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.