On 16 December 1857 , the area around Padula , Italy , was devastated by the Great Neapolitan earthquake which caused 11,000 deaths . At the time it was the third largest known earthquake in the world and has been estimated to have been of magnitude 6.9 on the Richter Scale . Mallet , with letters of support from Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin , petitioned the Royal Society of London and received a grant of £ 150 to go to Padula and record at first hand the devastation . The resulting report was presented to the Royal Society as the '' Report on the Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 '' . It was a major scientific work and made great use of the then new research tool of photography to record the devastation caused by the earthquake . In 1862 , he published the '' " Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 : The First Principles of Observational Seismology " '' in two volumes ; he brought forward evidence to show that the depth below the Earth 's surface , from where the impulse of the Neapolitan earthquake originated , was about 8 &ndash; 9 geographical miles
Great Neapolitan earthquake
1857 Basilicata earthquake
Robert Mallet