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Educational Theatre for Women
in Post-World War II Italy
A Stage of Their Own
Daniela Cavallaro
Educational Theatre for Women
in Post-World War II Italy
 Daniela Cavallaro

Educational Theatre
for Women in Post-­
World War II Italy
A Stage of Their Own
Daniela Cavallaro
University of Auckland
Auckland
New Zealand

ISBN 978-1-349-95095-9    ISBN 978-1-349-95096-6 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95096-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016957174

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.

Cover illustration: The all-women theatre company of Tirano (Sondrio) in Claudia Procula,
4 April 1954. Photo courtesy of Ebe Pedretti

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United
Kingdom
per mia madre
Sections of Chap. 4 first appeared in my article “Salesian Theatre for
Young Women in post-World War II Italy” published in Ecumenica 4.2
(2011), and are reprinted by permission of Ecumenica. Journal of Theatre
and Performance.
Sections of Chap. 5 first appeared in my article “Demons and Angels:
Morality Plays in the Context of Salesian Educational Theatre for
Young Women”, published in The International Journal of Religion and
Spirituality in Society 2:2 (2013), and are reprinted by permission of
Common Ground Publishing.
Sections of Chap. 6 and 7 first appeared in my essay “Scene femminili: A
Pre-feminist All-Women Theatre”, published in Women in Italy 1945–1960
© 2006, edited by Penelope Morris, and are reprinted by permission of
Palgrave Macmillan.
Sections of Chap. 7 first appeared in my essay “Catholic Theatre for
Women in Post-War Italy: Education, Morality, and Social Change”, pub-
lished in Catholic Theatre and Drama: Critical Essays © 2010, edited by
Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr., and are reprinted by permission of McFarland &
Company, Inc., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. www.mcfarlandpub.com.

vii
 Acknowledgements

The generosity of many has made this book possible.

The publishing company Àncora of Milan has graciously received me
several times, given me access to their archives, allowed me to photocopy
their magazines and even scanned images for me for this publication. I
am grateful to the many people in their Milan offices who helped me, but
especially to the editor Matteo Verderio, who has welcomed me during my
visits and unfailingly answered my email queries and requests during the
years for “just one more thing”.
Tadeusz (Tadek) Lewicki, Salesian of Don Bosco (SDB), of the
Pontifical Salesian University (UPS) in Rome, was my first contact with
the Salesian academic world. Not only did he personally guide me through
the meandering UPS Library storage floors to recover and bring up dusty
bound issues of Teatro delle giovani, he also organised for me free library
access at UPS, and set me up in my own library study space with a com-
puter and a scanner.
Michele Novelli SDB, of the Salesian Centre for Social Communication
in Rome, generously entrusted me with 15 years of issues of Teatro delle
giovani in print, 14 years of Teatro dei giovani in electronic format, hard-­
to-­find articles on Salesian theatre, and books on the Salesian presence in
Italian society. I have never been so happy to have extra weight in my lug-
gage than after visiting him in Rome, first at the Sacro Cuore Centre and
more recently at the Don Bosco Centre.
Renata Piovesan, of the Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice (Daughters of Mary
Helper of Christians, FMA) General House in Rome, was my first con-
tact with the Salesian Sisters. She is still my main source of information

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

c­ oncerning the life and works of Salesian women playwrights. She and her
sisters have welcomed me in every visit to the General House, where I
can be sure to find a quiet space to work, a photocopier/scanner, printed
and photographic material, and all the encouragement and support that a
scholar may need.
Thanks to Sister Renata, I also got in touch with a number of other
FMA sisters who helped me along the way, sharing their academic articles
and expertise, their memories and alumnae network. I am particularly
grateful to Piera Cavaglià, Angela Marzorati, Maritza Ortíz Rodríguez,
Elena Rastello and Mirella Torri of the General House in Rome; Grazia
Loparco and Bianca Torazza of the Auxilium University in Rome; Graziella
Boscato and Mariarosa Cirianni in Rome; Lorenzina Colosi of the Ufficio
catechistico in Rome; Maria Angiola Amerio and Vincenzina Anastasi in
Turin; Mara Borsi of the Institute “Beato Contardo Ferrini” in Modena;
Margherita Dal Lago in Udine; Annunciata Portaluppi in Milan; and
Maria Concetta Ventura in Catania.
For their help in answering my email questions or sending scanned
material from their libraries or archives, I am indebted as well to Alessandro
Bertinotti of the “Negroni” library of Novara; Gisella Bochicchio of the
Biblioteca di storia moderna e contemporanea, Rome; Patrizia Bonino and
Valeria Calabrese of the Biblioteche civiche torinesi; Angelita Borgheresi of
the Fondazione Istituto Dramma Popolare, San Miniato; Dario Massimi of
the library of the “Fondazione Istituto Gramsci”, Rome; Nadia Menusan
of the Biblioteca Civica Alliaudi of Pinerolo, Turin; Serena Paganelli of
the library “A. Baldini”, Santarcangelo di Romagna (RN); Anna Peyron of
the Teatro Stabile of Turin; Giuliano Sanseverinati of the Biblioteca comu-
nale Mozzi Borgetti, Macerata; Lucia Signori, of the Archivio Storico
Diocesano of Brescia; and the librarians of Museo Torino.
Generous individuals and researchers have helped recover biographical
information about several of the playwrights I mention in this book. In
particular, I would like to express my thanks to Guido Neri and Francesca
Romana Blasi for information on Anna Luisa Meneghini; Piero Gribaudi
on Angela Biedermann; Valentino Marcon on Giuseppe Toffanello; and
Andrea Mancini, Mario Piatti and Giorgio Diamanti on Gianni Rodari’s
theatre.
Though not themselves owners of the photos included in this volume,
the following persons have generously worked to make such photos avail-
able for me: Chiara Fabian for the Cavarzere photo; Giampaolo Festa for
Orzinuovi; Lucia Grandazzi for Cannobio; Marina Perozzo for Maccagno;
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi

Mariella Sala for Brescia; Aldo Selvello for Buriasco; and Carla Soltoggio
for Tirano. And once again, my continued gratitude goes to Tim Page of
the University of Auckland, for working with older photos to make sure
they would reach publishable standards.
In addition to photos and information, some individuals offered to
share parts of their private mail. I am very grateful to Libera Bertulli of
Orzinuovi for having made copies of Panzeri’s private letters to her avail-
able for my research, and to Emilia Badino of Buriasco for allowing me
access to part of her private correspondence with Scene femminili’s editor.
I would also like to acknowledge the funding received from the
University of Auckland for the editing of this book, completed with great
care by Ellen McRae, as well as for the archival research which I was able to
pursue in the following Italian institutions: the Central National Library,
the Burcardo Theatre Library, the Salesian Pontifical University Library,
the ISACEM (Institute for the History of Azione Cattolica) Library, the
Modern History Library, the Daughters of Mary Helper of Christians’
General House and the Salesian Centre for Social Communication
[Teatrino don Bosco] in Rome; the Archivio Storico Diocesano, the
Fondazione della Civiltà Bresciana and the Institute of the Ancelle della
Carità Library in Brescia; and the Àncora Publishing House in Milan.
Finally, I hold an immense debt to my personal reader and English
language native speaker Dan Stollenwerk. Not all scholars are as fortunate
as I to have a reader/editor working for and with them across the kitchen
table during holidays, weekends, lunch and evening hours. Di nuovo gra-
zie mille.
 Contents

1 Theatre Is a Serious Matter 1

2 Educational Theatre for Women: From Renaissance

to Fascism 15

3 Teatro delle giovani: Editors, Genres, Evolution 43

4 Teatro delle giovani: The Plays 63

5 Salesian Plays Not Published in Teatro delle giovani 107

6 Scene femminili: The New Magazine for

All-­Women Theatre 139

7 Scene femminili: The Plays159

8 Educational Plays from Other Magazines or Publishers197

xiii
xiv Contents

9 The Legacy of All-Women Educational Theatre 215

Appendix 223

Works Cited231

Index255
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 The theatre group of the FMA Oratory “S. Maria Liberatrice”,
Rome, ca 1920 27
Fig. 2.2 The theatre group of the girls’ oratory of Maccagno lnferiore
(Varese) in Jolanda Rapaccini’s Zingara del Volga,
3 September 1966 35
Fig. 3.1 Front cover of Teatro delle giovani, issue 1, 1950 44
Fig. 4.1 FMA students and alumnae of Legnano (Milan) most probably
in Flora Fornara’s La villa del mistero, ca 1960 67
Fig. 4.2 The all-women theatre company of Tirano (Sondrio) in Claudia
Procula, 4 April 1954 72
Fig. 4.3 FMA students and alumnae of Ruvo di Puglia (Bari)
staging a giallo, ca 1960 86
Fig. 4.4 A scene from Calcedonia, written and directed by
Caterina Pesci, 1963 92
Fig. 4.5 Caterina Pesci 95
Fig. 5.1 Flora Fornara 113
Fig. 5.2 The all-women theatre group “S. Giuseppe” of Cavarzere
(Venice) in a play about Maddalena of Canossa, ca 1958 120
Fig. 6.1 Front cover of Ribalte femminili, issue 1 1946, and
Scene femminili, issue 1 1947 140
Fig. 6.2 The all-women theatre company of S. Faustino, Brescia, in
Mariagiovanna Macchi’s La giovinezza vince, 20 January 1952 141
Fig. 6.3 Elisabetta Schiavo 152
Fig. 7.1 Clotilde Masci 168
Fig. 7.2 Gici Ganzini Granata (with Mario Panzeri) 170

xv
xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 7.3 Front cover of Scene femminili, issue 10, 1954. On the cover,
the all-women theatre group of Orzinuovi (Brescia), after the
première of Gici Ganzini Granata’s L’amore difficile174
Fig. 7.4 The all-women theatre company of Tirano (Sondrio) in
Gici Ganzini Granata’s Un lume alla finestra, 1957 178
Fig. 7.5 The all-women theatre group of Orzinuovi (Brescia) in
Gici Ganzini Granata’s Resta, Miette, 1952 180
Fig. 8.1 The “Associazione Amicizia” theatre company of
Cannobio (Verbano) in Angelo Beltrami’s Sinforosa,
la nuova cameriera, April 2015 207
Fig. 9.1 The theatre group of FMA students and alumnae of
Valle di Cadore (Belluno), ca 1960 219
Fig. 9.2 The theatre group of FMA students and alumnae of
Palestro (Pavia), ca 1965 221
 CHAPTER 1

Theatre Is a Serious Matter

“O gentle Romeo,” whispers a dreamy young Juliet, wearing an ­oversized

dress over her chequered school pinafore and a crown of flowers on her
head. “If thou dost love me, pronounce it faithfully. Or if thou think’st I
am too young for love, or too quickly won…”1 “Juliet, I swear to you”,
replies her classmate matter-of-factly, reading her lines from a book, wear-
ing the same school uniform and her hair divided in symmetrical plaits.
“No! A lower voice. Like a man. […] A deep, warm voice, you know”,
exclaims Juliet, breaking role. “Juliet, I swear to you”, tries the female
Romeo again, this time feigning a lower register. The poor attempt at
a male voice causes the group of about 15 uniformed girls and teenag-
ers admiring the performance to break into laughter. “Don’t laugh!”
cries Juliet earnestly. “Theatre is a serious matter!” The young specta-
tors resume their captive listening of the vows of eternal love exchanged
between Romeo and Juliet, until the stern principal, wearing a disapprov-
ing expression, appears at the door and scatters them away.
This short scene from Vittorio de Sica’s film Teresa Venerdì (1941), set
in an all-girls orphanage, humorously portrays the sort of theatrical rep-
resentations that used to take place in all-female Italian schools, boarding
schools, parish halls and orphanages before World War II.2 Theatre per-
formances were often encouraged in educational environments—which
were single gender at the time and would remain so until the mid-1960s—
as they gave the performers many educational opportunities: to practise
proper diction, as opposed to the more common dialectal pronunciation
of their daily lives; to memorise unusual, learned words; to sympathise

© The Author(s) 2017 1

D. Cavallaro, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II
Italy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95096-6_1
2 D. CAVALLARO

with the thoughts, feelings and life choices of different people; to learn
about exotic locations and past historical times; to show creativity in
arranging costumes; to prove reliability by regularly attending rehearsals;
to get along with peers; to respect their elders’ decisions; and to develop
self-confidence in presenting themselves to others (as happens in de Sica’s
film to the protagonist Teresa Venerdì, whose acting background allows
her to role-play herself into a romantic happy ending). Moreover, the time
spent in preparing, rehearsing and then actually performing would be
taken away from time that might be spent partaking in other possibly less
healthy forms of entertainment, in less secure environments.
In pre-war Italy, educational theatre was considered a healthy form
of entertainment and thus preferred to, for example, cinema or dancing,
which provided opportunities for promiscuity. The right sort of dramatic
work would also provide an appropriate, edifying message that both per-
formers and spectators (schoolmates and sometimes relatives) could easily
grasp. For a female cast and a female audience in particular, plays containing
characters who gave proof of such virtues as honesty, respect, obedience,
patience, loyalty, modesty and faith were considered particularly suitable—
which explains why Teresa Venerdì’s orphanage principal did not approve of
her pupils’ choice of Romeo and Juliet for their impromptu performance.
Inappropriate content was only one of the possible risks of theatre for
young women. Another was the presence onstage of male characters.
Shakespeare and other classics had to be modified or adapted to the needs
of the single-gender performers and spectators, with the male roles either
eliminated, switched to female or (if absolutely necessary, as would have
been the case for Romeo) performed by a girl in a male costume. However,
cross-dressing in all-female theatre could bring unwanted results: either
hilarity, if a female Romeo, for example, could not quite fake the necessary
deep, warm voice for the role, as in Teresa Venerdì; or sexual misconduct,
if the breech role happened to be too convincing.3 For centuries, in fact,
the biblical prohibition of cross-dressing4 transferred to the stage as well
because of the fear that cross-dressing might invite homosexuality or sig-
nal sexual availability (Garber 1992, 29–31), “that wearing the clothes
of the other gender might change the wearer, that a disquieting power—
a power at once sexual and political—did somehow inhere in clothes”
(Garber 1992, 217).
To avoid the problem of cross-dressing and the possible immoral
implications of staging the classics for a young audience while continu-
ing the tradition of theatre as an educational and healthy entertainment,
 THEATRE IS A SERIOUS MATTER 3

after World War II and for nearly 20 years many Italian women, as well as
several men, created hundreds of plays that both contain a definite educa-
tional message and consist of female roles only. These authors, their plays
and the magazines in which they appeared are the focus of this book.

From the Post-War Years to the Economic Miracle

Although some publications lasted until the mid-1960s, the golden era of
educational plays for women extended from 1946 to about 1960. This era
coincided with major transformations in Italian society, which was slowly
recovering from the end of Fascism and the ravages of war, and reaching a
period of new economic prosperity. As Molly Tambor put it, this was “not
just a period of apolitical desire for a return to normalcy and the recon-
struction of devastated families”, but a time of “great conflict, upheaval,
and political activism” for Italians—both men and women (2010, 431).
Women had become more independent and mobile during the war:
at home, where they took on responsibilities that would normally have
fallen to their husbands, fathers, brothers or sons, and after September
1943 outside the home, by participating in the anti-Fascist armed resis-
tance or enlisting in the Auxiliary Services of the army in Mussolini’s
Republic of Salò.
After the end of the war, women acquired the right to vote and to be
voted in, winning the presence of 21 women among the 543 members
of the Assembly that was in charge of writing a constitution for the new
Italian state. Making up 52 per cent of the electorate, their vote was highly
sought after in the 1946 elections, both for the constituents and for the
constitutional referendum to choose between monarchy and republic, as
well as two years later in the elections for the first general parliament of
the new Italian republic. The two main contestants in the 1948 election
were the Christian Democrats and the Popular Front—a coalition that
included the Italian Communist Party and the Italian Socialist Party. The
election staged a clash between a conservative, Catholic, capitalist Italy
envisioned by Christian Democracy and a revolutionary, secular, socialist
Italy envisioned by the Popular Front (Ventresca 2003, 439). The Church
treated the election as an almost apocalyptic battle between God and
Satan, Christ and the Antichrist, civilisation and barbarism, liberty and
slavery (Pollard 2003, 108). Women in particular were encouraged to cast
their vote to prevent the Communist threat from destroying their families.
“The ­legislative position of women in the new nation”, summarises Lesley
4 D. CAVALLARO

Caldwell, “was one that sought to endorse their rights as citizens while
insisting that motherhood was their major contribution to the building of
the new collectivity” (2006, 229).
Yet while women in the post-war years resumed their place in the domes-
tic environment, a shift supported by the return of men from the war and
the women’s consequent loss of jobs, there was also a desire for change.
As Penelope Morris points out, by the end of the 1940s and the beginning
of the 1950s, Italy was already feeling the influence of American consum-
erism; as yet inaccessible products (such as domestic appliances, cosmet-
ics and cars) featured in films and magazines were becoming objects of
desire (2006, 10). During the 1950s, industrial development, especially in
the north, and the consequent massive migration of southern agricultural
populations to join the industrial workforce, as well as the construction of
new, single-family housing, changed Italy from a traditionally rural soci-
ety to an urban one, giving origin to what was defined as “the economic
miracle”. Between 1953 and 1960, industrial production increased 89 per
cent (Scrivano 2005, 320) and salaries grew about 4 per cent per year
(Cacioppo 1982, 86). With the increase of per capita income, new prod-
ucts became available and more accessible, and mobility increased. The
number of motorcycles rose from one million in 1955 to four million in
1960 and the number of cars from 700,000 in 1954 to three million in
1962 (Crainz 2003, 84; 136). As for domestic appliances, in 1958 only
13 per cent of Italian families owned a refrigerator and 3 per cent owned a
washing machine. By 1965, that number had risen to 55 per cent and 23
per cent, respectively (Ginsborg 2003, 239). RAI, the Italian broadcast-
ing company, started its programming in 1954 for only 88,000 registered
television sets. In just four years, the number of televisions had reached
one million (Ginsborg 2003, 240). Leisure activities had also become
more frequent, cinema in particular: on average, more than two million
people per day went to the movies in 1955 (Crainz 2003, 142). Dance
halls and bars with jukeboxes became places where young people could
meet and socialise (Ginsborg 2003, 244).
However, this exposure to new products and lifestyles from the USA
was a concern for many parties: Communists deplored the Americanisation
of Italy and the Catholic Church looked with suspicion on the materi-
alism, changes in social customs and what it saw as a decline in moral
standards (Morris 2006, 11–12). Furthermore, mass migration brought
about a high number of de facto separations (about 600,000 in the late
1950s), women raising children on their own and issues of illegitimacy
 THEATRE IS A SERIOUS MATTER 5

(Caldwell 1995, 154–55), as divorce was not yet legal, so new couples
could not remarry. On the other hand, cohabitation of extended families
became common, as elderly parents had to move in with their children
because of lack of financial self-sufficiency and inadequate social struc-
tures (Cacioppo 1982, 84–85).

Recovering the Lost Tradition

of Educational Theatre for Women

It is this dramatic change in Italian society, for women in particular, that

I saw reflected in the new plays for female casts published in monthly
magazines after the end of the war and through the years of the country’s
reconstruction and the economic miracle.
My first encounter with post-World War II educational theatre for
women occurred in 2000, well before Italian library catalogues began to
be computerised and accessible online. Having found few primary and
secondary resources on women playwrights in Italy before feminist the-
atre, I decided to go through the most important magazines collected at
the Burcardo Library and Theatre Collection in Rome and simply look
for plays written by women. I still recall the jolt of surprise when I found
a magazine name in the card catalogue that sounded very encouraging:
Scene femminili (Women’s stages). What I found was even more than I
expected: the magazine not only published new plays by women in each
bimonthly issue, but the plays themselves included only women’s roles—
instances of which I had seen just occasionally in feminist theatre from
the 1970s. Sadly, the Burcardo library owned merely a few issues of Scene
femminili; however, these convinced me that I should look for the rest, as
well as for other similar magazines, if they existed. And in fact, the pages
of Scene femminili themselves indicated the existence of a “sister” publi-
cation, Teatro delle giovani (Young women’s theatre), that also sounded
promising. So began a more than decade-long search that brought to the
surface hundreds of educational plays in archives and libraries, as well as
from the bookshelves of generous donors.
Some of the plays I read were thought provoking, some of the comedies
witty and some of the dramas powerful. On the other hand, some works
were so melodramatic, far-fetched or tedious that one wonders if they were
ever staged at all. Nevertheless, in one way or another, all the plays I found
portrayed a female universe far different from what I was used to seeing in
6 D. CAVALLARO

Italian films, novels and theatre of the post-war years. There were two main
reasons for this difference: they did not include men and they were spon-
sored by Catholic institutions. Thus, I believe that not only the best plays but
also the genre of educational theatre for women in the Italian post-war years
deserve to be recovered and studied because of their unique characteristics.

Authors, Characters, Spectators

As I had hoped, educational theatre for female-only casts did provide me
with an unexpected source of theatrical works by women. In fact, the vast
majority of authors were women. Seldom professional writers, although
in some cases writing for educational theatre served as a preparation for
other literary endeavours, they were teachers, secretaries, housewives
and nuns who decided to write plays to satisfy the needs of the particular
group of girls in their charge.5 In most cases, because they did not acquire
fame through their publications, little information is available about these
playwrights. While Scene femminili encouraged its authors to introduce
themselves informally in the pages of the magazine, Teatro delle giovani
provided no information whatsoever on the identity of its authors, not
even whether (as was often the case) they belonged to a religious order.
Thus, part of my research consisted in recovering biographical data on
the women authors of all-girls theatre, since it gives evidence of women’s
interest and skills in writing for the theatre in a country such as Italy that
can count very few well-known female dramatists before the 1970s.6
A second unique characteristic was that all the roles in the plays I looked
at belong to women: this means that women are always the protagonists
and not merely occupying the supportive roles of mothers, sisters and love
interests of the male characters. As Maggie Gunsberg noted for Franca
Rame’s monologues of the late 1970s, the fact that women are not com-
peting with men for audience attention, as normally happens in main-
stream theatre, brings to the foreground the feminine perspective of the
world offered in the play (1997, 203). Thus, as the performers of educa-
tional plays for women would in many cases play roles that were similar to
their daily life activities—students, workers, sisters, friends, daughters and
homemakers—they offer a vivid portrait of the post-war world in which
they were growing up. On the other hand, many roles allowed young
women to forget for a few hours the difficult reality of the reconstruction
years and play what they were not: beggar, queen, detective, spy, martyr,
maid, slave, gypsy or saint.
 THEATRE IS A SERIOUS MATTER 7

Moreover, although in many cases a love interest is part of or even the

driving force behind the plot, the relationship between the two people in
love never takes centre stage. Rather, the protagonist’s casual encounter
offstage with a handsome and honest young man would be at the centre
of conversations among a group of friends, in which she lamented her
parents’ resistance to such a match or to any match at all, and plotted the
best way to overcome parental disapproval and win over the man of her
dreams. In fact, many plays stage conflicts in which the younger genera-
tion represents a desire for renewal, change and modernity, in contrast
to their parents’ stagnant immobility and attachment to age-old ideas.
On some occasions, however, it is the sensible grandmother who remains
a depositary of wisdom and ethical values that the younger generation
seems to have lost.
One of the challenges of creating plays with women’s roles only is to
find a specific situation in which the absence of men would seem justi-
fied. All-girls schools, orphanages and boarding houses were the obvious
choices, which would in later years expand to include factories, prisons and
even refugee camps. Home settings in dramas might mention fathers, hus-
bands, brothers or fiancés killed during the war; comedies would report
men travelling, building a career in a different city, momentarily away at
work or simply waiting downstairs for the protagonists to join them.
Whatever the setting, the women onstage—vivacious students, para-
lysed grandmothers, mischievous little sisters, frivolous mothers, respon-
sible widows, invidious friends, difficult mothers-in-law, underpaid factory
workers, aspiring missionaries, stern principals or supportive cousins—had
to make choices without the guidance or control of men. They did not
have to submit to or question the authority of husbands, fathers or confes-
sors. They were in charge.
The effect of such protagonism would have been felt not only by the
young and not-so-young women performing in all-women theatre, but
also by their audience, which in many cases was itself female only. Several
former performers of educational theatre mentioned that men were either
excluded from the audience (Ragazzi 2013; Villa 2013) or preferred to
remain outside anyway (Aliverti 2013); others recounted that attending
an all-women play was the only form of evening entertainment that their
own mothers were allowed (Cucco 2013). Thus, considering that most
plays were written by women, performed by women and addressed to
women, I would claim that educational theatre in post-war Italy—even
though possibly not deliberately—gave women a unique opportunity to
8 D. CAVALLARO

see onstage characters who were going through the same personal, ethical,
spiritual or social issues as themselves, in a space that privileged women’s
collective presence and encouraged both individual and group transforma-
tion. This same transformative power of plays made for women by women
would become explicit and conscious a few decades later, with the begin-
ning of feminist theatre.
Perhaps one final, important characteristic of educational theatre for
women was the environment in which shows were rehearsed and per-
formed. Considering the “old-established ideas that it was scandalous for
any woman to exhibit herself in public” (Gundle 2000, 68), how was it
possible for teenage girls and young women to take part in a public show?
In what space would a group of young women safely meet to prepare for
performance? Who would take responsibility for leading such a group?
Where would their parents allow them to go to enjoy a show? In post-war
Italy, the answer was a space sponsored by the Catholic Church and led by
nuns: the oratory.

The Oratory
In modern Italy, oratories are youth centres sponsored by a Catholic insti-
tution.7 Their main goal has traditionally been “to instruct young people
in the Christian doctrine and, at the same time, to keep them safe from
the ‘dangers of the streets’ and provide basic cultural notions” (Vecchio
1994, 391). Their origins date to post-Tridentine times, in particu-
lar to the Congregazione dell’Oratorio (Congregation of the Oratory)
founded by Filippo Neri (1515–95) in the sixteenth century. Oratories
became increasingly popular and important between the end of the nine-
teenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, initially thanks to
the work of congregations such as the Oratorians, the Congregazione
di S. Giuseppe (Congregation of St Joseph)—founded by Leonardo
Murialdo (1828–1900) in 1873—and the Salesians, founded by Giovanni
Bosco (1815–88) in 1859. Oratories were prevalent especially in the
north, with the cities of Milan, Brescia, Bergamo, Turin and Venice having
the largest numbers (Caimi 2011). For example, in the diocese of Milan
between 1895 and 1904, 145 oratories were created, 82 for boys, 63 for
girls (Giussani 2012, 17). Oratories offered young people space and time
for prayer and religious instruction, alternating with games, music and
other recreational activities.
 THEATRE IS A SERIOUS MATTER 9

After the first decade of the twentieth century, to ensure continued

interest on the part of young people who had begun work, oratories
expanded their activities to weekdays, creating initiatives that would help
young people increase their work opportunities, improve their literacy and
train them for trades, as well as sometimes establishing welfare centres and
savings fund societies for their members. The events of World War I and
the advent of Fascism, with its own compulsory youth associations, limited
the activities of oratories: they had to renounce their social concerns and
curtail their sporting activities, which were now to be controlled by the
regime (Manfredi 2015). However, the social function of the oratories,
especially in large cities, grew enormously in the last years of World War
II and during the country’s reconstruction, when the immediate needs of
young people who had been left as orphans, homeless and jobless, ren-
dered the oratories a prime space not only for sheltering, feeding and
entertaining them, but also for beginning the process of their moral and
spiritual recovery (Braido 2006, 300). By 1954, there were 5387 oratories
in Italy: 4064 in the north, 751 in the centre and 562 in the south and the
islands (Archambault 2006, 139).
In fact, most parishes, especially in the north, had two oratories: one for
boys and one for girls. The boys’ oratory was most often in a building sepa-
rate from the church itself. It would include a chapel, sports fields, gather-
ing rooms and housing for the priest in charge. The girls’ oratories, on the
other hand, were often attached to nursery schools and nuns’ institutions,
and would mostly be led by nuns (Vecchio 1994, 390). Among the congre-
gations that were in charge of oratories for girls were the Canossian Sisters,
Suore Maestre di santa Dorotea, Ancelle della Carità, Figlie di sant’Angela
Merici and, especially, the Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice, who were in charge
of 140 oratories by the beginning of World War I. Oratories for girls in
general offered fewer opportunities compared with those for boys, sports
being a prime example.8 Girls were encouraged towards sacrifice, modesty
and purity as appropriate for their expected futures as wives and mothers.
In spite of some limitations, however, girls’ oratories offered girls and
young women a place to gather outside of school and home. Being part
of an all-female oratory and youth association also gave women a unique
opportunity to develop social concerns and take on leadership roles, which
may have been impossible in lay environments (Tambor 2010, 434).
In many oratories girls were offered the possibility of learning embroi-
dery or bobbing lace, in addition to sewing, knitting and other domestic
skills. Theatre, however, was often one of the most popular activities of
10 D. CAVALLARO

the oratories—for the young women who were selected to perform and
for those who made up the audience. Other widespread activities included
excursions, pilgrimages, charitable outings, fairs and after-school studies.
During the school year girls would attend the oratory every Sunday.
Those involved in a particular project (such as a theatre performance or
the preparation of a trousseau) would also go to the oratory in the eve-
nings after dinner. During the summer holidays students would attend
the oratory daily, beginning with a daily Mass and continuing with recre-
ational, practical and spiritual activities (Giussani 2012, 108–10).
A set of handwritten rules for the girls’ oratory, which I found in the
Archives of the Church of the Saints Nazaro and Celso in Brescia and prob-
ably dates from the late 1940s or early 1950s, explains that the purpose of
the oratory was to gather all the poorest girls of the parish, under the pro-
tection of the Virgin Mary and St Luigi, to educate them in the practice
of Christian religion, “to take [them] away from the path of sin, and lead
[them] towards the path of virtue” (“Regole per le giovani dell’Oratorio”
n.d.). All girls aged seven and up wishing to sign up were accepted.9
Once they were enrolled, weekly attendance at the oratory was
expected; absences for serious reasons had to be communicated and justi-
fied. Three unjustified absences would lead to dismissal, as would undis-
ciplined or inappropriate behaviour. Girls were prohibited from straying
from the group, forming pairs or partaking in “obscene talk or less than
honest jokes” (rule 16).
The girls were expected at the oratory in the early afternoon. At 3
o’clock they would go to the chapel for prayers and then had permis-
sion to return outside to play. They were further expected to remain at
the oratory until sunset, when they would return to the chapel for final
prayers, to be recited “out loud with devotion and composure” (rule 13).
When walking home, they were not to run or shout or play, “particularly
with people of a different gender” (rule 15). Rule 19, the last one, stated
that girls attending the oratory would always be banned from attending
mixed-­gender dances.
Because of their association with the Catholic Church and nuns, orato-
ries were considered a safe, healthy environment for girls, providing not
only religious instruction but also useful skills, extracurricular learning and
diversion. Thus, most Catholic parents had no reservations about ­sending
their daughters to spend afternoons, evenings or Sundays at the oratory.
Nor did they prevent them from joining the oratory theatre group or
performing in front of an audience. In fact, virtually all of the former
 THEATRE IS A SERIOUS MATTER 11

performers I met stated that their parents were proud of their acting, and
if one of the fathers had any qualms about his daughter being away in
the evenings for rehearsals, the mother instead would encourage them to
go (Merlotti 2013; Ragazzi 2013). Having said that, performing in edu-
cational theatre was never meant to prepare one for further professional
dramatic activities; it was but “a bright parenthesis” before the young
woman’s actual destiny of wife and mother (Zio Pan 1959, 396).

The Moral Content

Because they were meant not just for entertainment but also as a form
of learning for performers and spectators alike, plays written for and
performed on the Catholic educational stage were supposed to have a
moral content—a final message that would inspire virtue and discourage
sin. What at first may appear to be generic moralising can instead make
for quite insightful reading for several reasons. First, the moral content
embedded in the plays reflects the specific issues that girls and women
had to confront in the years between the end of the war and the begin-
ning of the economic miracle. Second, although educational plays would
never encourage choices that went against the Catholic Church’s precepts,
they do sometimes show that following those precepts may be difficult
and that self-sacrifice, although noble, may not bring happiness. Third,
because they were sometimes created by consecrated authors, the plays
also explored facets of women’s lives that went beyond their everyday
activities to include spiritual needs and struggles. Fourth, because some
authors by choice did not invariably concentrate on married life, they give
us a portrait of women who are not always wives and mothers. And so
there are plays that enlighten young women on the dangers of dancing,
glossy magazines and banned films; others that explore intergenerational
conflicts, inviting all involved to keep communication open; some that
encourage forgiveness of past sins; others that portray women having
problems at work as well as at home; some that suggest that the life of a
single woman is sad and lonely; others that imply that the life of a married
woman may be sad and lonely; some that show girls simply having fun;
others that see women young and old willingly devoting their energies to
supporting others. Thus, the moral content of these educational plays was
not only prescriptive of how Catholic girls and women should behave, but
also descriptive of how they actually did behave.
12 D. CAVALLARO

A Stage of Their Own

This book is my attempt to recover the forgotten tradition of educational
plays for women, their authors and their main genres, as well as to show
how these plays reflect the social issues affecting Italian women between
1946 and the mid-1960s.
To understand the importance of these post-war developments, in
Chapter 2 I provide an introduction to the tradition of educational theatre
for young women in Catholic environments. First, I look at how religious
orders made use of theatre for the education of both young men and
young women in Italy from the Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth
century, focusing in particular on convent theatre and Salesian theatre. I
then consider the diffusion of educational theatre publications after the
unification of Italy (1861) until the end of World War II (1945).
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 look at Salesian theatre, one of the most important
sources of all-women plays of the post-war era, presenting its authors,
publications, genres, debates and representative plays. Chapter 3 consid-
ers the publication history, goals and ideals of the Salesian magazine for
all-women theatre Teatro delle giovani (1947–68). Chapter 4 presents the
different genres of plays published in Teatro delle giovani: from historical
to ideological, from melodramas and the lives of the saints to mysteries
and comedies. Chapter 5 explores the plays that appeared in other Salesian
publications (theatre collections or anthologies) and often featured differ-
ent themes such as ethical concerns or appropriate behaviour.
Chapters 6 and 7 then investigate the other main Catholic theatre mag-
azine, Àncora’s Scene femminili (1946–59). Chapter 6 presents the pub-
lication history of Scene femminili, its mission and editor, contracts and
competitions, authors and relationship with Teatro delle giovani. Chapter
7 discusses the genres, educational message and topics of several plays
published in Scene femminili, from marriage and motherhood to social
concerns.
Finally, Chapter 8 considers, among others, the magazine Boccascena
(1936–57) and the women’s theatre collection of the publishing house
Serafino Majocchi, highlighting the similarities with and differences from
the other major Catholic theatre publications. Chapter 9 then provides a
conclusion to the volume, exploring the legacy of the all-female plays of
the 1950s and 1960s and their influence on the young women who per-
formed in them.
 THEATRE IS A SERIOUS MATTER 13

Notes
1. All translations from Italian texts in this book are mine, unless otherwise
indicated.
2. See Reich (1995) for an analysis of the Italian schoolgirl comedy film genre.
3. In the 1931 German film Mädchen in Uniform (Girls in uniform), directed
by Leontine Sagan, for example, a performance of Schiller’s Don Carlos, in
which the female protagonist plays the lead role, is central to the develop-
ment of the conflict.
4. “A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s cloth-
ing, for the Lord your God detests anyone who does this” (Deuteronomy
22:5 NRSV).
5. The male authors included lawyers, doctors, principals and priests.
6. Biographical information on most of the women playwrights mentioned in
this book can be found in the Appendix. On the major female dramatists of
the years 1930–60, see Cavallaro (2011).
7. See the 2013 document of the Conferenza Episcopale Italiana on oratories
and their tradition, mission and way forward.
8. See Archambault (2006) for the importance of oratory training for male
soccer players in Italy.
9. The rules also specify that the oldest girls were expected to receive the sacra-
ments once a month, and that the most serious and mature among the girls
could be chosen as assistants to support the nuns with the youngest girls.

References
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Archambault, Fabien. 2006. “Il calcio e l’oratorio: Football, Catholic movement
and politics in Italian post-war society, 1944–1960”. Historical Social Research
31(1): 134–150.
Braido, Pietro. 2006. “Le metamorfosi dell’Oratorio salesiano tra il secondo dopogu-
erra e il postconcilio vaticano II (1944–1984)”. Ricerche storiche salesiane 25:
295–356.
Cacioppo, Maria. 1982. “Condizione di vita familiare negli anni cinquanta”.
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Caimi, Luciano. 2011. “La questione giovanile: fra oratori, associazioni, movimenti.
Dal 1861 alla fine del secolo XX”. Cristiani d’Italia. http://www.treccani.it/enci-
clopedia/la-questione-giovanile-fra-oratori-associazioni-movimenti-dal-1861-alla-
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———. 2006. “What do mothers want? Takes on motherhood in Bellissima, Il
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Cavallaro, Daniela. 2011. Italian women’s theatre, 1930–1960: An anthology of

plays. Bristol: Intellect.
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 CHAPTER 2

Educational Theatre for Women:

From Renaissance to Fascism

Convent Theatre
In Renaissance Italy, it was customary for the urban elite who wanted
to educate their daughters outside the home to send them to the safe
environment of a convent.1 At the time of the rise of the first convent
schools, female religious orders did not specifically consider teaching part
of their charism, but the fees paid for room, board and education con-
stituted important additional revenue. Often girls would be educated in
convents that had ties to their family and possibly even to their own female
relatives. Although situations varied according to family circumstances,
such as enrolling two sisters at the same time, girls tended to begin their
convent schooling between the ages of seven and nine and remain for one
to three years. Convent education consisted mainly of reading, sewing and
“le virtù”; that is, notions of Christian faith but also social virtues such as
silence, modesty, obedience and self-discipline. “The socialization con-
vent schools offered appealed to middling and upper-class households”,
Sharon Strocchia notes, “not merely because it passively protected girls’
chastity and reputation, but because it actively formed the character of
future wives and mothers around such core values” (1999, 23).
It is within this all-female environment that the genre of convent the-
atre originated in Renaissance Italy, marking the foundation of a dra-
matic experience (as actresses and spectators) created purposely for the

© The Author(s) 2017 15

D. Cavallaro, Educational Theatre for Women in Post-World War II
Italy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-349-95096-6_2
16 D. CAVALLARO

education of girls.2 According to Elissa Weaver, who has brought this

theatrical genre to the attention of the scholarly world, convent theatre
constituted a moment of shared entertainment for the female commu-
nity that rotated around the convent: relatives, friends, benefactors and
mothers of the students. Plays would be staged especially during the sea-
son of Carnival, the time of festivities that begins after the Epiphany (6
January) and stops just short of Lent, as well as for other convent celebra-
tions, such as novices’ taking of the veil. The performances given during
Carnival season were so popular that some young women would enter the
convent after Christmas and leave at the beginning of Lent—a practice
that the Church authorities tried to discourage (Weaver 2002, 88).
By the eighteenth century nuns had already been using theatre in their
convents for two centuries, not only as a form of entertainment but also as
an educational tool. In fact, Weaver explains, convent plays’ “main plots
teach religion and morals; the subplots, or comic interludes, provide the
fun; and the performance gives the young actresses an opportunity to
exercise the art of rhetoric, in particular memoria and pronuntiatio, mem-
orization and delivery” (2002, 62). The theatrical genre, moreover, was
particularly appropriate as an educational tool in a female environment
in which some women might lack the reading skills to learn from written
hagiographical and devotional texts, and as a transformational experience
for both performers and spectators, who actively embodied or passively
absorbed the values promoted onstage (Evangelisti 2007, 103–4).
Initially, it was the young novices and convent boarders who performed
in the plays. Later, even professed nuns acted on the convent stage. The
novice mistress may have authored a play, although works were also bor-
rowed or commissioned externally (Weaver 2002, 65–67). Convent plays
were usually written in Italian, since it was rare for nuns at the time to
study Latin as they needed only a basic knowledge to sing the office
(Weaver 2002, 108).
Space for the presentation varied from the convent’s refectory, to the
parlour, courtyard or sometimes even the church, with the secular audi-
ence watching from behind the grille (Weaver 2002, 79–80). Although
convents had no provision to create major stage effects, nuns some-
times made costumes or, more often, borrowed them from relatives. The
sixteenth-­century Commedia ovvero tragedia di Santa Teodora vergine e
martire (Comedy or tragedy of Saint Teodora virgin and martyr) men-
tions gold chains, necklaces, rings, big bonnets and hats among the props
available to some of the nuns to accessorise their costumes (quoted in
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
a few liberal-minded men, nearly all the members from the cotton-
growing states opposed the application strongly.
[178] Ibid., pp. 55-57.

Whitney combined in a singular degree high inventive capacity

with clear judgment and steady determination. By 1798 he saw that
his hopes for any large return from the cotton gin were uncertain. He
turned to the manufacture of firearms and by steady, sure steps built
up another business and died a well-to-do man. In this second
enterprise he developed the interchangeable system of manufacture
and thereby influenced modern society almost as greatly as he had
in the invention of the cotton gin, although this is little realized by the
general public.
In the chapter on “The Rise of Interchangeable Manufacture” we
traced Whitney’s work as a gun manufacturer from 1798, when he
first applied for his contract for ten thousand muskets. His
undertaking of this contract required courage and self-confidence.
Although he was not a trained gun maker, he proposed “from the
start” to manufacture guns by a new method, which was ridiculed by
those familiar with the manufacture of firearms at that time. He had
to build a plant, design and equip it with new and untried types of
tools; and to educate workmen to his methods. Furthermore, he did
this work, involving $134,000, under bond for satisfactory
performance. The high estimation in which Whitney was held by
those who knew him is evidenced by the fact that, although he was
already embarrassed and embarking on an entirely new kind of
enterprise, ten of the foremost men of New Haven signed his bond
for the faithful performance of his contract.
A contemporary, intimately acquainted with his work, has outlined
his method of manufacture in words which describe the
interchangeable system, as it exists today, so accurately that we give
it in full:
The several parts of the muskets were, under this system, carried along through
the various processes of manufacture, in lots of some hundreds or thousands of
each. In their various stages of progress, they were made to undergo successive
operations by machinery, which not only vastly abridged the labor, but at the same
time so fixed and determined their form and dimensions, as to make comparatively
little skill necessary in the manual operations. Such were the construction and
arrangement of this machinery, that it could be worked by persons of little or no
experience, and yet it performed the work with so much precision, that when, in
the later stages of the process, the several parts of the musket came to be put
together, they were as readily adapted to each other, as if each had been made for
its respective fellow.... It will be readily seen that under such an arrangement any
person of ordinary capacity would soon acquire sufficient dexterity to perform a
branch of the work. Indeed, so easy did Mr. Whitney find it to instruct new and
inexperienced workmen, that he uniformly preferred to do so, rather than to
attempt to combat the prejudices of those who had learned the business under a
different system.[179]
[179] Ibid., pp. 53-54.

It took him a much longer time to fulfill the contract than he had
anticipated; two years elapsed before his plant was ready. Only 500
guns were delivered the first year instead of 4000, and the entire
contract required eight years instead of two from the time when he
began actual manufacture. In spite of this delay he kept the
confidence of the government officials, who were very liberal in their
treatment of him; so much had been advanced to him to help him
develop his machinery that when the contract was completed only
$2450 out of the total of $134,000 remained to be paid. The work
was highly satisfactory, and in 1812 he was awarded another
contract for 15,000 muskets from the United States Government and
one for a similar number from the State of New York. What is known
of his methods and machinery is given in the chapter referred to,
which shows also how they spread to other armories throughout the
country.
The business which Mr. Whitney started was carried on for ninety
years. After his death in 1825 the armory was managed for ten years
by Eli Whitney Blake, later inventor of the Blake stone crusher, and
Philos Blake, his nephews. From 1835 to 1842 it was managed by
ex-Governor Edwards, a trustee of Mr. Whitney’s estate. His son, Eli
Whitney, Jr., then became of age and assumed the management,
and that same year obtained a contract for making the “Harper’s
Ferry” rifle,—the first percussion lock rifle, all guns before that date
having had flint locks.
Eli Whitney, Jr., continued to develop the art of gun making. He
introduced improvements in barrel drilling and was the first to use
steel for gun barrels. In 1847, during the Mexican War, Jefferson
Davis, then a colonel in a Mississippi regiment, wrote to the
Ordnance Department at Washington, that it was his opinion that the
steel-barreled muskets from the Whitney armory were “the best rifles
which had ever been issued to any regiment in the world.” The
Whitney Arms Company supplied the Government with more than
30,000 rifles of this model. The company continued in existence until
1888, when the plant was sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms
Company. It was operated by them for a number of years in the
manufacture of 22-calibre rifles. This work was subsequently
removed to their main works and the plant was sold to the Acme
Wire Company, and later to the Sentinel Gas Appliance Company, its
present owner. Some of the original buildings are still standing. It
may be of interest to note that at the time the works were first built, a
row of substantial stone houses was built by Whitney for his
workmen, which are said to have been the first workmen’s houses
erected by an employer in the United States.
In person Mr. Whitney was tall and dignified. He had a cultivated
mind and a manner at once refined, frank and agreeable. He was
familiar with the best society of his day and was a friend of every
president of the United States from George Washington to John
Quincy Adams. He had a commanding influence among all who
knew him. Seldom has a great inventor been more sane, for his
powers of invention were under perfect control and never ran wild.
Unlike those who devise many things but complete few, he left
nothing half executed. Robert Fulton said that Arkwright, Watt and
Whitney were the three of his contemporaries who had done the
most for mankind.[180] Lord Macaulay is quoted as saying, “What
Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney’s
invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its relation to
the progress and power of the United States.”[181] He contributed
immeasureably to the agriculture and the manufacturing methods of
the whole world and few mechanics have had a greater influence.
[180] Blake: “History of Hamden, Conn.,” p. 303.
[181] Devans: “Our First Century,” p. 153.
 Simeon North was born at Berlin, Conn., the same year as
Whitney, and like him, started life as a farmer. In 1795 he began
making scythes in an old mill adjoining his farm. Just when he began
making pistols is not clear. It is said that he made some for private
sale as early as the time of the Revolution, and it is probable that he
had begun their manufacture in a small way prior to receiving his first
government contract. He may have learned the rudiments of the
trade from Elias Beckley, who had a gun shop about a mile from
North’s birthplace.[182]
[182] The fullest account of Simeon North is given in the “Memoir of
Simeon North,” by S. N. D. North and R. H. North. Concord, N. H., 1913.

In March of 1799, about a year after Whitney received his first

contract for muskets, North received his first contract for horse-
pistols, 500, which were to be delivered in one year. This was
followed by others for 1500 in 1800; 2000 in 1802; 2000 in 1808;
1000 in 1810, and others not known. By 1813 he had made at least
10,000 and was employing forty or fifty men. In none of these
contracts was there any mention made of interchangeability, but
some time during these years North began to use interchangeable
methods. The correspondence quoted in the previous chapter and
the quotations already given show that Whitney was working on the
same basis from the start. It is a great pity that Colonel North’s
papers were destroyed after his death, as they might have thrown
some light on the question as to how and when he began to use
interchangeable methods. It is impossible now to say how much
Whitney and North influenced each other if they did at all. In 1812
the Secretary of War visited North’s shop at Berlin, Conn., and urged
him to increase his plant. On receiving the contract of 1813, North
purchased land in Middletown, Conn., and built a dam and a three-
story brick armory, 86 x 36 feet, on the best lines known at that time,
involving in all an expenditure of $100,000. The old factory was run
in conjunction with the new one until 1843, when it was closed.
North began making barrels of steel in 1848, only a year or two
after Eli Whitney, Jr., and contributed many improvements in the
design of the pistols and guns which he built. The Remington Arms
Company, the Savage Fire Arms Company, the Maynard Rifle
Company and the Massachusetts Arms Company, all trace back in
some way to him, and, like Whitney, he deeply influenced the
practice of the United States Government in its armories at
Springfield and Harper’s Ferry.
Colonel North’s first contract with the Government was made in
1799; his last was finished in 1853, a year after his death, covering
in all about 50,000 pistols and 33,000 rifles. He worked under
sixteen administrations, representing all parties, and in all the fifty-
three years he never received a reproof or a criticism of his work.
He had an old-fashioned sense of honor. In 1826 he was called on
to pay a note for $68,000 which he had indorsed. Although advised
that he could not be held legally, he said that his name was there
and he would stand by it. He placed a mortgage on his property, and
it was twenty-two years before he had made good the loss, which,
principal and interest, amounted to over $100,000. But for this
endorsement he would have died, for that time, a wealthy man.
Colonel North was a country-bred man, strong, quiet and almost
painfully modest. He lacked Whitney’s education and influence, but
like him he represented the best which American mechanical and
business life has produced.
 CHAPTER XIII
THE COLT ARMORY
The city of Hartford has been more closely identified with the later
development of interchangeable manufacture than almost any other
city. The gun makers have been so vital an element in its industrial
life that, before leaving them, we will trace their influence.
The grist and saw mills, always the pioneers, had made their
appearance in the seventeenth century. With recurring attempts at
silk manufacture, most of the meager industrial life was directed
toward some branch of textiles up to and even after 1800.
In 1747 Col. Joseph Pitkin started a prosperous forge for making
bar iron and a mill for iron slitting. It was killed by the Act of
Parliament of 1750, already referred to, but the Pitkin family
balanced the account by using the buildings during the Revolution to
make powder for the Continental army. Later the buildings were put
to their original use. The Pitkins were industrial leaders for many
years in textiles, and in the manufacture of silverware, clocks,
watches, and heating apparatus. Henry and James F. Pitkin made
the old “American lever” watches in 1834, and many of the early
workmen who went to Waltham were trained by them.
 Figure 31. Samuel Colt

The assessors’ returns for 1846 to the Secretary of State gave for
Hartford only three “machine factories” with a total capital of
$25,000, an annual output of $35,000, and forty-five men employed.
There were two boiler shops, a screw factory, a plow factory, a pin
factory, two brass and four iron foundries, and one poor gun maker
who did a business of $625 a year. Taken together, these enterprises
averaged only about $15,000 in capital, $20,000 in annual output
and fifteen employees each. This is hardly more than would be
expected in any town of its size, and certainly does not mark the city
as a manufacturing center. Book publishing employed over twice,
and clothing shops more than four times, as many men as all the
machine shops together.
In 1821 Alpheus and Truman Hanks purchased a small foundry
and began the business which later became Woodruff & Beach. This
firm had a long and successful career in building heavy machinery,
engines and boilers, and was among the earliest makers of iron
plows. In 1871 it became H. B. Beach & Son, boiler makers, and the
firm is still running, H. L. Beach being now (1914) the only survivor of
the old works.
In 1834 Levi Lincoln started the Phœnix Iron Works. Under various
names (George S. Lincoln & Company, Charles L. Lincoln &
Company, The Lincoln Company, The Taylor & Fenn Company) the
business has been maintained by his descendants to this day. Levi
Lincoln invented a number of machines, among them the first
successful hook-and-eye machine for Henry North of New Britain,
which became very valuable and helped to lay the foundation of the
prosperity of that town. George S. Lincoln & Company built machine
tools, architectural iron work and vaults. Their name is permanently
associated with the “Lincoln” miller, which was first built in 1855 in
their shop for the new Colt Armory, from the design of F. A. Pratt. It
was an adaptation and improvement of a Robbins & Lawrence miller
which had been brought to Hartford a year or two before. Few
machines have changed so little or have been used so widely. It has
been said that more than 150,000 of them have been built in this
country and abroad. Even in Europe, the type is definitely known by
this name.
The building of the Colt Armory in 1853 to 1854 marks a definite
era in Hartford’s history and the beginning of manufacturing there on
a large scale. Samuel Colt had an adventurous life, and died in the
midst of his success while less than fifty years old. Born in Hartford
in 1814, he had a rather stormy career as a schoolboy and shipped
before the mast to Calcutta before he was sixteen. After his return
from this voyage, he worked for some months in his father’s dye
works at Ware, Mass., where he got a smattering of chemistry. At
eighteen he started out again, this time as a lecturer under the name
of “Dr. Coult,” giving demonstrations of nitrous-oxide, or laughing
gas, which was little known to the public at that time. Dr. Coult’s
“lectures” were frankly popular, with a view more to laughter than the
imparting of knowledge, but he was clever and a good advertiser. It
is said that he gave laughing gas to more men, women and children
than any other lecturer since chemistry was first known. For three
years he drifted over the country from Quebec to New Orleans,
getting into all kinds of experiences, from administering gas for
cholera when impressed into service on account of his assumed title,
to fleeing the stage from big blacksmiths who took laughing gas too
seriously and actively.
He made the first crude model of his revolver on his voyage to
Calcutta and used the means derived from his “lectures” for
developing the invention. In 1835 he went to England and took out
his first patent there and on his return in 1836 he took out his first
American patent. These covered a firearm with a rotating cylinder
containing several chambers, to be discharged through a single
barrel. The same year, 1836, he organized the Patent Fire Arms
Company at Paterson, N. J., and tried to get the revolver adopted by
the United States Government. In 1837 an army board reported “that
from its complicated character, its liability to accident, and other
reasons, this arm was entirely unsuited to the general purposes of
the service.”
Colt’s first market was secured on the Texas frontier. His earliest
revolvers are known as the Walker and Texas models, and the hold
which he acquired with frontiersmen at that time has never been lost.
The Seminole War in Florida gave Colt an opportunity to
demonstrate the value of the revolver. In 1840 two government
boards gave it a qualified approbation and two small orders followed,
one for one hundred and the other for sixty weapons. The pistols,
however, were expensive, the sales small, and in 1842 the Paterson
company failed and ceased business.
In the next few years the tide turned. The superiority of the
revolvers outstanding was creating a great demand. With the
breaking out of the Mexican War in 1846 came two orders for 1000
pistols each, and from that time onward Colt’s career was one of
rapid and brilliant success.
As his Paterson plant had closed, Colt had the first of the large
government orders made at the Whitney Armory in New Haven,
where he followed minutely every detail of their manufacture. The
following year, 1848, Colt moved to Hartford and for a few years
rented a small building near the center of the city. With rapidly
increasing business, larger quarters soon became necessary.
In 1853 he began his new armory, shown in Fig. 32. South of the
city on the river front, lay an extensive flat, overflowed at high water
and consequently nearly valueless. He purchased a large tract of
this, built a protective dike 30 feet high and 1³⁄₄ miles long, and
drained it. His armory built on this site marks an epoch not only in
the history of Hartford, but in American manufacturing.
After the failure of his first venture at Paterson, Colt had seen the
advantage of interchangeable manufacture at the Whitney shop, and
determined to carry it even further in his new plant. So thoroughly
was this done that the methods crystallized there, and many of the
tools installed have undergone little change to this day. Machine
work almost wholly superseded hand work. Modern machines were
developed, and interchangeability and standards of accuracy given
an entirely new meaning.
The building was in the form of an “H,” 500 feet long and 3¹⁄₂
stories high. It contained over 1400 machines, the greater part of
which were designed and built on the premises. The tools and
fixtures cost about as much as the machines themselves, a
proportion unheard of before. In 1861 the plant was doubled. Three
years later the first building was burned to the ground, but was
immediately rebuilt. This plant was the largest private armory in the
world and far-and-away the best then existing for economical and
accurate production of a high-grade output. Many rivals have sprung
up in the past sixty years, but the Colt Armory is still one of the
leading gun factories of the world.
Colonel Colt was a remarkable man, masterful, daring and brilliant.
He started the larger industrial development of his city, and affected
manufacturing methods more than any other man of his generation.

Figure 32. The Colt Armory

From an Old Wood-Cut

One of the elements of his success was his ability to gather and
hold about him men of the highest order. Among these was Elisha K.
Root, one of the ablest mechanics New England has ever produced.
Root was a Massachusetts farmer’s boy, a few years older than Colt.
He served an apprenticeship, worked at Ware and at Chicopee Falls,
and came to the Collins Company, axe makers, at Collinsville,
Conn., in 1832. He began work there as a lathe hand in the repair
shop, but very soon became foreman and virtual superintendent. His
inventions and methods converted a primitive shop into a modern
factory and gave the Collins Company control, for a long time, of the
American market, and opened up a large export trade. In 1845 he
was made superintendent, and that same year was offered three
important positions elsewhere, one of them that of master armorer at
Springfield.
In 1849 Colt offered him the position of superintendent at a large
salary. It was characteristic of Colt that, although he was just starting
and still in small rented quarters, he outbid three others to get the
best superintendent in New England. Root moved to Hartford,
designed and built the new armory and installed its machinery. Many
of the machines devised by him at that time are still running, holding
their own in accuracy and economy of production with those of
today. Almost every process used in the plant felt his influence. He
invented the best form of drop hammer then in use, machines for
boring, rifling, making cartridges, stock turning, splining, etc., and
worked out the whole system of jigs, fixtures, tools and gauges. The
credit for the revolver belongs to Colt; for the way they were made,
mainly to Root. Fig. 33, a chucking lathe, and Fig. 34, a splining
machine, are two of Mr. Root’s machines which are still at work.
When Colonel Colt died, Mr. Root became president of the company
and continued until his death in 1865, receiving, it is said, the highest
salary paid in the state of Connecticut. He was a mechanic and
inventor of high order, a wise executive, and the success of the two
companies he served was in a large measure due to him. He was
quiet, thoughtful and modest. His influence went into flesh and blood
as well as iron and steel, for under him have worked F. A. Pratt and
Amos Whitney, Charles E. Billings and C. M. Spencer, George A.
Fairfield, of the Hartford Machine Screw Company, William Mason
and a host of others whom we cannot mention here. Like a parent, a
superintendent may be judged, in some measure, by the children he
rears, and few superintendents can show such a family.
Within a few years after the building of the Colt Armory,
manufacturing at Hartford had taken a definite character. From that
day to this it has centered almost wholly on high-grade products,
such as guns, sewing machines, typewriters, bicycles, automobiles
and machine tools. Naturally, during the past generation, the skilled
mechanics of the city have attracted many new and important
industries, only indirectly connected with the armory, which we
cannot consider here.
 In 1848 Christian Sharps invented his breech-loading rifle, and in
1851 a company was formed at Hartford to manufacture it. Richard
S. Lawrence came from Windsor, Vt., as its master armorer, and is
said to have brought with him the first miller used in the city. They did
a large business for some years, but later moved to Bridgeport, and
the plant was sold to the Weed Sewing Machine Company. C. E.
Billings and George A. Fairfield, both “Colt men,” were
superintendents of this plant. When the Columbia bicycles were
introduced, the Weed Sewing Machine Company made them for the
Pope Manufacturing Company of Boston. Later this company bought
the plant, and it became one of the greatest bicycle factories in the
world. Of late years it has been used for the manufacture of
automobiles.
Figure 33. Root’s Chucking Lathe

About 1855
 Figure 34. Root’s Splining Machine

About 1855

Two great industries sprang up in the neighborhood of Hartford in

the early days and had a vigorous life quite independent of it. We
have noted that Levi Lincoln contributed to the establishment of the
hardware industry at New Britain. Although New Britain is but a few
miles from Hartford, its manufactures have moved in a distinctly
different direction. In fact, by 1820 it had taken its character as a
hardware manufacturing center. North & Shipman had begun making
sleigh-bells, hooks and plated goods, and Lee was making buttons
and saddlery hardware. In 1839 Henry E. Russell and Cornelius B.
Erwin became active partners in Stanley, Russell & Company, the
beginning of the Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company. The
Stanley Works and Landers, Frary & Clark had their beginnings in
1842; P. & F. Corbin in 1848, and the Stanley Rule & Level Company
in 1854. About the same time, Elnathan Peck, after a partnership
with George Dewey and Henry Walter, sold out to J. B. Sargent, who
later moved to New Haven. Mr. Peck also moved to New Haven and
started what is now Peck Brothers. It is a remarkable case of the
localization of a great industry. These companies, all large and
important, started within fifteen years in one small village of only a
few thousand inhabitants.
The other industry which started near Hartford but has developed
separately is the manufacture of clocks. Early in the nineteenth
century Eli Terry, first at Windsor, just north of Hartford, and later at
what is now Thomaston, Conn., began using machinery in making
wooden clocks, and by 1840 he had reduced the price for a
movement from $50 to $5. About 1840 Chauncey Jerome, an
apprentice of Terry’s, introduced the one-day brass clock which
could be made for less than fifty cents. In 1842 he shipped his first
consignment to England. They were promptly confiscated at their
invoice prices by the customs authorities for under-valuation. This
was perfectly agreeable to Jerome, as it furnished him with a spot-
cash buyer at full price, with no selling expenses. He therefore sent
another and larger shipment, which shared the same fate. When a
third still larger one arrived, the authorities withdrew from the clock
business and let it in. The exports soon spread everywhere, and
today Connecticut manufactures three-fifths of the clocks produced
in the United States.
Nearly all the great clock companies of Connecticut, like the New
Haven, Seth Thomas and Waterbury companies, trace back directly
or indirectly to Jerome and Terry.
 CHAPTER XIV
THE COLT WORKMEN—PRATT & WHITNEY
At least two of the superintendents of the Colt Armory should be
mentioned—Prof. Charles B. Richards and William Mason.
Mr. Richards was not primarily a tool builder, but his contributions
to mechanical engineering are too great to pass without notice.
About 1860 he helped Charles T. Porter develop the design of the
first high-speed steam engine, and in order to study the action of this
engine he invented the Richards steam engine indicator. Indicators,
more or less crude, had been in use from the time of Watt, but the
Richards indicator was the first one accurate enough and delicate
enough to meet the demands of modern engine practice; and its
influence has been far-reaching. After a few years in New York as a
consulting engineer, he was for many years in the Colt Armory as
engineering superintendent under Mr. Root, and later was
superintendent of the Southwark Foundry & Machine Company in
Philadelphia. In 1884 he became Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University,
where he remained for twenty-five years as the head of the
mechanical engineering department.
William Mason was another of those who helped make the Colt
Armory what it was. He was a modest, kindly man, little known
outside of his immediate associates, but of singular fertility in
invention and almost unerring mechanical judgment. He learned his
trade with the Remington Arms Company at Ilion, N. Y., and after a
long association with them he was for sixteen years superintendent
of the Colt Armory. In 1885 he became master mechanic of the
Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, and held that
position until his death in 1913. He had granted to him more than
125 patents, most of them in connection with arms and ammunition
and tools for their manufacture, but they included many appliances
for looms and weaving, steam pumps, and bridge work, and he
assisted with the development of the Knowles steam pump and
Knowles looms.
Asa Cook, a brother-in-law of F. A. Pratt, was for years a foreman
and contractor at Colt’s. He was afterwards a designer and
manufacturer of machinery for making wood screws, bolt machinery
and many other types of tools. George A. Fairfield, another Colt
foreman, became superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine
factory and later president of the Hartford Machine Screw Company;
another workman, A. F. Cushman, of the Cushman Chuck Company,
for many years manufactured lathe chucks. In fact, there is hardly a
shop in Hartford which dates from the seventies and eighties which
does not trace back in some way to the Colt Armory. Its influence is
by no means confined to Hartford, for such men as Bullard and
Gleason carried its standards and methods to other cities.
Four of the Colt workmen formed two partnerships of wide
influence: Charles E. Billings and Christopher M. Spencer, who
organized the Billings & Spencer Company, and Francis A. Pratt and
Amos Whitney, of the Pratt & Whitney Company.
Charles E. Billings was a Vermonter, who served his
apprenticeship in the old Robbins & Lawrence shop at Windsor, Vt.
When twenty-one, he came to Colt’s, in 1856, as a die sinker and
tool maker and became their expert on the drop forging process. In
1862 he went to E. Remington & Sons, where he built up their
forging plant, increasing its efficiency many times, saving $50,000, it
is said, by one improvement in frame forging alone. At the end of the
war he returned to Hartford as the superintendent of the Weed
Sewing Machine Company, which had taken over the old Sharps
Rifle Works, built by Robbins & Lawrence. For a short time in 1868
Mr. Billings was at Amherst, Mass., associated with Spencer in the
Roper Repeating Arms Company. The venture was not a success,
and the next year, 1869, they came back to Hartford and formed the
Billings & Spencer Company. This company has probably done more
than any other for the art of drop forging, not only in developing the
modern board drop hammer itself, but in extending the accuracy and
application of the process. Mr. Billings was president of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1895.
Christopher M. Spencer was born at Manchester, Conn. He served
his apprenticeship in the machine shops of the silk mills there from
1847 to 1849, and remained for several years as a journeyman
machinist with Cheney Brothers. In 1853 he went to Rochester, N.
Y., to learn something of the other kinds of machinery, working in a
tool building shop and a locomotive shop. After some years at the
Colt Armory he went back to Cheney Brothers and soon obtained his
first patent for an automatic silk-winding machine. This was adopted
by the Willimantic Linen Company, with some modifications made by
Hezekiah Conant, and was the machine which Pratt & Whitney
began manufacturing in their first rented room in Hartford.
Mr. Spencer has had a passion for firearms from boyhood. In 1860
he obtained a patent for the Spencer repeating rifle. The Civil War
created a tremendous demand for it, and the Government ordered
first 1000, then 10,000, and before the war was over it had
purchased about 200,000. In 1862, while the first contracts were
pending, Spencer saw President Lincoln at Washington. He and
Lincoln went down on the White House grounds with the new rifle,
set up a board and shot at it. Lincoln enjoyed it like a schoolboy, and
shot well, too. He tore his coat pocket in the process, but told
Spencer not to worry over it, as he “never had anything of value in it
to lose.”
At the close of the war Spencer went to Amherst and was there
first associated with C. E. Billings in the Roper Company, as we
noted. A year later he joined in starting the Billings & Spencer
Company and coöperated with him in the development of the drop
hammer.
A successful machine which Spencer invented for turning sewing
machine spools suggested to Spencer the possibility of making
metal screws automatically. The result was his invention of the
automatic turret lathe. The importance of the blank cam cylinder, with
its flat strips adjustable for various jobs, was wholly over-looked by
his patent attorney, with the result that Spencer obtained no patent
right on the most valuable feature in the whole machine.