Author: Bell, James
Biography:
by
Ragaz, Sharon (SR)
BELL, James (b 1785: findmypast.co.uk)
The son of Robert Bell and his wife Elizabeth Dunn, he was born in Roos, Yorkshire, on 24 Nov. 1785 and was baptised on 26 Nov. He became an officer in the militia of the East Riding of Yorkshire in 1808 and was promoted to Major in 1810. His wife was Elizabeth (possibly Shutt, b c. 1798 in Chelsea, London) but no record of the marriage has been located. At least two of their children, Jemima Shutt Bell (b 1827) and James Shutt Bell (1830-59), were born in Beverley, Yorkshire. No public records have been located for other details of his life; the information given here is from his RLF applications in 1851, 1854, 1856, 1861, and 1866. He was granted a total of £130. On first applying on 3 June 1851 he gave his address as 17 Cecil Street, The Strand, London. At the time he was married with five children (three daughters and two sons). James Shutt Bell was “in confinement from a mental malady since 1848” and later applications state that he was in Northampton Asylum before his death in 1859. Bell gave the cause of his present financial distress as the costs of providing care for his son and of publishing his Compendious View of Universal History and Literature, in a Series of Tables…From the German of G. G. Bredow (1820, many editions). In 1861 the RLF sent him a gift of £10 from Queen Victoria; one of his letters states that his works were used to educate her. By then the family had moved to Scarborough, Yorkshire. A final letter of thanks in the RLF file is signed by Jemima Shutt Bell in 1866. Although the 1861 Census shows the family (parents, 3 daughters, and one son) living in Scarborough, Yorkshire, at some point they moved to Melcombe Regis, Weymouth, Dorset where on 9 Jan. 1871 Bell died of bronchitis. He left effects of under £100 with administration being granted to his daughter Jemima of Buxton, Yorkshire. (ancestry.co.uk 10 Mar. 2023, 11 Sept. 2026; findmypast.co.uk 10 Mar. 2023; York Herald 22 Sept. 1810; RLF file 1271; death certificate; AA) SR