Maddalena Carini was born on 1 March 1917 in Pavia as the last of seven children to Giuseppe Carini and Francesca Bianchi Martina.
Carini began to suffer from an aggressive form of tuberculosis in 1927 in the pleura and the peritoneum and so had to spent long periods of time in a sanatorium until 1937 - this ailment was known to have run through the generations [REF].