Paolo Robello left his home in the Genoa area of Italy around 1840 at the age of 14/15. We believe he came from a farming, rather than a fishing family, as, in later life, when he was forgetful and confused he apparently talked about his sheep. He left Genoa with a friend and the blessing of the local priest who gave him a pair of rosary beads to take with him. The two boys walked “across the Alps” and by April 1841 had reached London where Paolo appears in the Census as living in Saffron Hill in the Clerkenwell area. He was a travelling street musician and must have been in London at the time Mazzini set up his “Italian School” for the young boy musicians living in the area.

Between 1841 and 1851 he moved northwards, as he next appears in the 1851 Census (as Pol Rebel) in Edinburgh, living in lodgings with other musicians. By 1853 he had moved to Aberdeen and married Mary Ann McKay, who was the daughter of William McKay, a soldier in the 78^th Foot Regiment, and Maria Withnell, an English woman born in Staffordshire, who kept lodgings in the city. The couple were married in the East Parish, Aberdeen on 16 December 1853. Times were hard and Paolo’s trade moved from being a musician to “wool scourer/dyer”. In short he changed his initial life looking after live sheep in the sunny hills above Genoa to working in the difficult conditions of a wool mill in cold industrial northern Britain. This shows how bad the conditions must have been in Italy at that time, when the country was in political turmoil.

Paolo, however, was a strong courageous man and survived until the age of 91. Towards the end of his life, he and Mary Ann were looked after by their daughter, Catherine, who never married, and when she subsequently died of breast cancer, the couple were transferred into the care of the nuns in Nazareth House in Aberdeen where Paolo died on 19 March, 1916 .

Paolo and Mary Ann had 8 children. All children were immediately baptized in the local Roman Catholic Church of St Peters in Aberdeen. 5 of the children died in infancy of the various diseases which were common among the poor in industrial Britain at that time. The three who survived were Maria, who married and had a child but who died at the age of 24 in 1881, Catherine, who died on 3 February 1913 at the age of 53 of breast cancer, and Paul the youngest, who survived until he was 95 and became the first cinematographer in Scotland. Paul was therefore the only 2^nd generation survivor and our grandfather.

Paolo Robello and Mary Ann McKay had 8 children:

William Robello                    24/12/1854 –15/06/1857    Cause of death: Unknown.
Mary Annamaria Robello    30/10/1856 – 31/08/1881    Cause of death: Pithisis Pulmonalis
Joseph Robello                     16/07/1858 – 29/09/1859    Cause of death: Dysentry
Catherine Robello                25/02/1860 – 03/12/1913    Cause of death: Carcinoma Mamone
Ann Robello                         02/01/1862 – 18/07/1864    Cause of death: Whooping Cough
Mary Robello                       26/06/1864 – 09/03/1865    Cause of death: Bronchitis
Angelina Robello                26/07/1866 – 01/10/1866    Cause of death: Gastric irritation
Paul Robello                        17/12/1867 – 06/06/1961    Cause of death: Broncho pneumonia

5 of the children died in infancy.

Mary Annamaria Robello, the second child, married Lewis Gray and had a child. Both she and the child subsequently died and Lewis remarried.

Catherine Robello died of cancer at 53 years of age. She never married and worked in the woollen mills with her father. She looked after her elderly parents until she died.

Paul Robello lived until he was 95. He was the only one of this generation to leave children for the 3^rd generation of Robellos in Britain. He was born on 17 December 1867 and lived with his parents in Aberdeen until he married Helen Bain in St Peter’s Aberdeen on 5 June 1900. Previous to this date he had started training with George Washington Wilson, the photographer and in 1892 had started work with William Walker, a local bookseller and optical lanternist.

Paul became Walker’s chief technician and was responsible for the slides and stage lighting at lantern shows and concert parties. With the arrival of moving pictures, he travelled to London with Walker in 1896 to buy film equipment and subsequently filmed many local events, the most famous of which was the Braemar Gathering in 1898. This film was part of a command performance Walker gave for Queen Victoria at Balmoral Castle on 24 October 1898. Paul became, in fact, the first cinematographer in Scotland.

When Walker’s business collapsed, Paul worked on in Aberdeen, but had moved to Glasgow by 1918 where he was employed by Green’s Film Service to run the Production department for their Scottish Moving Picture News. In September 1922 he and Bobbie Mann started up their own company ‘Topical Productions’, which was based at 441 St Vincent Street, Glasgow. The company advertised itself as “specialists in the producing of Topical, Industrial and Educational Cine Films since 1896”. The firm tried to make sure that any of their important events films went on show in Glasgow cinemas that same day.

‘Topical Productions’ was also the Scottish representative for the UK wide Pathe–Gazette newsreel and supplied stories to Topical Budget news. The company continued to operate until 1944 when Paul retired. He spent the rest of his life in Mosspark with his family until his death aged 95 on 21 June 1961.

Paul Robello and Helen Bain left 4 children