to Vincent Gioberti on Aug. 10, 1847, Petitti mentions 1200 members and a fund of 30,000 lire. This society became operative in 1849.783 We have a letter dated August 8, 1855, which proves Don Bosco's
effective involvement in this society. With this letter the society's vice president entrusted to a young
man Don Bosco who had been released from prison, asking him to find employment for him, assist him
and help him, and keep a check on him for the three years of his apprentices hip. This kind of help was laid down in the Instructions for Sponsors of freed youth detainees.
Don Bosco took on the young man entrusted to him and the oblifations indicated, as evidenced by a letter dated August 14, 1855 from his close helper, Father Victor Alasonatti. The Biographer adds that Don Bosco accepted other young men released from prison but with less than satisfactory results, which led him to once again tell the administrators of the Society that his preference was for boys who needed to be sheltered in his Hospice, thus forestalling any “correctional measure”.784
2. Don Bosco's interest in young people with problems
Don Bosco transferred his more systematic interest in youths with problems, actually or virtually at serious risk, into all of hiseducational institutions starting from the original exemplar, the Oratory. It's main objective was to prevent youngsters from failing and relapsing.
This is what Don Bosco wrote to Michael Cavour, the father of Gustav Camillo Di Cavour, concerned as he actually was about public order in the face of the crowded and unpredictable life of the Oratory, during the critical years approaching 1848:
I have no other aim than that of improving the lot of these poor children. And if City Hall
cares to give me some place, I have a well-grounded hope of decreasing the number of
rascals and at the same time the number of youngsters going to jail.785
As we have explained in the previous chapter, this is the dominant objective of Don Bosco's entire
activity. This is more clearly declared during the last years of his life when his vision of problem youth
in the widest meaning of the term, was no longer limited to the local scene but is seen within a
framework of ever -expanding industrial cities, mass immigratio n and emigration, deep social and
cultural changes and the crisis of the relationship between progress and religious faith.
Information on Don Bosco's specific way of dealing with difficult boys enrolled in his institution is
scarce. Some informa tion does not have to do specifically with problem boys in a proper and true
sense, but only in reference to the specific aims of institutions.
As a matter of fact, the information regards the Oratory at Valdocco, the only Oratory personally
directed by D on Bosco and which he nurtured with preferential solicitude, particularly the growing
group of those aspiring to ecclesiastical life. Rigid judgments on the relative impossibility of correcting
some boys and his drastic firmness about expelling some on acc ount of serious insubordination,
immorality or moral corruption on account of scandal, theft and contempt for religious practices,
should not be generalised but seen in this context.
786
Don Bosco had typical contact with younger adults who were quarrelsom e, violent to the point of
delinquency around the 1846s and1850s, as a side activity to his Oratorian one. This is a time when
Turin witnessed clashes and encounters with the “cocche”, bands or gangs always fighting one another,
783Cr. R. Audisio, La 'Generala' di Torino..., pp. 205-229, La Società di patrocinio dei giovani liberati; onDon Bosco's
membership, p. 210; cf also C. Felloni and R. Audisio, 'I giovani discoli', in G. Braccio (Ed.), Torino e Don Bosco, Vol
I, p. 119.
784Cf MB V 228-231. It would seem there were tighter bonds between the Società and John Cocchi and the “Collegio
degli Artigianelli”, founded in 1849 (cf. R. Audisio, La 'Generala' di Torino..., pp. 226-227.
785'Cenno storico...', in P. Braido (Ed.). Don Bosco nella Chiesa..., pp. 46-47.
786This will be noted in Chap. 17.