The History of Prostitution: Its Extent, Causes, and Effects throughout the World

by William W. Sanger

As a counterpoise to these opinions of Lord Byron, it is but fair to give that of M. Valery, a traveler whose personal opportunities may have been less than in the case of the noble poet: “The morals of the Italian cities, which we still judge of from the commonplace reports of travelers of the last century, are now neither better nor worse than those of other capitals; perhaps at Naples they are even better.”

The Countess Pepoli, a lady of patriotic and literary family, has written an able educational manual, in which she claims consideration for the number of “good and virtuous women” in Italy, whose existence is ignored by the prejudiced writers of extravagant diatribes. But we are afraid that the very exception, and the pains she takes to prove the temptations to which the married woman is exposed, only affirm the truth of the general charge.

Whatever allegations of veracious or exaggerated unchastity or immorality may be made against the Italians, they are generally to be laid at the door of the aristocracy and upper classes. Among the humbler Italians, the peasantry and the country poor, there is no ground for ascribing to them either greater idleness or worse morals than are to be found in other parts of Europe.

Foundling hospitals are to be met with in most great cities of Continental Europe. Among Protestants, a strong prejudice exists against these institutions. That they prevent infanticide is self-evident. Their operation as an encouragement of illicit intercourse can not be estimated without some minute inquiries into the illegitimacy of places which encourage them, and of others which are without them.

The proportion of children in the foundling hospitals of Italy is certainly large, but it is believed, on good grounds, that a considerable number of them are legitimate, and are abandoned by their parents on account of their poverty. Of the really illegitimate, there are no means of saying with accuracy (nor, as far as we know, have any attempts been made to do so) to what class of society the infants belong. Meanwhile, although there is no ground for assuming a larger proportion of illegitimate children than in northern climates, on the other hand, the publicly displayed prostitution of Italy is infinitely less.

Naples has a population of about four hundred thousand. Of fifteen thousand births there are two thousand foundlings; we can not say illegitimates, for, owing to the reasons already specified, there are no means of ascertaining the facts.

In Tuscany, in 1834, there were twelve thousand foundlings received into the various hospitals.

The Hospital of the Santo Spirito at Rome is a foundling asylum with a revenue of about fifty thousand dollars per annum.

About one in sixteen of these children is claimed by its parents; the majority are cared for, during infancy and childhood, either in the hospitals or with the neighboring peasantry, with whom they are boarded at a small stipend. When of sufficient age they are dismissed to work for themselves; but in many of the hospitals they have some claim in after-life on occasions of sickness or distress.

We have already alluded to the wide differences of national character in the various political divisions of Italy. The vices of laziness, mendicancy, and their kindred failings of licentiousness and unchastity are chiefly confined to the towns, large and small.[231] The peasantry of Naples and of the Papal States are industrious, temperate; and the peasant women, even those who, from the vicinity of Rome, frequent the studios of the artists as models, are generally of unexceptionable character.[232] The mountaineers of the Abruzzi, long infamous as banditti (a stigma affixed by the French or other dominant powers on those who resisted their rule), in harvest-time brave the deadly malaria of the Campagna to earn a few liri honestly for their starving children, although in so doing the many that never return to their mountain homes show the risks that all have run. The corn, wine, and oil raised in Italy, the well-supplied markets of Rome and other cities, are evidence that the peasantry do not all eat the bread of idleness. The Papal States contain some of the finest, richest, and best cultivated provinces in Italy.[233] It is in the towns we must look for the worst results of misgovernment and bad example.