3-070-999 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Casamicciola (Isle of Ischia), the scene of the earthquake on the 4th March, 1881. 'The beautiful island of Ischia has been visited by a terrible earthquake, causing great loss of life at the small town of Casamicciola, which is a favourite seaside resort, in the summer, for Neapolitans and foreign sojourners...Casamicciola, on the northern shore...had three or four thousand inhabitants before the recent disaster, by which nearly three hundred lives, according to the latest estimate, have been destroyed...The earthquake began on Friday (yesterday week) at one o'clock in the afternoon, the shock that time, which only lasted a few seconds, demolishing about three hundred houses...a hundred and forty dead bodies have been dug out, besides many detached limbs and other fragments of human corpses. The visitors who had been staying in the place immediately left it, and many of the townspeople also fled into the interior of the island. Some of the homeless families found shelter at the institute of the Monte di Pietà, while others were accommodated with tents and blankets sent from Naples. The Italian Government, and the King of Italy personally, have contributed largely to the relief of the sufferers by this disaster'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.