Jessie White Mario, Garibaldi’s reporter

An Englishwoman who wanted to be a doctor and ended up as a journalist. But at the battle of Mentana she organized the field hospital and mended the wounded. She then she devoted herself to Naples, and she was the first to tell the disaster of the welfare of the Pious Works: she mangers of funds for the employees and no help to the poor of the city

To those who want to deal with poverty, unaware of the side effects of assistance, the lady must be introduced Jessie White Mario. The lawyer Ernesto Pozzi da Acquate – the village of Don Abbondio, in the Lecco area – who as a student had been a volunteer with Garibaldi and had met her in the Mentana camp, spoke of it as “More characteristic Garibaldi type”. Here she is: “Nurse, doctor, diplomat, correspondent of English and American papers, rescuer with life risk from column to column, ambassador among the armies, restless and always British phlegmatic, genius of good and providence of all”. But, of course, there was no shortage of detractors, such as the pro-Bourbon historian Giacinto de ‘Sivo, who mentions with hatred “certain foreign ladies, being soldiers or pump nurses”.