The Sun.
London, England, 1860-10-08 00:00:00

NAPLES,

TO THE EDITOR OP THE SUN.

Sir,—ln the year 1851 Mr. Gladstone addressed
two letters to Lord Aberdeen upon the state of the
prisons of Naples, and on the manner in which po-
litical prisons were treated at that period. The
revelations contained in the letters were so startling
and so full of horrors that those who had neither
visited this country, nor made themselves ac-
quainted, even superficially, with the administra-
tion of justice, could hardly credit the statements
which they perused. But the letters have passed
through 14 editions, and the material facts con-
tained in them remain uncontradicted. It is true
that some months after they appeared the Neapoli-
tan Government of that day published an answer.
But the answer did not deny the principal allega-
tions of the grossest cruelty and the most foul in-
justice which had been perpetrated under the rule
of King Ferdinand. It evaded the real question at
issue, and dwelt upon some slight inaccuracies in
regard to details, without attempting to refute or
to explain the glaring enormities and moat horrible
facts contained in those famous letters. Since that
period various communications on the condition of
the prisons in those States have been made to you
by your correspondent here, and last spring an in-
teresting account of the prisons in Sicily was for-
warded to you from the same source. As soon as it
appeared the admirers of "the mild and beneficent
Government" of the Roman States and the Neapo-
litan kingdom endeavoured to induce the public
to believe that the statements contained in that
account were incorrect. These endeavours were
however, silenced by the very clear and circum-
stantial description given by a clergyman of what
he had himself seen, and to which declaration
he affixed his signature. I have not seen the pri-
sons so described—with the thermometer varying
from 85 to 90 deg. in the shade, and a prevailing
and most depressing sirocco. I have not visited
Sicily ; but a few days ago, on going over some of
the prisons here, I happened to converse with an
official who had been employed at the Silician prison
described by your clerical correspondent, and he
corroborated all that was so graphically portrayed,
and exclaimed, " Ali Signore, quello era veramente
l'lnferno ; questo, in paragone, e Paradiso !" On
being pressed he gave an account of the atrocities,
surpassing those set forth in Mr. Gladstone's letters,
and spoke with an evident feeling of horror of the
scenes he had been compelled to witness.
Having obtained the necessary order, and accom-
panied by some English gentlemen staying in
Naples, I visited a few days ago the cells of the
Prefettura, the prison of the Santa Maria Appa-
rente, and the dungeons of the Castle of St. Elmo,
and I will now proceed to give you some account
of that which the official, to whom I have already
referred, set down as Paradise in contradistinction
to the prisons of Sicily, which he described as Hell.
But he spoke of these prisons as a comparative
Paradise when they were filled with prisoners—when
those unhappy men were the subjects of persecu-
tion, when the law was set at nought, when men on
the merest suspicion of an officer of police were
plunged into prison, and dragged out their miser-
able existence chained together in couples, perhaps
for years, and denied the trial which the constitution
provided. It is a well known fact that innocent men
have been kept for months and years in filthy cells,
chained, perhaps, to a criminal from whom they
were not separated for any purposes. But this I was
told was " Paradise" in comparison to Sicily. The
first place we visited was the Prefettura. This
large building is entered under an archway which
leads to a square court, round which are various
offices; among them are the printing-presses of the
official papers, &c. Having passed through the arch-
way and crossed the central court, we were taken to
a low archway, exactly opposite that under which
we had entered the Prefettura. An officer preceded
up with a lamp and unlocked a door beyond and on
the right of the low archway. We were then
shown into a dark room. We ordered the door to
be closed, and the light was very imperfectly seen
through an iron grating over the door. The room
was about 12 feet square. We were assured that

it had been cleaned out some time ago, but the smell
was very bad. At the end of this room was a door,
which, on being unlocked, was found to open into
another cell. Into this place no light or air could
enter. It was about 10 feet wide by about 16
long; near the door it might be 9 or 10 feet high.
But a few feet from the door the roof sloped down-
wards until it nearly touched the floor. These two
rooms may be called the " lock•up" of the Prefet-
tura. They were used to receive persons of all kinds
who were taken up on suspicion, and who were
lodged there previous to their depositions being
taken. These rooms were seldom cleaned, and were
described as reeking with filth and every sort of
abomination when they were occupied, and they
were used for purposes too disgusting to describe
and too horrible to contemplate. In these rooms
persons were placed on bare suspicion, and there
they were detained for eight or teri days, or more,
at the arbitrary will of the authorities under whose
orders they were arrested ! After leaving these
cells and recrossing the courtyard we were con-
ducted to another room. We passed under an
arch into a sort of vestibule, on each side of
which there appeared to be places for the use of
soldiers and others, with little light, and without
doors or any current of air, or apparently any drain,
for the filth was running over the pavement and
the stench dreadful. Beyond these horrible places,
which we passed on our right and left, there ap-
peared in the wall a door which the officer un-
locked ; we were then shown into a room about 20
feet square, without any light or air, and in which
the stench was so bad that not one of the party
could remain in the room for literally one minute,
and yet this room had been cleaned out and is not
now in use. What must have been its condition
when the tyrannies practised by the late King
were in full operation !

But in this room were placed persons of all de-
grees, suspected of political or other offences. They
were left there for days without any trial or any
inquiry, and we were informed by one of the offi-
cers that instances had been known of persons so
incarcerated who, when taken out at the expiration
of eight or 10 days, had been partially devoured by
the rats, which swarm in this charnel-house. It is
marvellous how any human beings could have ex-
isted in such a place for even a single day, without
light or air, with the filth of the prisoners on the
floor increased by that which flowed under the
doorway from the places to which I have alluded. I
have already stated that not one of our party could
remain in this cell for a minute, but we were as-
sured that when we visited the place the stench
was as nothing to what it was when in use. Such
is the state of the " lockup" of the Prefettura.
We then proceeded in carriages to Santa Maria
Apparente. This large pile of buildings originally
formed one of the monasteries of the city, and it is
said that no less than 180 monasteries and convents
yet remain. The church of Santa Maria is high
above the principal part of the town ; at the back
of the church is the ancient monastery. It is en-
tered by a great gate, and on the left of the en-
trance
irce m , with very easy " risers" for
steps,
the former slothful inhabitants
of the monastery. After ascending about 100 of
these steps there is a grated iron door, denoting
clearly file modern purposes to which the building
wellis the
s u e i
tteed.to
has been applied. After mounting about 70 more
steps there is another of these doors, and then ano-
ther which opens upon a long gallery used formerly
by the monks, and on the south side of which are
the rooms occupied previously by the members of
the brotherhood, and more recently by the victims
of the late Ruler of the Two Similes. These rooms
are about 14 feet long by 12 wide. They have each
a large window, from which there is a splendid
view of the Bay, and facing south. But this view