Only those who work are entitled to eat!

Such was the statement made to police by 25-year-old Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni when asked why he had just stabbed Elisabeth Amelie Eugenie, the Empress Consort of Franz Joseph I of Austria. He intended the act as a “great deed” to redeem the ignominy of his hard life. Born an orphan, he had gone from foster home to foster home, and then, as he grew older, from job to job. Shortly before his crime, he had lost his position as a servant in the home of an Italian duke. Homeless and half-starved, with little prospect of getting another job, he avenged himself on someone he thought knew no such suffering.

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