During the last quarter of the 18^th Century a small number of Italians, mostly young and, as far as is known, exclusively male, left their towns and villages around Lake Como and came to Britain. In London and the largest cities they established the foundations of the Anglo-Italian communities that, a century and more later, gave us not only ice cream for the masses but that national take-away: fish’n chips. These early migrants, however, were skilled carvers, gilders, glassblowers and scientific instrument makers, and they were particularly known for their barometers. While the scientific observation of atmospheric pressure lay behind their craft, the everyday experience of economic pressure encouraged their departure. They were not the first to come to England: Italian dancing masters and musicians  were also known, but this small ripple - you cannot call it a 'wave' let alone a flood, became a settled community.

It can't be overstressed that Italy was a geographic not a political entity. For centuries various parts of it were ruled by other nations - Spanish, French, Austrians, Arabs...  And the rest was fragmented into city states. It's arguable that Italy still is a fragmented country. At this period, Lombardy was ruled by the Hapsburgs, the Austrians, who were more interested in what Lombardy could do for them than what they could do for Lombardy. Right at the end of the century the economic situation further deteriorated as a result of the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French not only invaded this Austrian-held province of northern Italy but began to conscript the men of Lombardy into their army. The young men from Como knew from compatriots who had gone north, especially to France, Germany and Holland, that there was likely to be a market for their skills. Few probably intended to emigrate forever: they saw themselves as migrant workers doing their best for their families back home and with the ultimate aim of returning to lead a more prosperous life thanks to their foreign earnings.

There are numerous references to the barometer makers of Como in the contemporary writings of travellers to the region.
At the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 , Sir Thomas Charles Morgan and his second wife, the Irish-born novelist Sydney Owenson, embarked on a long tour of  France and Italy.  She wrote a book about each, to which he contributed the footnotes. Of Como she wrote:

Although the Lake of Como has lately been, and still is, the chosen retreat of ‘Chiefs out of war, and statesmen out of place’, and although human habitations crowd to disfigure its beautiful shores, it wears a character of desolateness, silence, gloom, and sequestration, which is singularly impressive. The many black dismantled buildings which skirt its shore…add much to the dreariness of the scene. And the absence of all land communication (there being no roads along the whole tract of the lake except to the Villa d’Este) deprives the country of those rural sounds and rustic imagery without which no scenery is lovely. The scream of the water-fowl, the toll of the church bell at all the canonical hours, the measured beat of the oar, and in the evening the wild choruses of the inhabitants of the innumerable paese, that lie along the lake, are, however, appropriate sounds, and well become the deep solitude and romantic character of the scene.

Occasionally, an Italian would take his British wife and children back to Italy, where the cost of living was less, even though he himself continued to work in Britain.

What was the attitude to these migrants when they reached Britain? Banfield and Goodison both quote the 1819 Cyclopedia  in its complaint against the wheel barometer which had lately obtruded on the public by strolling Italian hawkers in our streets, decrying the imperfect execution and the defective principle which made them mere mechanical pictures, and not scientific instruments, in the parlour.  It certainly suggests people were happy to buy their barometers, and the Italians soon came to dominate the market. Travellers seem to have enjoyed their encounters with these exotic often itinerant emigrants;  fellow Italians were not necessarily so kind to them, using them as the butt of jokes. One reason may have been their dialect, so hard to understand that in 1845 Pietro Monti published in Milan a dictionary  to help his fellow Italians: Vocabolario dei dialetti della città e diocesi di Como. [With] Saggio di vocabolario della Gallia cisalpina e celtico e Appendice al Vocabolario. There is a hint, too, that they were not always viewed with respect in Britain, as can be seen from this 1817 letter by William Stewart Rose, published as part of Letters from the North of Italy: Addressed to Henry Hallam Esq, Volume 1, London, John Murray, 1819. He had reached the Italian lake region of Maggiore and Como:

You know the class of Italians who wander about the world with prints and barometers. These are considered in England as Jews, but are, in fact, generally speaking, natives of the banks of the lakes of Lombardy... One ruling passion, the love of gain, distinguishes them all. One of these men had embarked with us at Paris, as an outside passenger, and appeared to me little short of an idiot...  But to give them honour due, though miserly, they are not dishonest, and are singularly sober, active and industrious.

                                                                          TO ENGLAND 

  In the modern age of fast trains and air travel to Milan, the journey from Como to England takes less than a day. Using motorways and tunnels, the 750 miles can safely be completed by car with just one overnight stop. The emigrating Italians must have walked much of it while carrying their heavy packs of barometers, thermometers, mirrors, and other wares  made during the winter months.

     The ‘favoured’ route before 1799 was  to go north from Como, across Lake Lugano,up to Airolo and over the St. Gothard Pass. It is not designed for vertigo sufferers.  On the northern side, at Andermatt, the wild waters of the River Reuss crash down the Schöllenen Gorge. The travelling Italians would have crossed this via the narrow 16^th century stone ‘Devil’s Bridge’, a structure which had been improved in the 1770s to take carriages but not stagecoaches.  J.M.W. Turner painted a number of dramatic views of this route, inspired by his travels in Switzerland in 1802, which can be seen at:-
 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/turner-the-devils-bridge-st-gothard-tw1813
 they are certainly worth a look, but for copyright reasons cannot be shown on the website. Foot travellers, many with packs, are clearly visible. In fact, when Turner saw it, the bridge must have been recently repaired following severe damage by the French army in 1799.