Note 76 — Chapter IV · RELIGION AND NON-RELIGION AMONG THE PEOPLE.

It must not be believed that even prostitutes, who as a class are so closely allied to criminals, are wholly non-religious. A case is cited of a number of prostitutes who subscribed the money to have one of their companions, who was on the point of death, removed from a house of ill-fame to some place where the priest might visit her; others subscribed money for a great number of masses to be said for the soul of a companion who was dead. At all events prostitutes are quite superstitious, and their religion swarms with strange and ridiculous beliefs.

In Italy criminals are usually religious. Quite recently the Tozzi family of butchers, after having killed and dismembered a young man, sold his blood, mixed with sheep’s blood, in their shop, and went none the less to perform their devotions to the Madonna, and to kiss the statue of the Virgin. The Caruso band, Lombroso says, habitually placed sacred images in the caves and woods in which they lived, and burned candles before them. Verzeni, who strangled three women, was an assiduous frequenter of the church and the confessional, and he came of a family which was not only religious but bigoted. The companions of La Gala, who were imprisoned at Pisa, obstinately refused to take food on Friday during Lent, and when the keeper tried to persuade them to do so, they replied, “Do you think we have been excommunicated?” Masini, with his band, met three countrymen and among them a priest; he slowly sawed open the throat of one of them with an ill-sharpened knife, and then, with his hands still bloody, obliged the priest to give him the consecrated Host. Giovani Mio and Fontana went to confession before going out to commit a murder. A young Neapolitan parricide, covered with amulets, confessed to Lombroso that he had invoked the aid of the Madonna de la Chaîne in the accomplishment of his horrible crime. “And that she really helped me I conclude from this, that at the first blow of the stick my father fell dead, although I am myself personally weak.” Another murderer, a woman, before killing her husband, fell on her knees and prayed to the blessed Virgin to give her the strength to accomplish her crime. Still another announced his acceptance of a line of action devised by his companion in these words, “I will come, and I will do that with which God has inspired thee.”