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Working in and for charity institutions: patterns of employment and actors 203

protection of the duke since 1580. The aim the Albergo was to ‘receive
youths (garzoni) that spent their days in contrade playing and dealing
in dissolute activities’ by providing them with means to train
‘virtuously in industrious occupations in the crafts, in order to flee
idleness, the root of all ills’ . Since the middle of the sixteenth century
10
special attention was paid also to the protection and control of women
in economic and moral distress. It is precisely during this period that
the Monastero delle Povere Orfanelle was established with the aim to
host young orphaned girls from the middle classes (artisans and
merchants). Other institutions were founded in those years: in 1589
the Compagnia di San Paolo set up the Casa del Soccorso, in 1683 the
Deposito and in 1750 the Casa delle Forzate, with the aim to enclose
girls and women whose behaviour placed them in danger or ‘for women
who were considered to have exposed their families to scandal’ . The
11
Ospedale di Carità was undoubtedly one of the most popular charity
institutions in Turin. Founded in 1649, by the Compagnia di San
Paolo, the sovereign, and a group of the municipality’s elite, its raison
d’être was supposedly to prevent mendicancy and the presence of
infirm vagrants. Nonetheless, right from the start, its policy consisted
mainly in providing relief to a great range of people in dire economic
straits. Orphans, abandoned children, foundlings, unmarried women
and men constituted important categories traditionally helped by the
Ospedale: from 1762 to 1798 children alone accounted for about 20
per cent of the applicants. Data also shows the relevance of families
with infants: 38 per cent of applicants (more than one third) were
couples and over 72 per cent of them had at least one baby or a very
young child. On the other hand, widows accounted for 20 per cent and
one third of them had small children. As for the nature of the relief, ill
and elderly people, paupers, the destitute and orphans were housed
in the institution itself, while families in hardship received relief at
their homes (namely, rations of bread), and their babies were cared for
by wet nurses paid by the hospital. Of course, family members

10 T. P. Posani Il Regio Albergo di Virtù di Torino (…) Brevi cenni storico-statistici, Tip.
Angelo Locatelli, Torino, 1884, pp. 5-7.
11 S. Cavallo, Charity and power cit., p. 226; on the Monastero delle Orfanelle see:
M. Maritano, Sole sotto lo stesso tetto. Il monastero delle povere orfanelle di Torino nel
Settecento, Tesi di Laurea, rel. Prof. L. Allegra, Università degli Studi di Torino, Facoltà
di Lettere, aa. 1999/2000; on the three institutions founded by the Compagnia di San
Paolo: M. Maritano, Le Case del Soccorso, del Deposito e delle Forzate dalla fondazione
alla Rivoluzione Francese, in A. Cantaluppi, W. Crivellin, B. Signorelli (eds.), Le figlie
della Compagnia, cit., pp. 51-61. For the charity system in Piedmont in the first half of
the nineteenth century see: F. Plataroti, L’albero della povertà. L’assistenza nella Torino
napoleonica, Carocci, Roma, 2000; U. Levra, L’altro volto di Torino risorgimentale: 1814-
1848, Istituto per la storia del Risorgimento italiano. Comitato di Torino, Torino, 1989.

Mediterranea - ricerche storiche - Anno XVII - Aprile 2020
ISSN 1824-3010 (stampa) ISSN 1828-230X (online)