THE POOR IN NAPLES
By JESSIE WHITE VA. MAEIO,

AUTHOR OF GOVERNMENT REPORTS ON THE ITALIAN POOR

HoKRiBLE Condition op the Naples Poor a Quarter op a Century Ago—-
Pasquale Villari's Investigations—The Dwellings—Efforts at Im¬
provement—The Rampa di Brancaccio—The Cemetery for the Poor—
The Cholera op 1884—Volunteer Nurses—King Humbert's Visit and
Reforms—The Sanitary Conditions—"Naples Must be Disembowelled"
—Efforts of the Municipality—The Evicted Poor—The New Build¬
ings—Needs of the City—The Hospitals—Emigration.

THE old saying Vedi Napoli poi 7norir maybe translated ^'See
misery in Naples to learn what misery means "—to realize
what amount of hunger, nakedness, vice, ignorance, supersti¬
tion, and oppression can be condensed in the caves, dens, and ken¬
nels, unfit for beasts, inhabited by the poor of Naples. In 1871 it
was affirmed by the " authorities " that, of the entire population of
the city, two-thirds had no recognized means of livelihood ; no one
knew how more than a quarter of a million human beings lived,,
still less w^here they passed their lives of privation, pain, and
wretchedness; or how, when death ended all, their bodies Avere
flung dow^n to rot together in foul charnel holes, far away and apart
from the holy ground where the upper third were laid to rest that—

" From their ashes may be made
The violets of their native land."

Five years later, in 1876, when misery, gaunt and stark, reared
its head for the first time defiantly in every city, town, and village