Page 63 - Mellinato, Giulio, and Aleksander Panjek. Eds. 2022. Complex Gateways. Labour and Urban History of Maritime Port Cities: The Northern Adriaticin a Comparative Perspective. Koper: University of Primorska Press.
P. 63
Porters in the Eighteenth-century Port City of Trieste ...
Among the porters, we can also find the hiding of lawbreakers and il-
legal business. As the porters were recognizable by their special clothes,
criminals disguised themselves as porters (with a harness and a sack)
in the city. Unhindered and with the helplessness of the police, they en-
gaged in theft, fraud and other prohibited activities (BCT, AD, AP, 30
August 1768). The facchini and their families were, above all, very mobile
and it was very difficult to control them. From year to year, with the ma-
turity of housing leases, they moved within the city from apartment to
apartment. It happened that many dropped out of the census records be-
cause they did not know if they would keep their apartment, so they de-
clared to the enumerators that they would leave Trieste (Breschi, Kalc,
and Navarra 2001, 185, 190, 192). Issues like the growing number of fac-
chini, the strong sense of professional affiliation and social identification
developed in their ranks despite the absence of corporate organizations,
the poor life, and perhaps the resistance they faced in other cities, all
raised concerns for security and dictated special attention in relation to
this category of workers. They were necessary for the development of the
port and the city but, at the same time, they were a problematic and po-
tential threat to public order. The functioning of a free port and the devel-
opment of the maritime and trade activities also depended on ensuring a
good level of public order and security. Therefore, from the middle of the
eighteenth century, Trieste, together with Vienna and some other major
Austrian cities, was considered a laboratory for the development of the
so-called police sciences and police practices (Čeč and Kalc 2010, 518–20).
The long way to regulating the porters’ work
The porters thus became the subject of special attention for the free
port administration and the trading elite, especially the stock exchange
wholesalers who, with their views and interests, strongly influenced the
economic policy and administrative policy choices in the city. At the end
of the 1760s, the idea arose to introduce a register of porters in order to
systematize the position of workers and to control all those who might
join this profession. The initiative came in 1768 in the form of a part of
the police administration reform, with the introduction of a new system
for police operations. Antonio Pittoni, the police commissioner at the
time, had the final word (Čeč and Kalc 2010, 534). The register of porters
(Rollo dei facchini) should also serve to rationalize the porterage services
by regulating the number of workers according to the market demand or
63
Among the porters, we can also find the hiding of lawbreakers and il-
legal business. As the porters were recognizable by their special clothes,
criminals disguised themselves as porters (with a harness and a sack)
in the city. Unhindered and with the helplessness of the police, they en-
gaged in theft, fraud and other prohibited activities (BCT, AD, AP, 30
August 1768). The facchini and their families were, above all, very mobile
and it was very difficult to control them. From year to year, with the ma-
turity of housing leases, they moved within the city from apartment to
apartment. It happened that many dropped out of the census records be-
cause they did not know if they would keep their apartment, so they de-
clared to the enumerators that they would leave Trieste (Breschi, Kalc,
and Navarra 2001, 185, 190, 192). Issues like the growing number of fac-
chini, the strong sense of professional affiliation and social identification
developed in their ranks despite the absence of corporate organizations,
the poor life, and perhaps the resistance they faced in other cities, all
raised concerns for security and dictated special attention in relation to
this category of workers. They were necessary for the development of the
port and the city but, at the same time, they were a problematic and po-
tential threat to public order. The functioning of a free port and the devel-
opment of the maritime and trade activities also depended on ensuring a
good level of public order and security. Therefore, from the middle of the
eighteenth century, Trieste, together with Vienna and some other major
Austrian cities, was considered a laboratory for the development of the
so-called police sciences and police practices (Čeč and Kalc 2010, 518–20).
The long way to regulating the porters’ work
The porters thus became the subject of special attention for the free
port administration and the trading elite, especially the stock exchange
wholesalers who, with their views and interests, strongly influenced the
economic policy and administrative policy choices in the city. At the end
of the 1760s, the idea arose to introduce a register of porters in order to
systematize the position of workers and to control all those who might
join this profession. The initiative came in 1768 in the form of a part of
the police administration reform, with the introduction of a new system
for police operations. Antonio Pittoni, the police commissioner at the
time, had the final word (Čeč and Kalc 2010, 534). The register of porters
(Rollo dei facchini) should also serve to rationalize the porterage services
by regulating the number of workers according to the market demand or
63
