Courts, Criminals and the Camorra

by Arthur Cheney Train

“The Camorra truly exists at Naples, and signifies violence and absolutism. Formerly it had severe laws and iron regulations, and all the gains derived from criminal undertakings were divided among all the leaders. There was blind, absolute obedience to the chiefs. In a word, the Camorra was a state within a state.

“To-day this collectivism, this blind obedience, exists no longer. All the Camorrists respect one another but they act every man for himself.

“The Camorra exerts its energies in divers ways. The first rung in the Camorrist ladder is the exploitation of one or more women; the second, the horsefair sales and public auctions of pawned goods. The Camorrists go to these latter with the special object of frightening away all would-be non-Camorrist buyers. Usury constitutes another special source of lucre, and at Naples is exercised on a very large scale. The Camorrist begins by lending a sum of five francs, at one franc per week interest, in such fashion that the gain grows a hundredfold, so that the Camorrist who began with five-franc loans is able to lend enormous sums to noblemen in need of funds. For instance, the Camorrist loans ten thousand lire, but exacts a receipt for twenty thousand lire, and gives goods in place of money, these goods being subsequently bought back at low prices by the selfsame usurers. Another great industry of the Neapolitan Camorra is the receipt of stolen goods; practically all the receivers of such in Naples are members of the Camorra.”

Governor Abbate, who for thirty years past has been chief warder of the prisons at Pozzuoli near Naples (the ancient Puteoli at which St. Paul sojourned for seven days on his way to Rome), gave evidence before the Viterbo Assize on June 13, 1911:

“In the course of my thirty years’ experience I have had the worst scum of the Neapolitan Camorra pass through my hands. I have never met a gentleman nor an individual capable of speaking the truth among them. I have never been without a contingent of Camorrists in my prison. I always follow the system adopted in most other Italian prisons of putting all the Camorrist prisoners together in a pack by themselves. When new inmates come, they spontaneously declare if they be Camorrists, just as one might state his nationality or his religion. I group them accordingly with the rest of their fellows. They know they will be so treated; and unless we follow this system a perfect inferno of terrorism ensues. The Camorrists seize the victuals, the clothes and underwear of the non-Camorrist inmates, whom, in fact, they despoil in every way imaginable.

“I come to learn the grades of my Camorrist prisoners inasmuch as Camorrists, probationers, freshmen, and the rank and file, show studious obedience to their seniors and chiefs, whom they salute with the title of ‘master.’”

The Camorrist, in addition to exploiting women, still levies toll on boatmen, waiters, cab-drivers, fruit-sellers, and porters, and, under guise of protecting the householder from the Camorrists, extorts each week small sums from the ordinary citizen. The meanest work of these “mean thieves” is the robbing of emigrants about to embark, from whom they steal clothing and money and even the pitiful little packages of food they have provided for the voyage.

A grade higher (or lower) are the gangs of burglars or thieves whose work is directed and planned, and the tools and means for which are furnished by a padrone or basista. These will also do a job of stabbing and face-slashing at cut rates or for nothing to oblige a real friend of the “Beautifully Reformed Society.”

More elevated in the social scale is the type of Professor Rapi or Signor de Marinis, the Camorrista elegante, who on the fringe of society watches his chance to blackmail a society woman, “arrange” various private sexual matters for some nobleman, or cheat a drunken aristocrat at the gaming-tables.

Last, there is the traffic in the elections, which has been so advantageous to the government in the not distant past that its ostentatious attempts to drive out the Camorra, made in response to public demand, have usually been half-hearted, if not blatantly insincere.