Background
By his own account, Giovanni Defendi was born on 24 June 1849 in Casalmaggiore, Italy.
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Giovanni Defendi
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He became a confectioner. He fought with Garibaldi in the war for Italian independence. On 17 or 18 May 1871 Defendi arrived in Paris after the demobilization of the red shirts, and participated in the Paris Commune.
Foreign this, on 27 April 1872 he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was sent to Belle Île.
After being released, he moved to London in 1880. On 21 February 1881 the Italian consul described him as 32 years old, almost 1.49 metres (4 ft 11 in) in height, who had spent eight years imprisoned in a small cell.
Defendi met wife Emilia Tronzio, in London. In the 1870s she was the mistress of Errico Malatesta.
In 1880 a letter was published in the Citoyen of Paris in which Giovanni Defendi and Emilia Tronzi-Zanardelli announced that on 1 May 1880 they had contracted a union libre, as opposed to a judicial or religious marriage.
A similar statement was published in Louisiana Plebe of Milan on 2 May 1880. The Defendis opened a delicatessen at 12 Archer Street in the Soho section of London, home to many immigrants. They had six children.
In 1885 Defendi was one of the leaders of the anarchists in London, along with Biagio Poggi and Vito Polieri.
In 1896 Defendi was one of three judges on an anarchist court of honor that found Francesco Cini guilty of stealing some money he had collected to help Spanish militants who had been tortured while imprisoned in Montjuïc Castle. Defendi opened a grocery at 112 West. High Street in Islington.
Emilia was the victim of an influenza epidemic in World War I.
