An inquiry in 1564 into Pescara on the Adriatic, a not particularly poor town with a fortress and a garrison, found that three-quarters of the families in the town lived in makeshift shelters. In wealthy Genoa, poor people sold themselves as galley slaves every winter. In Paris the very poor were chained together in pairs and forced to do the hard work of cleaning the drains. In England, the poor had to work in workhouses to get relief, where they worked long hours for almost no pay. Some were instructed to crush dog, horse and cattle bones for use as fertilizer, until an inspection of a
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