“All is arranged for to-day.

Feilding.”

Before visiting the “Vicaria,” he was careful to draw up a most elaborate précis of all the questions to be asked of officials, all portions of the prison worthy of note, and all such points of information as should render his inspection as thorough as possible.

To give, in our own words, an account of this visit would be too long for these pages, but Panizzi, on the following day that he inspected the prison, wrote down a few brief observations, in conjunction with Lord Feilding (November 20th, 1851):—

“The general impression on our minds was most unfavourable. The mixing together of criminals of every description (homicides excepted) without distinction, the total want of occupation for the prisoners, with the exception of about thirty shoemakers who worked in two cells apart, and the fact that prisoners before trial and prisoners after trial are huddled indiscriminately together, are facts which speak for themselves, as to the total unfitness of the Neapolitan prison discipline for the reformation of the offender. A criminal, when he has undergone his term of imprisonment here, must come out infinitely more savage and demoralized than when he went in. Humanity, policy, and religion call loudly for a reform in these sinks of horror.”

The following is Panizzi’s report:—“Yesterday, Wednesday, the 19th of November, 1851, I accompanied Lord Feilding to see the prisons of the “Vicaria.” We got permission through Father Costa, a Jesuit, who came with us, with another father whose name I never heard; the Chief Gaoler and the Inspector of the Police went with us through the gaol. We entered it at a quarter past two o’clock, and left it at three minutes past four by my watch.

“Near the stairs by which we entered there are prisons looking into the quadrangle of the “Vicaria.” As two of the judges, as we were told they were, came downstairs to get into their carriage, the shutters of the prison nearest the bottom of the stairs were closed, and opened immediately after the carriage had driven off.

“Having got upstairs, we entered a small room in which a person sat keeping some register or other, and were immediately ushered into a smaller room, where an inspector sat. On the table we found three different sorts of bread—i.e., common bread, bread for the sick, and bread which is given to the prisoners in the evening. The whole of this bread was good of its kind; the only objection to the evening bread might be its being heavy.

“We entered the first Camerone dei Nobili, which has only one window at the end of it. It is a long, vaulted, low room, very dull, and the atmosphere of which I should call very bad, had we not experienced worse. Off this room, on the left, are six smaller rooms, communicating with the Camerone by doors, some of them closing with railings, and others with oak shutters. In these rooms are kept such prisoners as can afford to pay for better accommodation—that is a small bed, instead of the common beds of the “Camerone.” The air of these rooms was better, because, by leaving the windows open, a thorough draft was created through them. But the air was cold and damp; there was no means of excluding the air and cold. Except in one or two of these rooms there was a paper window instead of glass; in the other there was nothing. So that you must either have the cold from without, or close the enormous oak shutters, and exclude both air and light, not only from each of these rooms themselves, but from the Camerone, which, to a certain extent, receives both, particularly air, from them. The atmosphere at night, when all those windows are closed, must be intolerable; and I am firmly persuaded that, were it not that the shutters are opened to try the soundness of the double row of iron bars by which each window is secured, the inmates would be smothered. These bars are tried five times during the night. Of course, every time this operation takes place, the inmates are roused from their sleep or slumber, and whilst the shutters are open a chilling draft must be created.

“In the Camerone sleep 120 persons.