Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-vpsfw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T19:30:37.807Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The police and the urban ‘dangerous classes’: the culture and practice of public law and order in Milan after national unity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 June 2015

SIMONA MORI
SIMONA MORI*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli studi di Bergamo, via Pignolo 123, 24121 Bergamo, Italy
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

The city of Milan during the second half of the nineteenth century is the field of observation for this study, which focuses on urban policing and social control in a situation that ultimately caused problems for the whole country. The case of Milan, which has not received enough attention in this regard, is particularly interesting, given its status as the northern metropolis. It was the second largest population centre in Italy and the most important economic one, a leader in the late struggle for political independence and an opponent at that time of the centralizing policies of the nation-state.1

Type
Special section on policing and urban crisis
Information
Urban History , Volume 43 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 266 - 284
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 For general reference, Davis, J.A., ‘Economy, society and the state’, in Davis, J.A. (ed.), Italy in the Nineteenth Century 1796–1900 (Cambridge, 2000), 235–63 (at 240)Google Scholar; on the relationship with the central political power, Meriggi, M., ‘Lo “stato di Milano” nell’Italia unita: miti e strategie politiche di una società civile (1860–1945)’, in Bigazzi, D. and Meriggi, M. (eds.), Storia d’Italia. Le regioni dall’Unità a oggi, La Lombardia (Turin, 2001), 7–49Google Scholar.

2 Cammarano, F., Storia dell’Italia liberale (Laterza, 2011)Google Scholar, 61ff. Davis, J.A., Conflict and Control. Law and Order in Nineteenth-Century Italy (London, 1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, still offers a helpful overview (see 212ff).

3 Martucci, R., Emergenza e tutela dell’ordine pubblico nell’Italia liberale (Bologna, 1980)Google Scholar.

4 Marucco, D., Mutualismo e sistema politico: il caso italiano, 1862–1904 (Milan, 1981), 157–64Google Scholar.

5 As noted by Giorio, F., Ricordi di questura (Milan, 1882)Google Scholar. A series of reports for the years 1861–89, though not complete, is in Archivio di Stato di Milano (ASMi), Questura – Gabinetto (QG), folder (f.) 105 and f. 106. On this type of source, see Berselli, A., ‘Amministrazione e ordine pubblico dopo l’Unità’, in Amministrazione della giustizia e poteri di polizia dagli stati preunitari alla caduta della destra (Rome, 1986), 167–213Google Scholar (at 176), with a useful introduction to the history of the Italian police in the mid-nineteenth century.

6 Francia, E., ‘Polizia e opinione pubblica in Toscana nel Quarantotto’, in Macry, P. (ed.), Quando crolla lo Stato. Studi sull’Italia preunitaria (Naples, 2003), 141–77Google Scholar.

7 Hughes, S.C., ‘La continuità del personale di polizia negli anni dell’unificazione italiana’, Clio, 26 (1990), 337–61Google Scholar.

8 Marius, La pubblica sicurezza in Italia (Milan, [1896?]), 39, 43.

9 Sbriccoli, M., ‘Caratteri originari e tratti permanenti del sistema penale italiano (1860–1990)’, in Violante, L. (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Annali XIV: Legge Diritto Giustizia (Turin, 1998), 487–551 (at 487)Google Scholar.

10 See for all Davis, Conflict and Control.

11 On this problem, Amato, G., Individuo e autorità nella disciplina della libertà personale (Milan, 1967)Google Scholar, from a legal point of view.

12 Colloca, C., ‘La polisemia del concetto di crisi: società, culture, scenari urbani’, Societàmutamentopolitica, 1 (2010), 19–39Google Scholar. For an opposite opinion, see Starn, R., ‘Historians and crisis’, Past and Present, 52 (1971), 3–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a careful historical review of the concept, see Koselleck, R., ‘Crisis’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 67 (2006), 357–400CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Meriggi, M., Breve storia dell’Italia settentrionale dall’Ottocento a oggi (Rome, 1996), 31Google Scholar.

14 Mori, S., ‘Dal dissenso politico ai conflitti del lavoro: la Questura di Milano dopo l’annessione al Regno di Sardegna (1859–1867)’, in Antonielli, L. (ed.), Gli spazi della polizia. Un’indagine sul definirsi degli oggetti di interesse poliziesco (Soveria Mannelli, 2013), 179–96Google Scholar.

15 Marucco, Mutualismo e sistema politico, 158.

16 Mori, ‘Dal dissenso politico’.

17 Inspector's report on the Borgo Ortolani, 24 Oct. 1861 (ASMi, QG, f. 105).

18 Inspector Locatelli's report on Section IV, 1 Jan. 1866; Inspector Baglioni's report on Section IV, 29 Mar. 1874; Quaestor Cossa's general report, 1 Jul. 1879. All in ASMi, QG, f. 105.

19 Inspector Baglioni, 29 Mar. 1874 (ibid.).

20 General report, 1 Jul. 1879 (ibid.).

21 Hunecke, V., Classe operaia e rivoluzione industriale a Milano 1859–1892 (Bologna, 1982), 394Google Scholar.

22 Marucco, Mutualismo e sistema politico, 74.

23 Mori, ‘Dal dissenso politico’.

24 Hunecke, Classe operaia, 368.

25 On Milanese primacy, Dalmasso, E., Milano capitale economica d’Italia (Milan, 1972)Google Scholar; Rosa, G., Il mito della capitale morale. Letteratura e pubblicistica a Milano fra Otto e Novecento (Milan, 1982)Google Scholar.

26 De Maddalena, A., L’industria milanese dalla restaurazione austriaca alla vigilia dell’unificazione nelle rilevazioni della Camera di Commercio di Milano (Milan, 1957)Google Scholar; Sapori, A., ‘L’economia milanese dal 1860 al 1915’, in Storia di Milano, vol. XV: Nell’unità italiana (1859–1900) (Milan, 1962), 857–938Google Scholar; Hunecke, Classe operaia; Peruta, F. Della, Milano. Lavoro e fabbrica 1815–1914 (Milan, 1987)Google Scholar; Bigatti, G., La città operosa. Milano nell’Ottocento (Milan, 2000), 177Google Scholar; Davis, ‘Economy’, 240, 253.

27 Cantarella, E., ‘Introduzione’, in Corio, L., Milano in ombra (abissi plebei) (Milan, 1982), XI–XLIVGoogle Scholar (at XXV); Colombo, E., Come si governava Milano. Politiche pubbliche nel secondo Ottocento (Milan, 2005), 19, 313Google Scholar.

28 Bigatti, La città operosa, 169, 178.

29 Decleva, E., ‘Milano industriale e l’esposizione del 1881’, in Decleva, E. (ed.), L’Italia industriale nel 1881 (Milan, 1984), XV–LXXIX (at XXXII)Google Scholar.

30 Rosa, Il mito della capitale morale. Now also Colombo, Come si governava Milano, 123–201.

31 Colombo, G., ‘Milano industriale’, in Mediolanum (Milan, 1881), vol. III, 37–64Google Scholar.

32 Bigatti, La città operosa, 143; Sapori, ‘L’economia milanese’, 866.

33 According to Del Panta, L., Evoluzione demografica e popolamento nell’Italia dell’Ottocento: 1796–1914 (Bologna, 1984), 118Google Scholar, Milan's annual average population growth was 7.9 per 1,000 in the decade 1861–71, 20.1 in 1871–81, 21.1 in the period 1881–1901 and 26.3 in 1901–11. The other two large northern Italian cities, Turin and Genoa, experienced a similar trend, though a little less marked: Bonifazi, C., L’Italia delle migrazioni (Bologna, 2013), 74–5Google Scholar.

34 Population growth in Milan in the period 1872–1901 was 16 per cent due to internal population increase and 84 per cent due to immigration, according to Gallo, S., Senza attraversare le frontiere. Le migrazioni interne dall’Unità a oggi (Rome and Bari, 2012), 60Google Scholar.

35 Del Panta, Evoluzione demografica, 90.

36 A light and shade picture of the previous situation is in Bigatti, La città operosa.

37 Ibid., 174.

38 See generally Bigatti, La città operosa, 146ff.

39 Sapori, ‘L’economia milanese’, 867.

40 Woolf, S., The Poor in Western Europe in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (London and New York, 1986), 58Google Scholar.

41 Garbellotti, M., Per carità. Poveri e politiche asisstenziali nell’Italia moderna (Carocci, 2013)Google Scholar; Woolf, S., ‘The poor and how to relieve them: the Restoration debate on poverty in Italy and Europe’, in Davis, J.A. and Ginsborg, P. (eds.), Society and Politics in the Age of the Risorgimento (Cambridge, 1991), 49–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Davis, Conflict and Control, 244ff.

43 Frégier, H.-A., Des classes dangereuses de la population dans les grandes villes, et des moyens de les rendre meilleures (Brussels, 1840)Google Scholar, was the most cited.

44 Cantarella, ‘Introduzione’, XVII.

45 Corio, Milano in ombra (abissi plebei), first published in 1876 in the magazine La vita nuova; Valera, P., Milano sconosciuta (1879) (Milan, 1967)Google Scholar; Arrighi, C. (ed.), Il ventre di Milano. Fisiologia della capitale morale per cura di una società di letterati, 2 vols. (Milan, 1888)Google Scholar. On the subject of this trend in the literature on crime, see Chevalier, L., Classi lavoratrici e classi pericolose. Parigi nella rivoluzione industriale (Laterza, 1976)Google Scholar, 85ff, and more specifically Pick, D., Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, 1848–c. 1918 (Cambridge, 1989), 20–1, 97CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 Rosa, Il mito della capitale morale, 57ff.

47 Bolis, G., La polizia e le classi pericolose della società (Bologna, 1871)Google Scholar; Locatelli, P., Sorveglianti e sorvegliati. Appunti di fisiologia sociale presi dal vero (Milan, 1876)Google Scholar; Locatelli, P., Miseria e beneficenza. Ricordi di un funzionario di pubblica sicurezza (Milan, 1878)Google Scholar; Alongi, G., Polizia e delinquenza in Italia (Rome, 1886)Google Scholar.

48 Bolis, La polizia, 459 (author's translation).

49 Bonino, M., La polizia italiana nella seconda metà dell’Ottocento. Aspetti culturali e operativi (Rome, 2006)Google Scholar, 91ff, with a thorough commentary on Locatelli's first work.

50 Locatelli, Sorveglianti, 7.

51 Lombroso, C., L’uomo delinquente (Milan, 1876)Google Scholar.

52 Gibson, M., Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (Westport, 2002), XV, XXI, 5Google Scholar.

53 See for example Lombroso, C., Sull’incremento del delitto in Italia e sui mezzi per arrestarlo (Turin, 1879), 2Google Scholar.

54 Villa, R., Il deviante e i suoi segni. Lombroso e la nascita dell’antropologia criminale (Milan, 1985), 210ffGoogle Scholar.

55 Amato, G., ‘La libertà personale’, in Barile, P. (ed.), La tutela del cittadino, vol. II: La pubblica sicurezza (Vicenza, 1967), 51–180 (at 90)Google Scholar.

56 Pick, Faces of degeneration, 115; Frigessi, D., Cesare Lombroso (Turin, 2003), 208Google Scholar.

57 Alongi, Polizia e delinquenza, 32. On the aggressive attitude that seems to have prevailed by the 1880s, see Mori, S., ‘Becoming policemen in nineteenth-century Italy: police gender culture through the lens of professional manuals’, in Barrie, D.G. and Broomhall, S. (eds.), A History of Police and Masculinities, 1700–2010 (London, 2012), 102–22 (at 112–13)Google Scholar.

58 Alongi, Polizia e delinquenza, 39.

59 Direzione Generale della Statistica, Movimento della delinquenza secondo le statistiche degli anni 1873–1883 (Florence, 1886), XLVII–XLVIIIGoogle Scholar. In spite of its limited reliability, counting only charges, this is the main synoptic source for estimating the incidence of criminality at that time (cf. Melossi, D., ‘Andamento economico, incarcerazione, omicidi e allarme sociale in Italia: 1863–1994’, in Violante, L. (ed.), La criminalità. Storia d’Italia. Annali 12 (Turin, 1997), 37–63Google Scholar.

60 Berselli, ‘Amministrazione’, 202.

61 Marcionni, L., La pubblica sicurezza, le ammonizioni e la polizia giudiziaria in Milano (Milan, 1877), 3ffGoogle Scholar.

62 Crimes of aggravated larceny brought yearly before the Milan Court of Appeal (Direzione Generale di Statistica, Movimento della delinquenza, passim): 3192 (1875), 2742 (1876), 1800 (1877), 2223 (1878), 2881 (1879), 2869 (1880), 2500 (1881), 2265 (1882), 2415 (1883), 1844 (1884).

63 Cases of theft brought before the Milan Court of Appeal: 1959, 2366, 2062, 1843, 1885, 1798 (years 1779–84). Resistance to authority: 443, 443, 884, 1304, 854, 1282, 898, 473, 589, 498 (years 1775–84). Robbery: 94, 190, 254, 206, 198, 129, 124, 107, 109, 94 (years 1775–84). Murder: 53, 45, 42, 92, 78, 89, 61, 74, 63, 53 (years 1775–84). Direzione Generale di Statistica, Movimento della delinquenza.

64 Questore Restellli, six-monthly report, 5 Jan. 1880, in ASMi, QG, f. 105. On this image, see G. Consonni and G. Tonon, ‘La terra degli ossimori’, in Bigazzi and Meriggi (eds.), Storia d’Italia. La Lombardia, 114.

65 The Scapigliatura was the Milanese ‘boheme’, an artistic and literary movement that reacted to the prevailing bourgeois culture in the urban contests by the second half of the nineteenth century.

66 Report on City Section IV, 1 Jan. 1884 (ASMi, QG, f. 106).

67 Report on Section VIII, 22 Jan. 1885 (ASMi, QG. f. 106).

68 Ibid.

69 Questore Amour, 1 Jul. 1879 (ASMi, QG, f. 105).

70 Questore Cossa, circular letter, 28 Jan. 1866 (ASMi, QG, f. 83), referring to the Public Security Law Marzo 20, 1865.

71 Public security law, 20 Mar. 1865, n. 2248.

72 Reports on Section VIII, 20 Dec. 1883 (Inspector Vincenzo Paoletti), and on Section V, 12 Jan. 1884 (ASMi, QG, f. 106).

73 Paoletti's cited report, 20 Dec. 1883. See also Paoletti, Vincenzo's memoirs Da Brundisio alle Alpi. Reminiscenze di un ispettore di S.P. (Milan, 1891), 56Google Scholar.

74 Lombroso, Sull’incremento del delitto, 135.

75 Hunecke, Classe operaia, 120.

76 Inspector Formenti on Section II, 12 Jun. 1883; report on Section V, 12 Jan. 1884 (ASMi, QG, f. 106).

77 Ibid.

78 By 1882, most male workers living in the cities had the right to vote (Peruta, F. Della, Società e classi popolari nell’Italia dell’Ottocento (Milan, 2005), 190Google Scholar).

79 Reports 1 Jan. 1883, and 1 Jul. 1883 (ASMi, QG, f. 106).

80 Cossa, 21 Feb. 1866 (ASMi, QG, f. 92); Rastelli, 1 Jan. 1882 (ASMi, QG, f. 106).

81 Cf. for example Amour, 1 Jul. 1879; Santagostino, 1 Dec. 1886, and 31 Dec. 1887 (ASMi, QG, f. 106). For a wider view of Italian police organization in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Davis, Conflict and Control, 244–69; S.C. Hughes, Crime, Disorder and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge, 1994); Tosatti, G., ‘La repressione del dissenso politico tra l’età liberale e il fascismo. L’organizzazione della polizia’, Studi Storici, 1 (1997), 217–55Google Scholar; Bonino, La polizia italiana.

82 See dossier ‘Guardie’, in ASMi, QG, f. 92, particularly report 16 Jan. 1876.

83 Santagostino, 1 Jul. 1883, in ASMi, QG, f. 106.

84 As was the general case in Italy. Cf. Davis, Conflict and Control, 219, 247.

85 These measures were first introduced as exceptional ones and were supposed to prevent crime, but their massive use and the effects they had on the individuals they applied to made them very similar to real punishments. Cf. D. Petrini, ‘Il sistema di prevenzione penale tra controllo sociale ed emarginazione’, in Violante (ed.), Storia d’Italia. Annali 12. La criminalità, 891 ss. (901), and Sbriccoli, ‘Caratteri originari’, 487–9; specifically Fozzi, D., Tra prevenzione e repressione. Il domicilio coatto nell’Italia liberale (Rome, 2011)Google Scholar.

86 Public security law, 20 Mar. 1865, art. 106. About this policy Lacchè, L., La giustizia per i galantuomini: ordine e libertà nell’Italia liberale: il dibattito sul carcere preventivo. 1865–1913 (Milan, 1990), 140–6Google Scholar.

87 Report cited, 20 Dec. 1883.

88 Six-monthly report to the prefect, 5 Jan. 1880, in ASMi, QG, f. 105.

89 Cf. the reports in ASMi, QG, f. 106.

90 Locatelli, 1 Jan. 1866; report 28 Jun. 1874 (ASMi, QG, f. 105); cited report 1 Jan. 1883.

91 Report on Section V, 27 Dec. 1861 (ASMi, QG, f. 105).

92 Cf. the chapter by Valera, Milano sconosciuta, 75, with a portrait of the well-known ‘appuntato’ (policeman) Mazza (‘el scior Dondina’): efficient, but brutal in chasing the city's petty criminals.

93 Giarelli, F., Vent’anni di giornalismo (1868–1888) (Codogno 1896), 226Google Scholar.

94 Il Secolo, issues dated 17 Jan. 1870 and 19 Feb. 1880. Radical ‘Gazzettino rosa’ had already protested in 1870 against police abuses in applying repressive measures not only to marginals, but also to citizens who were being prosecuted only for political reasons (Hunecke, Classe operaia, 365).

95 Giorio, Ricordi di questura, 83. On the same topic, see also Marius, La pubblica sicurezza in Italia, 135, and in recent times, Berselli, ‘Amministrazione’, 177.

96 Giorio, Ricordi di questura, 85. On the negative effects of ammonizione and domicilio coatto, cf. also Lombroso, Sull’incremento del delitto, 64.

97 Report on Section II, 19 Jun. 1883; report on Section III, 20 Jun. 1883; questore's report, 1 Jul. 1883 (ASMi, QG, f. 106).

98 Cited report 20 Dec. 1883; also Paoletti, Da Brundisio alle Alpi, 56 ss. On the Milanese questori and Santagostino in particular, see Giarelli, Vent’anni di giornalismo, 246–52.

99 In fact by the end of the 1880s, the condition of the Milanese police was once again crucial (Davis, Conflict and Control, 267).

100 Giarelli, Vent’anni di giornalismo, 252.

101 Fiorentino, F., Ordine pubblico nell’età giolittiana (Rome, 1978), 30Google Scholar; Tosatti, ‘La repressione del dissenso politico’, 226; Jensen, R.B., ‘Police reform and social reform. Italy from the crisis of the 1890s to the Giolittian era’, Criminal Justice History, 10 (1989)Google Scholar.

102 Saracini, E., I crepuscoli della polizia: compendio storico della genesi e delle vicende dell’amministrazione di pubblica sicurezza (Naples, 1922), 2Google Scholar. About the poor treatment of the agents, Cappa, D., Trentadue anni di servizio nella polizia italiana (Milan, 1892), 313, 373Google Scholar.