Patriot and politician
Camillo was the fourth son of Baron Pasquale Sceberras, and Lucrezia Maria nèe Dorell Falzon. During the troubled years which preceded the fall of the Order of St. John, he joined the local secret Jacobin Party which was plotting to hand over the island to the French Republican Government. He sided with the French during the insurrection that broke out on 2 September 1798.
On 9 November, 1798, Sceberras left the island secretly accompanying the French Civil Governor Regnaud St. Jean d’Angely, in a small craft named Desiree under padrone G. Scolaro with St. Vathica in command. He landed at Civitavecchia on 28 November. Sceberras returned to Malta in 1817 and nurtured as he was in the very cradle of civic liberty, he began to take an active part in the local movement for political reform. In 1832, he formed the Comitato Generale Maltese together with Giorgio Mitrovich, which drew up a popular petition for the grant of political rights. This was followed by others in 1835, which attracted considerable attention in the metropolis and the House of Commons.
At the request of Mitrovich who had gone to London to agitate and enlist sympathy for the Maltese cause, he drew up a just and impartial report on the grievances of the Maltese for the information of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Glenelg. In Malta, Col. Cardew, the officer administering the Government issued an official notice on 11 November, 1835 inviting Camillo Sceberras and all other qualified persons to give evidence in a conference but only the Canons of the church of St. Paul’s Shipwreck accepted the invitation and this in connection with their belief that the government of the day had been responsible for depriving them of the use of a mace in processions and the permission to change the colour of their tippets from purple to red.
In 1842, Sceberras addressed a memorial to the Governor against the growing infiltration of the Jesuits in Malta and their plotting with the reactionary British emissaries in the island working actively to thwart the growing Italian Liberation movement.
Camillo Sceberras’ political education in France and his known strong pro-French sympathies caused him to be regarded with suspicion in those troubled years and at a time when large-scale Maltese emigration to the French possessions of Tunisia where they found new and prosperous homes was forging a strong bond of sympathy with France and French liberal ideas.
Camillo Sceberras married Maddalena Ravanelli on 3 June 1807 in the church of Campo Santo in the Duomo zone of Milan.
Sceberras died aged 82 years in 1855.
This biography is part of the collection created by Michael Schiavone over a 30-year period. Read more about Schiavone and his initiative here.