Working in and for the charity institutions: patterns of employment and actors in early modern Savoy-Piedmont State

This article aims to analyse the range of labour performed by poor people in the charity institutions of the early modern Savoy-Piedmont State. It focuses especially on individuals that, in different ways, were involved in the working system of these institutions, analysing the nature of the work they were required to perform and the social and economic ties that bonded them both with their peers and the institutions. Apart from a few institutions that relegated beggars and vagrants, and workhouses that exploited their inmates for producing for the market, several institutions emphasized the fact that poor should be trained so as to gain some kind of skill and enter the labour market as soon as possible. Although with important differences between girls and boys, and among institutions, a temporary stay at a charity was an occasion for children to learn a job and even join the guilds at a favourable condition. At the same time, this system was profitable also for artisans and entrepreneurs enlisted by the institutions for organizing work and training the poor, since it endowed them and their families with economic privileges and social prestige.