To the Minister for the Navy, Benedetto Brin
E I, 2677
He requests some disused furnishings from the Ministry of the Navy’s warehouses, to be used for his college in La Spezia, where there is a shortage of furniture.
Rome, 16 January 1878
Your Excellency,
Among the cities in Italy where there are many abandoned children, La Spezia is certainly one of them.
Almost all of the citizens are workers at the Arsenale who are unable to take proper care of them, while the population has grown rapidly from five to twenty-seven thousand in a very short time, making it impossible to provide the educational institutions that are absolutely necessary. For these reasons, many of them were sent to and accepted at the hospice in Turin known as St Francis de Sales and at the hospice of St Vincent in S. Pier d'Arena near Genoa.
However, in order to meet this growing need in a normal and more proportionate manner, I would have opened a shelter for these young people with the aim of providing them with an education that would enable them to become good citizens, capable of earning an honest living over time, in accordance with the aims of the institutions mentioned above.
However, having no other means apart from the charity of the city, I have taken the liberty of appealing to you to assist me with some old furnishings that are no longer in use and are stored in the Navy’s warehouses there.
These would be church items, chests, dressers, baskets, mattresses, beds, tables and benches, sideboards, sofas, flagpoles, small tables, school blackboards, washbasins, kitchen utensils, various items of clothing and footwear of any shape and in any condition, including worn items.
With this generous donation, Your Excellency would be effectively contributing to a project that benefits exclusively the poorest children of the people, who, if left to their own devices, would inevitably end up populating the prisons of the State.
I pray God that he will make you happy, while I have the great honour of professing myself
Your Excellency’s
most obliged servant,
