Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell

1868-1926

    Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on July 14, 1868 in Washington Hall Durham County, England. Her education began with home schooling, and then she attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford University and was the first woman to obtain first-class honors there.

    Bell spent time on the social round in London and Yorkshire and she traveled extensively in Europe and visited Persia. Her travels continued with two around the world trips, in 1897-1898 and in 1902-1903. She was an avid mountain climber; her climbing exploits in the Alps gave her recognition as a mountaineer. In Jerusalem in 1899-1900 she learned to speak the Arabic language and she investigated Arab archaeological sites. Gertrude Bell had several nicknames. The Arabs called her a "Daughter of the desert" and she was renowned as the "Uncrowned Queen of Iraq."

    Her acquired knowledge of the region led her into service with the British Intelligence during World War I where she served under Sir Percy Cox and Sir Arnold Wilson. In 1915, she was appointed to the Arab Bureau in Cairo, whose goal was to gather information for mobilization of Arabs against Turkey.

    She was part of the Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force in Basra and Baghdad. In 1920, she became Oriental Secretary to the British High Commission in Iraq. When Winston Churchill was made Colonial Secretary in 1921, he summoned the greatest experts on the Middle East to a conference in Egypt to determine the future of Mesopotamia. This conference included Gertrude Bell and 39 men.

    In 1921 she was influential in establishing the Hashimite dynasty ruler Faysal I, the first king on the throne of Iraq. In the same year, she published Review of the Civil Administration in Mesopotamia. Between 1923 and 1926 she founded an archaeological museum in Baghdad and became Iraq's Director of Antiquities.

    Facing ill health and loneliness, Bell took a lethal dose of sleeping pills and died July 12, 1926, in Baghdad, Iraq. She left money to fund the British Institute of Archaeology in Iraq. A year after her death, Letters of Gertrude Bell, a two-volume set, was published by her stepmother in 1927. The Gertrude Bell papers consist of around 1,600 letters to her parents and 16 journals, which she kept while she was traveling, and 40 other miscellaneous items.

    There were also about 7000 photographs taken by her from 1900-1918. Those of Middle Eastern archaeological sites are of great value because they record structures that have since been damaged or in some cases disappeared altogether.

 

References

Former link, http://www.biography.com/cgi-bin/biomain.cgi, (2006)

Smithsonian, http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/apr98/bell.html, (2006)

Former link, http://www.britannica.com/seo/g/gertrude-bell/, (2006)

Newcastle University Library, Former link, http://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/specialcollections/exhibition_bell_1.php, (2006)

Former link, http://www.netsrq.com/~dbois/bell.html, (2006)

Former link, http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/home/index.htm, (2006)

Written By: Joel R. Siebring, 2001