Rhizome: Bell
Watercolour painting by John Bell of the Bell Ironworks under construction at Port Clarence, Middlesbrough c. 1853
Losh, Wilson and Bell, later Bells, Goodman, then Bells, Lightfoot and finally Bell Brothers, was a leading Northeast England manufacturing company, founded in 1809 by the partners William Losh, Thomas Wilson, and Thomas Bell.
The firm was founded at Newcastle-upon-Tyne with an ironworks and an alkali works nearby at Walker. The alkali works was the first in England to make Soda using the Leblanc process; the ironworks was the first to use Cleveland Ironstone, presaging the 1850s boom in ironmaking on Teesside.
The so-called discoverer of Cleveland Ironstone, the mining engineer John Vaughan, ran a rolling mill for the company before leaving to found the major rival firm Bolckow Vaughan. The other key figure in the company was Lowthian Bell, son of Thomas Bell; he became perhaps the best known ironmaster in England.
As Bell Brothers, the firm continued until 1931, when it was taken over by rival Dorman Long.
The firm's origins can be traced back to 1790 when Archibald Dundonald, with John and William Losh, experimented on how to produce soda from salt. In about 1793 they opened a works at Bells Close, near Newcastle. Dundonald sent William Losh to Paris to study Nicolas Leblanc's process for making soda from salt. In 1807, the Loshes opened an alkali works at Walker, Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland. It was the first in England to use the Leblanc process. Dundonald left the partnership and the business continued as Walker Alkali Works.
Losh, Wilson & Bell's first ironworks was founded in 1809 at Walker, beside the alkali works, carrying out a mixture of engineering work but not building steam engines. By 1818, George Stephenson's original wooden wagonway was completely relaid with cast-iron edge-rails made in collaboration between Stephenson, who owned the patent, and Losh, Wilson and Bell. Around 1821, George Stephenson was briefly a partner in the Walker Ironworks.
In 1827 a rolling mill capable of 100 tons of bar iron per week was installed at the Walker Ironworks; in the same year, Losh, Wilson and Bell's Walker foundry was listed in Parson and White's gazetteer of Durham and Northumberland as a steam engine manufacturer. In 1833, the iron puddling process was installed at Walker. In 1835, while working as an inspector of construction on the Whitby & Pickering Railway, Thomas Wilson noted the presence of ironstone in a railway cutting at Grosmont, and arranged for drift mines to exploit the find; the new railway carried the ore to Whitby. In that year, at the age of nineteen, Thomas Bell's son Lowthian Bell entered the firm's Newcastle office under his father. In 1836 he joined his father at the firm's ironworks at Walker.
In 1838, a second mill for rolling rails was added, run by the engineer John Vaughan (who went on to found Bolckow Vaughan); he strongly influenced Lowthian Bell to become an ironmaster. In the same year, The Athenaeum Journal reported that the Losh, Wilson & Bell works was manufacturing tin and iron plate in large quantities, along with iron bars for making railway-carriage wheels. The firm's adjacent alkali works was one of several such operations on the Tyne that were collectively producing more than 250 tons of crystallised soda and about 100 tons of soda ash weekly. The journal called William Losh "the father of soda-making on the Tyne" and described him as the head of the firm (although it was a partnership).
In 1842, the shortage of pig iron persuaded Bell to install its own blast furnace for smelting mill cinder; this was a key decision, enabling the firm to expand. Only two years later, in 1844, the firm installed a second furnace at Walker for Cleveland Ironstone from Grosmont, six years before the boom in Cleveland iron when Vaughan and Marley discovered ironstone in the Eston Hills in 1850. From 1849, Losh, Wilson and Bell were subcontractors on the Newcastle-Gateshead High Level Bridge, responsible for constructing the bridge approaches.
Losh, Wilson and Bell constructed the approaches for the Newcastle-Gateshead High Level Bridge, c. 1852.
On 25 January 1851, Lowthian Bell left the partnership with William Losh, Thomas Wilson, Catherine Bell, Thomas Bell and John Bell. The business at that time was described in the London Gazette as "Iron Manufacturers, and Ship and Insurance Brokers, under the style or firm of Losh, Wilson, and Bell". He went on to have a career in chemistry and politics, becoming a member of parliament among many other distinctions.
Bells, Goodman: From 1869 at the latest, the company owning the Walker Engine Works was Bells, Goodman & Co. In that year the firm made the tunnelling shield and iron castings to line the Tower subway tunnels. In 1871 the firm made pumping and winding engines for Seghill Colliery. In 1875 it made machinery to condense smoke and gases for Clyde Lead Works of Glasgow.
Bells, Lightfoot: In 1875, the Bells, Goodman partnership was dissolved when Alfred Goodman retired. The firm became known as Bells, Lightfoot & Co. In 1876 it supplied a 90" Cornish beam engine for Springhead Pumping Station near Anlaby in the East Riding of Yorkshire; it had an unusual box-section wrought iron beam, and continued running until 1952. On 30 November 1876, Thomas Bell Lightfoot, Managing Partner, was granted a patent for his developments on machines for squeezing metals into shape. However, on 28 August 1883, Thomas Bell moved to Bilbao, Spain, where he continued to describe himself as an Ironmaster, and by mutual consent his partnership with Henry Bell and Thomas Bell the younger was dissolved. The deed was witnessed on 7 December 1883.
Bell Brothers: By 1873, Bell Brothers owned 9 coal mines in County Durham and Yorkshire. There were 10 mines in 1882; in 1888 the "Clarence Salt Works" was also recorded. In 1896 and 1902 the company had 11 mines. In 1914 there are 12; in 1921 there are 14. The 1881–1891 Arts and Crafts classical style Bell Brothers office building at Zetland Road in Middlesbrough was designed by architect Philip Webb; it was his only commercial development. According to English Heritage it is architecturally the most important building in Middlesbrough.
Bell Brothers was recorded in the Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory of 1923 as having an annual output of 600,000 tons of coal for coking and manufacturing. Sir Hugh Bell was chairman and managing director; Arthur Dorman and Charles Dorman were directors. That same year, Bell Brothers, described in the Sydney Morning Herald as "owners of coal and ironstone mines and blast furnaces and rolling mills", was finally merged completely with Dorman Long.
Left: Watercolour painting by John Bell of the Bell Ironworks under construction at Port Clarence, Middlesbrough c. 1853
Hugh Lee Pattinson FRS (25 December 1796 – 11 November 1858) was an English industrial chemist. He was also an entrepreneur, sharing the risk of major industrial developments with famous ironmaster Isaac Lowthian Bell and cable manufacturer Robert Stirling Newall.
Although known in his time for his 1833 patent "An improved method for separating silver from lead", a process that bears his name, he is best remembered for his daguerreotype photographs taken in 1840. Among these is the earliest known photograph of the Niagara Falls.
Pattinson was the son of Thomas Pattinson, a shopkeeper in the country town of Alston, Cumberland, and his wife Margaret Lee; they were Quakers. He was educated at local private schools. He was interested in science from an early age, doing experiments with electricity when he was 17, and also studying the chemistry of metals.
He began his working life by helping his father in his shop in Alston. In around 1825 he worked for Anthony Clapham, a soap maker in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. In 1825 he became assay master (a tester of the purity of gold or silver coins) to the Greenwich Hospital Commissioners, back at Alston. In continuing experiments in metallurgy, he discovered the basis of his method of separating silver from lead in 1829, but had too little money to go any further. In 1831 he became works manager at Thomas Wentworth Beaumont's lead works. The greater income allowed him to continue his experiments on silver refining until he had a workable process.
In 1834 he resigned from Beaumont's works, and with John Lee and George Burnett, set up a new chemical works at Felling, near Gateshead. It employed around 300 men.
Pattinson patented his process for enriching silver bearing lead in 1833. It exploited the fact that in molten lead containing traces of silver the first metal to solidify out of the melt is lead, leaving the remaining liquid richer in silver. Pattinson's equipment consisted basically of nothing more complex than a row of about 8–9 iron pots, which were heated from below. Some lead, naturally containing a small percentage of silver, was loaded into the central pot and melted. This was then allowed to cool. As the lead solidified, it was skimmed off and moved to the next pot in one direction, and the remaining metal which was now richer in silver was then transferred to the next pot in the opposite direction. The process was repeated from one pot to the next, the lead accumulating in the pot at one end and metal enriched in silver in the pot at the other. The level of enrichment possible is limited by the lead-silver eutectic and typically the process stopped around 600 to 700 ounces per ton (approx 2%), so further separation is carried out by cupellation.
The patent process, known as pattinsonisation, earned Pattinson £16,000 in royalties. The earlier process of "cupellation" had required at least 8 ounces (250 grams) of silver per ton of lead to be economic. Cupellation involved removing the lead from a silver-rich alloy by oxidising the lead to litharge, leaving the silver behind. Pattinson's process was economic with as little as 2 to 3 ounces (about 75 grams) of silver per ton.
Felling Chemical Works, shown at top of Ordnance Survey map of 1862
Works established in 1833 by John Lee, Hugh Lee Pattinson, and George Burnett, as John Lee and Co, where the Pattinson process of de-silverising lead was carried on.
By 1848 The site had grown to 17 acres. The works were lit by gas from the firm's own coke ovens and there was an associated iron works and a brickyard. There was also a company school for children of employees.
Products are soda ash, refined alkali, soda crystals, bi-carbonate of soda, and bleaching powder, produced by Weldon's and Deacon's processes. The works produce about 14,000 tons of soda ash and 6,000 tons of bleaching powder per year. About 650 men and 150 boys are employed.
In about 1840, Pattinson travelled to Canada in the hope of setting up a mining business, stopping at the Niagara Falls long enough to make the earliest known photograph of the falls, a daguerreotype which survives (2009) in the collection of Newcastle University.
It was once believed that the small figure standing silhouetted with a top hat was added by an engraver working from imagination as well as the daguerreotype as his source, but the figure is clearly present in the photograph. Because of the very long exposure required, of ten minutes or more, the figure is assumed by Canada's Niagara Parks agency to be Pattinson himself.
The image is left-right inverted, and taken from the Canadian side. Pattinson made other photographs of the Horseshoe Falls as well as of Rome and Paris. These were then transferred to engravings to illustrate Noël Marie Paymal Lerebours' Excursions Daguerriennes (Paris, 1841–1864). Aside from being the first known photograph of the Falls, Pattinson's image is also the earliest known surviving photograph of any part of Canada, which wouldn't become a nation for another 27 years.
Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, 1st Baronet, FRS (18 February 1816 – 20 December 1904) was a Victorian ironmaster and Liberal Party politician from Washington, County Durham, in the north of England. He was described as being "as famous in his day as Isambard Kingdom Brunel".
Bell was an energetic and skilful entrepreneur as well as an innovative metallurgist. He was involved in multiple partnerships with his brothers to make iron and alkali chemicals, and with other pioneers including Robert Stirling Newall to make steel cables. He pioneered the large-scale manufacture of aluminium at his Washington works, conducting experiments in its production, and in the production of other chemicals such as the newly discovered element thallium. He was a director of major companies including the North Eastern Railway and the Forth Bridge company, then the largest bridge project in the world.
He was a wealthy patron of the arts, commissioning the architect Philip Webb, the designer William Morris and the painter Edward Burne-Jones on his Yorkshire mansions Rounton Grange and Mount Grace Priory.
Bell was the son of Thomas Bell, one of the founders of the iron and alkali company Losh, Wilson and Bell, and his wife Katherine Lowthian. He was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and educated at Dr Bruce's academy in Percy Street, Newcastle, followed by studying physical science at Edinburgh University and the Sorbonne University, Paris. He gained experience in manufacturing alkalis at Marseilles before returning to Newcastle in 1836 to work in his father's Walker iron and chemical works.
Bells, Goodman: From 1869 at the latest, the company owning the Walker Engine Works was Bells, Goodman & Co. In that year the firm made the tunnelling shield and iron castings to line the Tower subway tunnels. In 1871 the firm made pumping and winding engines for Seghill Colliery. In 1875 it made machinery to condense smoke and gases for Clyde Lead Works of Glasgow.
Bells, Lightfoot: In 1875, the Bells, Goodman partnership was dissolved when Alfred Goodman retired. The firm became known as Bells, Lightfoot & Co. In 1876 it supplied a 90" Cornish beam engine for Springhead Pumping Station near Anlaby in the East Riding of Yorkshire; it had an unusual box-section wrought iron beam, and continued running until 1952. On 30 November 1876, Thomas Bell Lightfoot, Managing Partner, was granted a patent for his developments on machines for squeezing metals into shape. However, on 28 August 1883, Thomas Bell moved to Bilbao, Spain, where he continued to describe himself as an Ironmaster, and by mutual consent his partnership with Henry Bell and Thomas Bell the younger was dissolved. The deed was witnessed on 7 December 1883.
Bell Brothers: By 1873, Bell Brothers owned 9 coal mines in County Durham and Yorkshire. There were 10 mines in 1882; in 1888 the "Clarence Salt Works" was also recorded. In 1896 and 1902 the company had 11 mines. In 1914 there are 12; in 1921 there are 14. The 1881–1891 Arts and Crafts classical style Bell Brothers office building at Zetland Road in Middlesbrough was designed by architect Philip Webb; it was his only commercial development. According to English Heritage it is architecturally the most important building in Middlesbrough.
Bell Brothers was recorded in the Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory of 1923 as having an annual output of 600,000 tons of coal for coking and manufacturing. Sir Hugh Bell was chairman and managing director; Arthur Dorman and Charles Dorman were directors. That same year, Bell Brothers, described in the Sydney Morning Herald as "owners of coal and ironstone mines and blast furnaces and rolling mills", was finally merged completely with Dorman Long.
Sir Thomas Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet, CB, JP, FSA (10 February 1844 – 29 June 1931) was mayor of Middlesbrough three times – in 1874, 1883 and 1911 – High Sheriff of Durham 1895, Justice of the Peace, Deputy Lieutenant of County Durham, Lord Lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire. He joined his family firm, Bell Brothers, and became director of its steelworks at Middlesbrough. Sir Hugh was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the 1918 Birthday Honours.
Bell was educated at Edinburgh, the Sorbonne university in Paris, and in Germany. When he was 18 he was obliged by his father to work at the family's Bell Brothers Ironworks at Walker, Newcastle. He was then made the director of the family's other large factory, the steelworks at Middlesbrough.
Bell was, like his father, a director of the North Eastern Railway, and had a private platform on the line between Middlesbrough and Redcar at the bottom of his garden at his house Red Barns. He was treated as royalty by the railway. His daughter, Lady Richmond, recalled saying goodbye to her father at King's Cross. He stayed with her on the platform to chat until the train left. When the train did not leave on time they went on talking, until at last a guard came up to them and said "If you would like to finish your conversation, Sir Hugh, we will then be ready to depart." He was no ordinary capitalist and mill owner, but made sure his workers were well paid and cared for.
Left: Portrait of Sir Hugh Bell, with Gertrude Bell aged 8, by Edward Poynter, 1876
Sir William Cubitt FRS (bapt. 9 October 1785 – 13 October 1861) was an eminent English civil engineer and millwright. Born in Norfolk, England, he was employed in many of the great engineering undertakings of his time. He invented a type of windmill sail and the prison treadwheel, and was employed as chief engineer, at Ransomes of Ipswich, before moving to London. He worked on canals, docks, and railways, including the South Eastern Railway and the Great Northern Railway. He was the chief engineer of Crystal Palace erected at Hyde Park in 1851.
He was president of the Institution of Civil Engineers between 1850 and 1851.
Cubitt was born in Dilham, Norfolk, the son of Joseph Cubitt of Bacton Wood, a miller, and Hannah Lubbock. He attended the village school. His father moved to Southrepps, and William at an early age was employed in the mill, but in 1800 was apprenticed to James Lyon, a cabinet-maker at Stalham, from whom he parted after four years. At Bacton Wood Mills he again worked with his father in 1804, and also constructed a machine for splitting hides. He then joined an agricultural machine maker named Cook, at Swanton, where they constructed horse threshing machines and other implements.
Cubitt became known for the accuracy and finish of his patterns for the iron castings of machines. Self-regulating windmill sails were invented and patented by him in 1807, at which period he settled at Horning, Norfolk, in business as a millwright. He in 1812 sought and obtained an engagement in the works of Messrs. Ransome of Ipswich, where he soon became the chief engineer. For nine years he held this situation, and then became a partner in the firm, a position which he held until he moved to London in 1826.
Already Cubitt was concerned with the employment of criminals; and for the purpose of using their labour he invented the treadmill, with the object, for example, of grinding corn, and not at first contemplating the use of the machine as a means of punishment. This invention was brought out about 1818, and was immediately adopted in the major gaols of the United Kingdom. From 1814 Cubitt had been acting as a civil engineer, and after his move to London he was fully engaged in important works. He was extensively employed in canal engineering, and the Oxford canal and the Liverpool Junction canal are among his works under this head. The improvement of the River Severn was carried out by him, and he made a series of reports on rivers. In 1841 he designed a new wharf on the Regent's Canal at Camden in London to allow transhipment of goods between the canal, road and railway. The Bute docks at Cardiff, the Middlesbrough docks and the coal drops on the Tees, and the Black Sluice drainage were undertakings which he successfully accomplished.
After the introduction of railways Cubitt's evidence was sought in parliamentary contests. As engineer-in-chief he constructed the South Eastern Railway: he adopted the scheme of employing a monster charge of 18,000 lb. of gunpowder for blowing down the face of Round Down Cliff, between Folkestone and Dover (26 January 1843), and then constructing the line of railway along the beach, with a tunnel beneath the Shakespeare Cliff. On the Croydon Railway the atmospheric system was tried by him.
On the Great Northern, to which Cubitt was the consulting engineer, he introduced the latest innovations. The Hanoverian government asked his advice on the subject of the harbour and docks at Harburg. The works for supplying Berlin with water were carried out under his direction; and he was surveyor for the Paris and Lyon railway.
On the completion of the railway to Folkestone, and the establishment of a line of steamers to Boulogne, he superintended the improvement of the port there, and then became the consulting engineer to the Boulogne and Amiens railway. Among his last works were the two large landing-stages at Liverpool, and the bridge for carrying the London turnpike road across the River Medway at Rochester, Kent.
Cubitt joined the Institution of Civil Engineers as a member in 1823, became a member of council in 1831, vice-president in 1836, and held the post of president in 1850 and 1851. While president in 1851 he had major responsibility for the erection of the Great Exhibition building in Hyde Park. At the expiration of his services he was knighted by the queen at Windsor Castle on 23 December 1851. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society on 1 April 1830, and was also a fellow of the Royal Irish Academy, and a member of other learned societies.
One of Cubitt's nephews and his protégé on the South Eastern and Great Northern railways, James Moore C. E., was appointed Chief Engineer for the Hobson's Bay Railway company and designed the first commercial steam railway in Melbourne. Moore replaced another of Cubitt's assistants, William Snell Chauncy.
Cubitt retired from business in 1858, and died at his residence on Clapham Common, Surrey, on 13 October 1861, and was buried in Norwood cemetery on 18 October.
Left: Sir William Cubitt, by Thomas Herbert Maguire, lithograph, 1850
Dame Florence Eveleen Eleanore Bell, DBE, JP (née Olliffe; 9 September 1851 - 16 May 1930) was a British writer and playwright.
Bell was born in Paris, France in 1851, the youngest of four children of Irish-born Joseph Francis Olliffe (later Sir Joseph Olliffe) and Laura Cubitt. She was the second wife of Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet Bell of Rounton Grange, and was styled Lady Florence Bell. The couple had three children:
Hugh Lowthian Bell (21 October 1878 – 2 February 1926)
Florence Elsa Bell (c. 1880 – 3 May 1971, married Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond)
Mary Katherine Bell, OBE (c. 1882 - 8 October 1966, married Charles Philips Trevelyan)
Bell was the stepmother to her husband's children from his first marriage: British explorer and key political figure in the Middle East, Gertrude Bell (1868–1926) and Maurice, 3rd Baronet (1871–1944).
In 1918 she was appointed as Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). She died on 16 May 1930 at her home, 95 Sloane Street, Chelsea.
Works:
Alan's Wife (with
, 1893)
A Collection of Plays and Monologues for the Drawing Room
At the Works: Study of a Manufacturing Town, Middlesbrough (1907)
The Letters of Gertrude Bell, Volume 1 (1927)
The Letters of Gertrude Bell, Volume II (1927)
French Without Tears: Book I
French Without Tears: Book II
French Without Tears: Book III
Petit theâtre des enfants: twelve tiny french plays for children
Left: The Cairo Conference, 1921. From the left: Winston Churchill, Gertrude Bell, T.E. Lawrence.
Gertrude Bell, Percy Cox and T.E. Lawrence were among a select group of "Orientalists" convened by
to attend a
to determine the
boundaries of the British mandate
(e.g., "the British Partitions") and nascent states such as Iraq. Gertrude is supposed to have described Lawrence as being able "to ignite fires in cold rooms".
Throughout the conference, she, Cox and Lawrence worked tirelessly to promote the establishment of the countries of
and Iraq
by the Kings
and
, sons of the instigator of the
against the Ottoman Empire (ca. 1915–1916),
, Sharif and Emir of Mecca. Until her death in Baghdad, she served in the Iraq British High Commission advisory group there.
Bell opposed the
, on the grounds that it would be unfair to impose Jewish rule on Arab inhabitants of Palestine. She wrote that she regarded the
with "the deepest mistrust" and that "It's like a nightmare in which you foresee all the horrible things which are going to happen and can`t stretch out your hand to prevent them".
Creation of Iraq
After British troops took Baghdad on 10 March 1917, Bell was summoned by Cox to Baghdad
and given the title of "Oriental Secretary." As the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire was finalised by the end of the war in late January 1919, Bell was assigned to conduct an analysis of the situation in Mesopotamia. Due to her familiarity and relations with the tribes in the area she had strong ideas about the leadership needed in Iraq. She spent the next ten months writing what was later considered a masterly official report, "Self Determination in Mesopotamia".
The British Commissioner in Mesopotamia,
, had different ideas of how Iraq should be run, preferring an Arab government to be under the influence of British officials who would retain real control, as he felt, from experience, that Mesopotamian populations were not yet ready to govern and administer the country efficiently and peacefully.
On 11 October 1920, Percy Cox returned to Baghdad and asked her to continue as Oriental Secretary, acting as liaison with the forthcoming Arab government. Gertrude Bell essentially played the role of mediator between the Arab government and British officials. Bell often had to mediate between the various groups of Iraq including a majority population of Shias in the southern region, Sunnis in central Iraq, and the Kurds, mostly in the northern region, who wished to be autonomous. Keeping these groups united was essential for political balance in Iraq and for British imperial interests. Iraq not only contained valuable resources in oil but would act as a buffer zone, with the help of Kurds in the north as a standing army in the region to protect against
, Persia (Iran), and Syria. British officials in London, especially Churchill, were highly concerned about cutting heavy costs in the colonies, including the cost of quashing tribal infighting. Another important project for both the British and new Iraqi rulers was creating a new identity for these people so that they would identify themselves as one nation.
British officials quickly realised that their strategies in governing were adding to costs. Iraq would be cheaper as a self-governing state.
The
was held to determine the political and geographic structure of what later became Iraq and the modern Middle East. Significant input was given by Gertrude Bell in these discussions thus she was an essential part of its creation. At the Cairo Conference Bell and Lawrence highly recommended
, (the son of Hussein,
), former commander of the Arab forces that helped the British during the war and entered Damascus at the culmination of the Arab Revolt. He had been recently deposed by France as
, and British officials at the Cairo Conference decided to make him the first
. They believed that due to his lineage as a Hashemite and his diplomatic skills he would be respected and have the ability to unite the various groups in the country. Shias would respect him because of his lineage from
. Sunnis, including Kurds, would follow him because he was Sunni from a respected family. Keeping all the groups under control in Iraq was essential to balance the political and economic interests of the British Empire.
Upon Faisal's arrival in 1921, Bell advised him on local questions, including matters involving tribal geography and local business. She also supervised the selection of appointees for cabinet and other leadership posts in the new government. Referred to by Arabs as "al-Khatun" (a Lady of the Court who keeps an open eye and ear for the benefit of the State), she was a confidante of King Faisal of Iraq and helped ease his passage into the role, amongst Iraq's other tribal leaders at the start of his reign. He helped her to found Baghdad's
from her own modest artefact collection and to establish The British School of Archaeology, Iraq, for the endowment of excavation projects from proceeds in her will.
The stress of authoring a prodigious output of books, correspondence, intelligence reports, reference works, and white papers; of recurring bronchitis attacks brought on by years of heavy smoking in the company of English and Arab cohorts; of bouts with malaria; and finally, of coping with Baghdad's summer heat all took a toll on her health. Somewhat frail to start with, she became emaciated.
Historians have pointed out that the present troubles in Iraq to be derived from the political boundaries Bell conceived to create its borders. Her reports, however, indicate that problems were foreseen, and both Bell and her British colleagues believed that there were just not many (if any) permanent solutions for calming the divisive forces at work in that part of the world. However, her lobbying for the Sunni minority to control the Shia majority created a template for the Sunni dictatorships that followed. Her colleagues also insisted that the Kurds be deprived of a homeland, and that a portion of them should be incorporated into Iraq, a division that Bell did not oppose. The division of the Kurds between Iraq, Syria and Turkey led to their oppression in all three countries, and Bell endorsed the use of force against the Kurds. "Mesopotamia is not a civilised state," Bell wrote to her father on 18 December 1920.
Throughout the early 1920s Bell was an integral part of the administration of Iraq. The new Hashemite monarchy used the Sharifian flag, which consisted of a black stripe representing the
, white stripe representing the
, and a green stripe for
, and lastly a red triangle to set across the three bands symbolising Islam. Bell felt it essential to customise it for Iraq by adding a gold star to the design. Faisal was crowned king of Iraq on 23 August 1921, but he was not completely welcomed. Using Shi'ite history to gain support for Faisal, during the holy month of
, Bell compared Faisal's arrival in Baghdad to Husayn, grandson of Muhammad. However, there was little enthusiasm for Faisal when he landed at the Shia port of Basra.
She did not find working with the new king to be easy: "You may rely upon one thing — I'll never engage in creating kings again; it's too great a strain." Faisal attempted to rid himself of the control of British advisors, including Bell, with only limited success.
Right: Photographs taken by Gertrude Bell of the gardens at Rounton Grange, circa 1912.
The children are Mary & Anthony Spring, daughter and son of Cecil Spring Rice and Florence Caroline Lascelles.
Left: Florence and Hugh Bell with Nora (later Susanna) Richmond and Hugh Bell, early 1924, in the garden of Rounton Grange.