THE YEAR WAS 1839

Pontone di Scala

... and the place was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Spanish Bourbon King Ferdinand II was on the throne and, on the whole, life was good - relatively speaking. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was no tin-pot, backwater state. The state of the kingdom was described in some detail by John Goodwin Esq. (Her Majesty's Consul for Sicily) in an article that he wrote in 1842 for the Journal of the Statistical Society of London.

The kingdom's population of about 8,000,000 had increased from approximately 5,000,000 some 100 years earlier and was defended by a standing peace-time army of 42,394 and a navy of 19 sail vessels, 3 steamers and 30 gunboats.

The kingdom traded (importing and exporting) with the Mediterranean countries, Great Britain and France (and their colonies), South America, Northern Europe, the Baltic states and, of course, the USA. Exports leaving the city of Naples alone in 1840 were worth £162,590 (£27,015,219 in today's money). Imports into the City of Naples in the same year were worth a staggering £1,526,845 (£67,333,864).

Its merchant fleet had gone from a total fleet of 8,000 tons in 1824 to 150,634 tons in 1837 (7,800 vessels). Goodwin notes that "[t]he Neapolitan and Sicilian masters, if less hardy and daring than the British, are more careful of their vessels and cargoes, upon which account they are often preferred by fruit merchants and others for voyages from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom and the north of Europe."

The "chief products of husbandry", says Goodwin, are corn, wine, oil, cotton, flax, hemp liquorice-paste, silk and wool. The territory of Naples produced something in the region of 25,200,000 gallons of wine and 819,000 gallons of brandy. It exported 35,000 tons of oil a year, and about 500,000 tons of raw silk. Exports of wine from Sicily (predominantly Marsala) in 1838 amounted to some 3,150,000 gallons.

The "chief manufactures" are woolens, leather, silks, cottons, paper, soap, glass, earthenware, steel and iron. Exports included 120,000 lbs of organzine and sewing silk a year.

The territory of Naples annual iron production was in the region of 500 tons of pig iron and 1,500 tons of malleable iron - the best being produced, according to Goodwin, at the Satriano foundries in Calabria. The export of sulphur from Sicily had reached something like 75,000 tons a year by 1838.

In October 1839, the kingdom opened its first railway line from Naples to Portici and Goodwin notes that "... carriage roads have been constructed in all parts of the realm ...".

What's more, by 1842 when Goodwin wrote his article, there was also something approaching a system of universal education for both boys and girls.

Goodwin's conclusion on the effect of the Bourbon monarchs on the state of the kingdom are that "[i]f we examine what effect these changes have produced upon the condition of the people, we shall find that have in part wrought evil, but good upon the whole. If the result has been unfortunate in the release of the court from popular control both in Naples and in Sicily, it has in all other respects been happy. The nation is no longer divided into demesnal and feudal populations, but constitutes one people. The commons are no longer subject to nobles and churchmen, but are governed by a single ruler. Justice, no more dealt out by baronial dependents, is administered by the king's judges. Privileged order have ceased to exist, and civic equality prevails in full force. Voluminous states are compressed into a single code. The burthen of taxation, once thrown upon the middle orders, is now shared equally by all classes of society. We may therefore assert that the condition of the people is materially improved, and that the improvement bids fair to proceed, if it be accompanied by an amendment of the executive power, according to which its progress will be faster or slower."

It was in this world on the 27th day of March in the year of our Lord 1839 that Luigi Criscuolo and his wife Brigida celebrated the birth of their son Pasquale in the province of Principato Citra, in the District of Salerno, in the Comune of Scala in the Frazione of Pontone.

The principal source (actually, it's the only source) for the story I am about to relate is a book published in 1904 called "La Prima Repubblica Marinara d'Italia - Amalfi", written by a gentleman called Umberto Moretti.

In what is described as 'il capitolo unico' (the only chapter) in the section headed 'Notes on Industry and Commerce' Moretti discusses the traditional industries of the area (both manufacture and agriculture). Unfortunately for me, much of his chronological referencing is obscure. It was clearly understood by his readers and I have sought the assistance of Google on more than one occasion but not always with any notable success.

His first stop is with the fishing industry which brought in, among other things, coral, tuna, mackerel and swordfish which were sold in the markets in Naples and Salerno. Coral fishing in Amalfi, however, had died in the 16th century and was, at the time when Moretti was writing, restricted to Torre del Greco (it is still one of the principal tourist souvenirs in the shops along the coast).

The agricultural muscle of the area (involving a third of the local population earning about 1.5 Lira a day per man - it's pretty much meaningless to me too and I can't find anything on the internet to convert it into a modern equivalent) is dedicated principally to the lemon groves (and still is it has to be said) and that is closely followed by the grape (God bless the grape) although Moretti notes that much of the land given over to vines was being 'converted' (if that's the right word) to lemon groves on account of the fact that the latter is, apparently, more productive than the former which presumably means that lemons were more profitable.

Much of the grape grown in Amalfi is sent to Naples where it finds its way to the table. The rest is used to produce "light wines of excellent quality" much of which is exported under the name Capri Bianco. The area also produced sufficient pulses and potatoes for the needs of the local population but no more than enough.

Moretti next turns to mourn the fact that "... the art of extracting the essential oil of the rose and producing that pleasant perfume ... sought by medieval gentlemen for its fragrant qualities." for which Amalfi was once a centre of excellence had entirely disappeared - the rose beds making way for lemon groves. Rose water was, apparently, demanded of tenants by their landlords by way of rent and the last recorded case was to be found in a tenancy agreement dated 1824.

The Amalfi silk industry, run predominantly by Jews, which had prospered, particularly in Amalfi, Ravello, Scala and Agerola, was short lived and it faded and finally died when, in the early 16th century Garcia Alvarez de Toledo, 4th Marquis of Villafranca del Bierzo and Viceroy of Naples chased the Jews from the area. Another case of commercial good sense being suppressed by religious zeal.

It was replaced by a wool industry when Alfonso the Magnanimous (what a wonderful epithet) introduced merino sheep into the area. Wool mills sprang up in Amalfi, Scala, Ravello and, above all, in Atrani. This wool found its way onto the markets of Calabria, Sicily, Sardinia, Capua, Benevento, Naples, Foggia and Melfi. As appears to be the way of things in Amalfi, however, this endeavour too met its end when the wool mills were converted to flour mills. Once again Moretti is left to mourn the disappearance of a promising and productive industry.

Moving on to the manufacturing efforts of the good burgers of Amalfi and the surrounding area, we are taken to the paper mills. Amalfi was, and is, famous for its paper. It boasted, and boasts, that it started producing paper in 1276 and Moretti states confidently that, in 1861, there were 38 paper mills in the town employing 270 workers, producing 2,000,000 kilos of paper and bringing in Lit 145,000 per annum. In 1904 Moretti counted no more than 15 mills employing 80 workers. One of these mills, a very significant edifice, can still be found hidden in the woods behind the town, its machinery mute. Cobwebbed. Sad.

Next on the list of things to do in Amalfi is the work in the pasta factories (I use the term factory loosely because it has modern connotations that are misplaced). Moretti describes it as the principal industry in Amalfi which continues to survive not because it has been able to modernize and keep up with the rest of the industry but because the workers are very poorly paid. Nevertheless, employing 1,800 workers, it produces 2,000,000 kilos of pasta a year worth Lit 800,000.

He finishes his journey through the forms of gainful employment available to the Amalfitani with a visit to the merchant fleet which, in the days of the Amalfi Marine Republic, had made it very rich indeed. It stretched in the middle ages to every shore of the Mediterranean from the Black Sea to the Western Mediterranean Basin. By the end of the 19th century, it was reduced to the coast of Southern Italy and Sicily. Amalfi's exports (by sea and not necessarily to places outside Italy) included lemons, salted anchovies, pasta, cheese, paper and fresh fruit. Almost nothing was moved by land because of the mountainous nature of the region.

Pasqualina Rispoli & Pasquale Criscuolo

This was the land of my Criscuolos. This was the land in which Pasquale grew up. Life was clearly hard but as John Goodwin Esq. made abundantly clear in his paper on the development of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, things were improving and could be expected to improve further.