Among the perquisites of the Camorrists was the monopoly of gambling. A tax was levied upon every game of morra played,—a favourite amusement with all Neapolitans. It is simplicity itself; one player holds up his doubled fist and throws out one or more fingers and the other guesses the number as they are displayed. If one cries “five” and the number of fingers is three or four, the other player wins. In the prisons the stakes were measures of wine, also supplied by the Camorra, which in this way made money all round. The gains were very substantial when affairs prospered, and as much as £40 or £50 was paid into the society’s treasury every week.
The organisation was extensive and all the prisons were brought into it. How well the system worked was to be seen in a correspondence between the chief Camorrist and one of his subordinate lieutenants in another prison which was shown to Mr. Marc Monnier. These letters, by many different hands, proving that the chief was no scholar and had to depend upon the literary skill of others, dealt largely with the affairs of the society, which issued orders, gave decisions, inflicted punishments, and divided its funds. All the current news was passed on, prison arrivals and departures, new sentences and terms expired. The most remarkable thing was the facility and regularity with which these clandestine letters were passed in and out of the prisons; no doubt the wardens were always at the service of the Camorrists and helped them in every way.
Discipline was strict in the ranks; submission and obedience were rigorously exacted; advancement was slow and painfully earned. The recruit passed a long novitiate. He began in the lowest grade, that of the garzone chi mala vita, “youth of vicious life,” in which he was kicked about by his betters and did any kind of dirty work. Then he rose to be a picciotto, holding a certain position, but still an inferior. He might pass through years of diligent, even dangerous service, and if necessary be put to the severest trial, that of carrying out a murder at the command of the society, when some bloodthirsty vengeance was sought. If nothing of the kind pressed, it was at one time the rule to throw down a copper coin on the ground for the picciotto to pick up while his comrades stabbed at his fingers with the points of their knives. Promotion might be earned by some tremendous act of self-sacrifice, such as that of accepting the blame for a heinous crime committed by some one else. Cases have been known in which the innocent criminal received and endured a very long sentence, even ten or twenty years at the galleys, cheerfully, bearing the burden of another for the great reward of becoming a full member of the society. This probation might be greatly prolonged, but it was worth it to secure the coveted position of the Camorrist entitled to dictate to others, to take his share of the spoils when divided, and to receive the adulation and cringing respect of the lower orders. He was after that eligible to become one of the supreme chiefs, a post of great consequence and of unlimited power. He became in the argot of the society a masto or a capomasto; that is, “master” or “grand-master,”—a personage who ruled over his fellows as a superior being. When an ordinary member met a masto on the street, he was bound to remove his hat and humbly ask for orders.
Every member was addressed as “Si,” the abbreviation of signore. The Society had a rich vocabulary of slang terms. Freddare was “to kill”; il dormenté was “the dead man.” A dagger, as in ancient days, was the misericordi; the tit-tac or bobotta was a revolver; the police were lasagne, so called after a kind of macaroni; l’asparago was a gendarme. The Camorrists were loyal to each other, and any treachery was punished with death. They quarrelled among themselves and were bound to fight with knives and to strike in the chest in serious cases. A Camorrist might cease active work but could never wholly withdraw from the society. They received help in old age; their widows were pensioned and their children provided for.
After the fall of the Bourbons and in the early days of the unification of Italy, when the new régime had not consolidated its power, the Camorra in Naples was more than ever formidable; they controlled such forces and were so strongly bound together that the ordinary laws were of little avail against them. People were afraid to complain when they were robbed, and the police hesitated to pursue the robbers. If any were taken red-handed and the case was clear against them, the judges often dared not convict or sentence them. It was some time before the energetic measures taken by the government were of any avail, for even when numerous arrests had been made, there was a definite danger in collecting these terrible creatures in the same gaol. The leading Camorrists in those days were miscreants foremost in the committal of every kind of crime; they were thieves, brigands and murderers, and the careers of one or two of the worst may be quoted in support of this statement.
A prominent personage, leader and king, was Salvatore Crescenzo, who first entered the Vicaria in 1849, where he continued his violent misdeeds by wounding one fellow prisoner and killing another. After regaining his freedom in 1855, he returned to the active business of a Camorrist, was again captured and sent to gaol, but this time at a distance from Naples. After his next release, he took to politics and was for a time a member of the revolutionary police under Liborio Romano, but this was not in his line, and he again joined the Camorra and ended his life in the island of Ponza.
A long list might be made out of men of the same type.
It might be supposed that the baleful tyranny of the Camorra, which was an undoubted fact, based upon undeniable evidence, had now disappeared from the Italian prisons. Yet, according to the best authority, the society still flourishes in the south and especially in the convict colonies established in the various islands of the kingdom. A writer in the “Archivo di Psichiatria,” Signor Pucci, states positively from his personal knowledge that the Camorra is still ferociously active. It is absolute master in every colony. Although by no means numerically strong, by its admirable and unscrupulous organisation it still rules despotically, despises laws and regulations and sets the authority of all prison officials at defiance. Brutal violence may not be often practised as of old, but the society still extorts blackmail from the rest of the colonists, adopting nefarious methods of obtaining money. One is by the tax on gambling—the Italian, bond or free, is always eager to gamble; another is by the most extortionate usury at twenty or thirty per cent.; a third is by forcibly impounding the earnings of those who work. When new arrivals appear in the colony, if they have money or decent clothes they are made drunk and then robbed. The first sight, says Signor Pucci, that strikes the visitor is that of a number of lazy, truculent ruffians lounging idly in the sun or strolling and loafing about the yards and passages. These are the Camorrists; they are too lazy to lift a finger to shut a door; but on Sundays they appear in smart clothes, wearing watches and chains, the proceeds of their extortion. As these coatti “ex-convict colonists,” are mostly criminal men, it is easy to understand how soon this corrupting association drags them down. The authorities are powerless to protect them or to control the infamous practices of the Camorra. This is alleged to be the cardinal defect of the colonies and those who know declare that wherever Italians of the dangerous class congregate together in their freedom, the Camorra will always exercise its baneful control.
The influence of this criminal society has extended to all classes, and especially has it made itself felt in the municipal life of Naples, which might well be termed rotten to the core. No determined effort to strike at this plague spot and eradicate this crying evil met with any success before the royal order for inquiry into the condition of municipal government was issued in 1900, when the most astonishing facts were brought to light.
The origin of the Mafia, which flourishes chiefly in Sicily is lost. Probably it arose centuries ago as a means of self-protection among the residents of that unhappy island which has been the pawn of so many rulers. Though little is definitely known of it, apparently the society is as powerful in the twentieth century as in the eighteenth or the nineteenth.