and regulated in Rome, although there does not exist any special act relating to it.
In the Middle Ages many vices stained the fame of Rome; but it is of the present day that we are about to write. The Romish system has produced the following results, according to M. Felix Jacquot, who lived at Rome for four years on purpose to study the morality and the health of Italy.
1st. Not being able to confine prostitution to certain houses, it has spread itself among families.
2nd. Clandestine prostitution, which is most prevalent at Rome, has there produced the evils that it always engenders, houses of accommodation, seduction at home, and the extension of syphilis.
It is extremely probable that, as there are no standing regulations relative to prostitution, perhaps a sort of arbitrary power is vested in the police which opens the door to innumerable evils.
There exist at Rome five forms of clandestine prostitution: let us begin with the street walkers.
Street walker is the only name that can be given to those ignoble creatures that prostitute themselves in the evening and during the night, at the corners of the streets and in the dark angles of the public squares near the cathedral of St. Peter, and under the colonnades of Bernin, where the French soldiery are so often infected. The street walker was not much known at Rome before the revolution of 1849. She is the result of disorder, and the occupation of Rome by the French gives vitality to her existence. Some of these wretches will infect ten or even twenty men in one night, who have recourse to them to satisfy their brutal cravings and bestial desires.
We have to treat, secondly, of houses of ill-fame; but there is little to be said about them; they do not differ in any respect from those to be found in other cities. The dangers of frequenting them are precisely the same. Syphilis acquires new virulence by being fostered by the inmates, who are recruited from amongst innocent and inexperienced girls belonging to families in the city.
Thirdly, there are houses where the girls neither live nor sleep, but where they are sure to be found during certain hours of the day. The women dine there, and only return to their families at night. These houses are not numerous, probably there are not more than six or seven in the whole city. To escape the watchfulness of the police, these change their locale; whilst one or two close others open, so that there is no diminution of the evil. They rather affect quiet localities: the steep hilly streets little frequented, such as the rampart of the capitol behind the church of St. Joseph des Menuisiers, or those quarters where strangers who come to pass a season at Rome instal themselves. There are not many women, as a rule, in these houses; generally six and seldom more than eight. They are frequented by young girls, and notoriously by married women. As so many men are obliged to remain bachelors when they take orders, a vast number of women are compelled, against their will, to embrace a life of celibacy. Then, in a country without industry and with very little agriculture, the lower classes have positively no resources to marry upon. There is a disinclination, also, amongst all classes in Rome to have children without possessing the means to educate them as they should be educated. There is quite a passion amongst the ladies in Rome to get married, and they put every art into requisition to effect their end. An irreproachable character is one of the means employed by young unmarried ladies. But once married everything is changed, and their reserve ceases. This change is to be attributed to too much exclusiveness and the restraint imposed on naturally strong and libidinous instincts; at any rate it is a well-established fact at Rome that marriage is productive of the worst passions and the most scandalous intrigues.
These houses are subject to no visits of the sanitary police. If the authorities are cognisant of their existence they take no notice unless the neighbours complain of such immodest residents in their immediate vicinity. Their existence depends in a great measure upon the lowest members of the police force, whose secrecy is often bought by large bribes. If money is refused them, these fellows complain to their superiors, and the extermination of the offending house of accommodation generally ensues.
It is no uncommon thing in England and France to hear the clamour of drunken men and women issuing from those houses—the noise of bacchanal lyrics mingled with oaths and curses, the immodesty of the women joining with the blasphemy of the men; but in Italy it is different. There is a sort of dignity amongst the Italians even in the midst of their debauchery. An anonymous denunciation before the clergy of the parish or the justices that a man was drunk, will often expose the denounced individual to punishment.
The hospital of San Giacomo is set apart for syphilitic maladies, and there the women are treated by the physicians, but unfortunately too late.
Gay women are to be placed in the fourth category. Under this name we include all those who make the sale of their charms a profession. Some are mistresses to foreigners and to natives, and transmit infection from one to the other; the others receive the first comer for a certain stipulated sum. There are a few, however, who only receive those that are known to them or who are well introduced. This is a measure of personal safety; by it they elude the danger of infection, and escape from the supervision of the police.
Syphilis is very prevalent in Rome, more so than in France; and the influence of the climate is much felt in accelerating the approach and increasing the virulence of the disease.
Fifthly. Prostitution in families is one of the most deplorable results of the non-toleration of open houses of ill fame.
This actually goes on under the eyes of the parents; the mother will introduce you to her daughter, and the little brothers will provide you with a ladder to enter the house with.
The love of the far niente is so strong amongst the Italians that labour, when it can be obtained, is odious to them. “La travailleuse,” says M. Jacquot, “chaude encore des baisers adultères sera bien reçue dans l’alcôve conjugale, si elle apporte un bon pécule au bout de la semaine;” and he adds with indignation, “for a long time I refused to believe in the existence of such ignominy, to-day I am only too well convinced.”
An honest woman will on no account be seen in the streets after dark, and a servant will not go into the city from the suburbs after the day has disappeared.
The city of Rome contains 150,000 people; and nourishes, lodges, and takes care of more than 4000 poor people, infirm people, old people, orphans, foundlings, etc., without reckoning assistance given at their own houses to those who require it. There are different hospitals too: the Trinity of the Pelerins, the deaf and dumb asylum, the madhouse, etc. Nearly 22,000 necessitous are relieved every year. The hospital of St. Roch gives admittance to women with child without asking their name or condition, without inquiring whether or not they are married. Women in a good position, who wish to conceal the fruits of a culpable amour, can receive every attention by paying 3 scudi (or about 4s. 6d. of our money) a month. The child is taken to the Pia casa di Santo-Spirito. Both men and women when discharged from hospital are so weak that they cannot pursue their avocations. When this is the case they are received into the refuge for convalescents, called the Trinity of the Pelerins, that we have had occasion to refer to before. This hospital has received six hundred thousand inmates since the year 1625.
As things are at present constituted at Rome there is little more to be said respecting it, but we cannot conclude without expressing our admiration of the numerous charitable establishments that one finds there. Every infirmity is cared for with no sparing hand, and the defenceless and the destitute are not deserted by the state and the charity of private individuals.