The life and correspondence of Sir Anthony Panizzi, K.C.B., Vol. 2 (of 2): Late principal librarian of the British museum, senator of Italy, etc.Fagan, Louis
History
The life and correspondence of Sir Anthony Panizzi, K.C.B., Vol. 2 (of 2): Late principal librarian of the British museum, senator of Italy, etc.
Fagan, Louis
Panizzi, Anthony, Sir, 1797-1879
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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