The year was 1839 ...

... and the place was the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The Spanish Bourbon King Ferdinand II was on the throne and, on the whole, life was good - relatively speaking. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was no tin-pot, backwater state. The state of the kingdom was described in some detail by John Goodwin Esq. (Her Majesty's Consul for Sicily) in an article that he wrote in 1842 for the Journal of the Statistical Society of London.

The kingdom's population of about 8,000,000 had increased from approximately 5,000,000 some 100 years earlier and was defended by a standing peace-time army of 42,394 and a navy of 19 sail vessels, 3 steamers and 30 gunboats.

The kingdom traded (importing and exporting) with the Mediterranean countries, Great Britain and France (and their colonies), South America, Northern Europe, the Baltic states and, of course, the USA. Exports leaving the city of Naples alone in 1840 were worth £162,590 (£27,015,219 in today's money). Imports into the City of Naples in the same year were worth a staggering £1,526,845 (£67,333,864).

Its merchant fleet had gone from a total fleet of 8,000 tons in 1824 to 150,634 tons in 1837 (7,800 vessels). Goodwin notes that "[t]he Neapolitan and Sicilian masters, if less hardy and daring than the British, are more careful of their vessels and cargoes, upon which account they are often preferred by fruit merchants and others for voyages from the Mediterranean to the United Kingdom and the north of Europe."

The "chief products of husbandry", says Goodwin, are corn, wine, oil, cotton, flax, hemp liquorice-paste, silk and wool. The territory of Naples produced something in the region of 25,200,000 gallons of wine and 819,000 gallons of brandy. It exported 35,000 tons of oil a year, and about 500,000 tons of raw silk. Exports of wine from Sicily (predominantly Marsala) in 1838 amounted to some 3,150,000 gallons.

The "chief manufactures" are woolens, leather, silks, cottons, paper, soap, glass, earthenware, steel and iron. Exports included 120,000 lbs of organzine and sewing silk a year.

The territory of Naples annual iron production was in the region of 500 tons of pig iron and 1,500 tons of malleable iron - the best being produced, according to Goodwin, at the Satriano foundries in Calabria. The export of sulphur from Sicily had reached something like 75,000 tons a year by 1838.

In October 1839, the kingdom opened its first railway line from Naples to Portici and Goodwin notes that "... carriage roads have been constructed in all parts of the realm ...".

What's more, by 1842 when Goodwin wrote his article, there was also something approaching a system of universal education for both boys and girls.

Goodwin's conclusion on the effect of the Bourbon monarchs on the state of the kingdom are that "[i]f we examine what effect these changes have produced upon the condition of the people, we shall find that have in part wrought evil, but good upon the whole. If the result has been unfortunate in the release of the court from popular control both in Naples and in Sicily, it has in all other respects been happy. The nation is no longer divided into demesnal and feudal populations, but constitutes one people. The commons are no longer subject to nobles and churchmen, but are governed by a single ruler. Justice, no more dealt out by baronial dependents, is administered by the king's judges. Privileged order have ceased to exist, and civic equality prevails in full force. Voluminous states are compressed into a single code. The burthen of taxation, once thrown upon the middle orders, is now shared equally by all classes of society. We may therefore assert that the condition of the people is materially improved, and that the improvement bids fair to proceed, if it be accompanied by an amendment of the executive power, according to which its progress will be faster or slower."

It was in this world on the 27th day of March in the year of our Lord 1839 that Luigi Criscuolo and his wife Brigida celebrated the birth of their son Pasquale in the province of Principato Citra, in the District of Salerno, in the Comune of Scala in the Frazione of Pontone. This is where my story begins again ...

Wonderment and awe

Our trip to Pompeii was an organized trip. We spent the whole day following an ageing gentleman called Lorenzo around the city while he held a garishly coloured, folded umbrella above his head so that we could follow him around like a troop of goslings following their mother goose. For a snob like me who hates being a tourist, it was pure torture - rescued by the fact that I managed to transport myself sufficiently far back in time that 'Renzo's presence didn't bother me any more.

We went on from Pompeii to the workshop of the blacksmiths to the Gods. The bus took us most of the way up and we walked the last twenty minutes or so. There was a fella handing out walking sticks - aparently for free but, of course, they weren't. He needed a tip. We took a stick, handed him a few grand and headed up to the caldera. It was unfortunate that it was quite a hazy sort of day so that you could barely see the bay of Naples and you couldn't see much further south than Salerno, if you could see that far.

Having been to Pompeii and Vesuvius, we started to feel adventurous and decided to take on Herculaneum and Paestum. Herculaneum is, in many ways, better than Pompeii. Apart from the fact that all of the ovine tourists go to Pompeii and none of them go to Herculaneum, through an accident of the eruption and the way it landed on the two cities, the woodwork in Herculaneum survived (albeit carbonized) whereas that in Pompeii simply disappeared.

Ercolano was brilliant although I was almost embarrassed to find that none of the photos I took there were any good. Rubbish. Every single one. I shall have to go back and rectify the matter.

Paestum, like Neapolis, Pompeii and Herculaneum (and a lot of the other cities in southern Italy) were Greek cities. Part of the glorious entity that was Magna Grecia. Even though it was nowhere near as well preserved as either of the two Vesuvian cities, it was good enough to impress ... and some. Seriously heavy Greek temples. The sort of stuff you only expect in Athens.

We were guided around the place by an extremely classily dressed young Italian lady (a history student?) who appeared to know her stuff and was happy to call me family when she discovered that my family came from Scala - the town where she was born and bred. I'd like to think that it was my natural Italian good looks that led her to seek the familial connection so readily but it really doesn't matter. This greying 39 year-0ld spent the rest of the tour around the city chatting to her and feeling very privileged as a result.

Apart from anything else, the fact that I could chat to the guide in her own language and even in her own accent (I can't do the dialect but I can do the accent) separated me from the rest of the ovine tourists.

From the sublime?

This story started four lifetimes ago in a village called Pontone on the Sorrento peninsula in the Lattari mountains behind Amalfi.

It was started by Nicola (just for the record, the emphasis is on the second syllable) Criscuolo who was born in Pontone on 21 December 1875 and the lady who was to become his wife, Raffaella Fraulo, who was born in 1874 in Minori.

Having joined the Royal Italian Army on 24 January 1896, he married Raffaella on 8 February 1900 in Amalfi and, on 2 March 1900, having been granted a period of indefinite leave, the lovebirds took ship in Naples bound for London.

Why did they leave? I've asked myself that question a hundred times. His eldest brother Luigi (ten years his senior) presumably inherited what land the family owned and he already had four kids by the time Nicola left. No prospects? No idea. Itchy feet? Maybe. Looking for a better life? In London?? Economic migrants? Absolutely.

When he arrived in London, he got a flat in Marylebone and (cliché No. 1) set up his own business making ice cream. In 1902 the couple celebrated, presumably, the birth of their first child - a masculine child - called Pasqualino. The name was probably inevitable given that Nicola's father was called Pasquale and his mother Pasqualina.

By 1903, they'd moved to Woburn Walk in St Pancras where Nicola opened a 'refreshment shop' and where, shortly afterwards, they brought their second child, Giolina Marie, into the light.