which had been publishing accounts of her speaking tours. She was treated as a celebrity, toured the area and successfully deflected attention away from Mazzini, who was working on a clandestine expedition to break patriots out of a Bourbon prison near Naples. The operation failed badly, Mazzini escaped the police round-up and returned to London. Jessie was captured and sent to prison in Genoa for four months, where she met the man who would become her husband, Alberto Mario. They married in December 1857 at her family's home in England. Jessie continued her speaking tours in England and Scotland, to much acclaim. In the Fall of 1858 Jessie and Alberto went to New York City to continue lecturing and fund-raising; she to English speaking audiences and he to Italian speakers. Spring 1860 found them in Lugano, Switzerland, from where they rushed to Genoa to be part of the second wave of volunteers going to Sicily to join Garibaldi in his lightning-fast conquest of the Bourbon-controlled southern half of Italy. Alberto was on Garibaldi's staff and Jessie was nurse to the wounded, doing whatever was needed. This included tightly holding a boy while his arm was amputated without anaesthesia. Skills learned and refined during this war were used again in 1866 in the war against the Austrians west of Venice; in 1867 at Monterotondo and Mentana, north of Rome; and in the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War when Garibaldi led an army against the Germans in eastern France. As the unification of the Italian peninsula became complete, in 1870, with the addition of Rome which quickly became the capital, attention shifted to the problems of this new country. Social issues were not high on the agenda; in fact, most social problems were not even recognised by the new government. Social concerns Starting in the early 1870s Jessie devoted herself to philanthropic work among the urban poor of South Italy, working particularly on three research projects aimed at raising governmental awareness and encouraging subsequent action. The first was to research the causes, effects and possible solution to the problem of pellagra. This disease, of the three D's — dermatitis, diarrhoea and dementia — is caused by lack of protein-rich foods in the diet and a subsequent lack of vitamin B3. Jessie's research into pellagra lasted for ten years, and her findings showed that even such simple, readily available diet supplements as two glasses of