Gertrude Bell. Because her parents worked long hours and her father died when she was 15, Gertrude spent much of her childhood caring for her younger brother, Ralph. She was described as an 'outsider', the 'Queen of the Desert' and 'the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day'. Her grandfather, Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell, was a member of Parliament … Iraq would be cheaper as a self-governing state. Gertrude Amelia Krieger was born on July 15, 1893, in Chicago, Illinois. In 1961, this became the National Library of Iraq. [40] He quotes six examples of her writing, the shortest of which is "No one knows exactly what they do want, least of all themselves, except that they don’t want us. Her father remarried and had two more daughters and a son with his second wife, Mary. She became a witness to the Armenian Genocide while in the Middle East. Gertrude Bell was born on July 14, 1868 in Washington New Hall, County Durham, England as Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell. In 1888 Bell earned a degree from the University of Oxford. After drawing up Iraq’s borders, Bell’s influence waned and she devoted more of her life to archaeology. Gertrude Bell's Party at the Dead Sea 1900, A130, Gertrude Bell Archive Newcastle University. The Cairo Conference of 1921 was held to determine the political and geographic structure of what later became Iraq and the modern Middle East. 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. She was conferred upon the Order of the British Empire and her work was specially mentioned and acknowledged in the British Parliament. He helped her to found Baghdad's Iraqi Archaeological Museum 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. She became the only female political officer in the British forces and received the title of "Liaison Officer, Correspondent to Cairo" (i.e. Her experiences in the Middle East were published in 1907 in the book ‘Syria: The Desert and the Sown’. A Yorkshire woman, Gertrude Bell had both. Similarly, Gertrude Bell’s mother, Mary Shield Bell, died giving birth to a son, Maurice, when Bell was three years old. In a letter to her stepmother, she recounts how she had the research room to herself and spoke to some Syrians from Damascus who were part of the ethnographic section of the exhibition. Jane Digby, Gertrude Bell and Freya Stark had lives as illustrious as their male counterparts in the Middle East. Whilst she lost her mother at a very young age, her father, Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet became an important mentor throughout her life. 1915–1916), Hussein bin Ali, Sharif and Emir of Mecca. After British troops took Baghdad on 10 March 1917, Bell was summoned by Cox to Baghdad[8]:274–276 and given the title of "Oriental Secretary." She spent most of the next decade traveling around the world. Another son, George Francis Temple Jr. (Sonny), followed in 1919. The cause of death was an overdose of sleeping pills. This is where she met T. E. Lawrence for the second time. Gertrude Bell Gertrude Bell was born on July 14, 1868 in Washington New Hall, County Durham, England as Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell. But I prefer another reading. [33][31], Bell, Cox and Lawrence were among a select group of "Orientalists" convened by Winston Churchill to attend a 1921 Conference in Cairo to determine the boundaries of the British mandate (e.g., "the British Partitions") and nascent states such as Iraq. Cox found her an office in his headquarters, where she was employed for the two days per week she was not at Military GHQ Basra. In October 1917 Bell was made a Commander of the new Order of the British Empire, and five months later she received the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. She specialised in modern history, and it was said that she was the first woman to graduate in Modern History at Oxford with a first class honours degree, a feat she achieved in only two years. [30] In her final years she became acquainted with Kinahan Cornwallis who later wrote an introduction to the posthumously published book The Arab War, Confidential Information for General Headquarters from Gertrude Bell, Being Despatches Reprinted from the Secret "Arab Bulletin". ... in in her old age, was to Afghanistan. [35][36], Mark Sykes, the British diplomat responsible for the Sykes–Picot Agreement, was not fond of her.[37]. Now 32 years old, she was starting to display some spirit and a genuine fascination for the ancient ruins. She wrote a book about her experiences called Persian Pictures, A Book of Travelsthat was published in 1894. Gertrude Bell was an archaeologist, a linguist, traveller, and the greatest woman mountaineer of her age. Bell also had an affair with a married man, Maj. Charles Doughty-Wylie, whom she is said to have exchanged love letters between 1913 and 1915. It was generally casual flattery, and yet the example of Bell and her colleagues was unsettling. His older sister was Gertrude Bell. [38] Her funeral was a major event, attended by large numbers of people including her colleagues, British officials and the King of Iraq. Washington, Tyne and Wear. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on 14 July 1868 in Washington Hall, County Durham, England to Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet, and Mary Shield Bell. Prize share: 1/3 Life Gertrude Elion was born in New York. In 1915, both Bell and Lawrence were assigned to the Army Intelligence Headquarters in Cairo for war service, because of their extensive knowledge of the region and languages spoken therein. The RSC’s latest play traces Gertrude Bell’s fraught attempt to set up a museum in Iraq. In May 1892, after leaving Oxford, Bell travelled to Persia to visit him. However, she failed in an attempt of the Finsteraarhorn in August 1902, when inclement weather including snow, hail and lightning forced her to spend "forty eight hours on the rope" with her guides, clinging to the rock face in terrifying conditions that nearly cost her her life. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, spy and archaeologist who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her knowledge and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Greater Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. In November 1915 she was summoned to Cairo to the nascent Arab Bureau, headed by General Gilbert Clayton. His role in British policy-making exposed Gertrude at a young age to international matters and most likely encouraged her curiosity for the world, and her later involvement in international politics.[6]. Bell died in the early hours of July 12 of an overdose, two days before her 58 th birthday. In 1899 Bell studied Arabic in Jerusalem. Gertrude’s mother died while giving birth to her brother, Maurice when she was four. There she met a young diplomat and wrote to her parents asking for permission to marry him. [11]:41 Actually, eleven people graduated that year. There is much debate on her death, but it is unknown whether the overdose was an intentional suicide or accidental since she had asked her maid to wake her. ... She's Old Ain't Dead! Throughout her travels Bell established close relations with tribe members across the Middle East. Florence Bell was a playwright and author of children's stories, as well as the author of a study of Bell factory workers. The museum opened in 1923 owing much of its creation, collections and cataloguing to Bell. Keeping these groups united was essential for political balance in Iraq and for British imperial interests. Gertrude Trudy Bell Zanesville - Gertrude Trudy Bell, 95 of Zanesville, passed away January 7, 2021 at the Beckett House in New Concord, OH. During the spring of 1900 she went to visit t… On 3 March 1916, Gen. Clayton abruptly sent Bell to Basra, which British forces had captured in November 1914, to advise Chief Political Officer Percy Cox regarding an area she knew better than any other Westerner. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1988/elion/biographical She was buried at the British cemetery in Baghdad's Bab al-Sharji district. However, there was little enthusiasm for Faisal when he landed at the Shia port of Basra. In 1899, Bell again went to the Middle East. Additionally, being a woman gave her exclusive access to the chambers of wives of tribe leaders, giving her access to other perspectives and functions. She traveled to the Middle East again in 1899. One Alpine peak in the Bernese Oberland, the 2,632 m (8,635 ft) Gertrudspitze, was named after her after she and her guides Ulrich and Heinrich Fuhrer first traversed it in 1901. "Letters from Baghdad" documentary (2016) Directors: Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum. 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 Turkey, Persia (Iran), and Syria. She also played a key role in designing the Iraqi national flag as we know it today. The horrors she witnessed had a profound effect on her. He had been recently deposed by France as King of Syria, and British officials at the Cairo Conference decided to make him the first King of Iraq. She is said to have been the consummate diplomat as many of the people she negotiated with, became her admirers later on. [18] She travelled across Arabia six times during the next 12 years. She narrated her experiences in her book ‘Persian Pictures’, published in 1894. She was a key member in British policy-making in the Middle East. Bell, Lawrence, and Cox were said to have worked incessantly towards the establishment of the ‘Transjordan’ countries as well as Iraq in the conference which was presided by King Abdullah, King Faisal and their sons. More people should know about Gertrude Bell. Daughter of John Shield of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia. They ordered her home instead (the young man died nine months later). [48], The Gertrude Bell archive, held by Newcastle University, was added to the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme in 2017. She was a woman ahead of her time and became known as ‘Queen of the Desert’. History was one of the few subjects women were allowed to study, due to the many restrictions imposed on them at the time. Both Bell and Lawrence had attended Oxford and earned a First Class Honours in Modern History, both spoke fluent Arabic and both had travelled extensively in the Arabian desert and established ties with the local tribes before World War I. Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia. In 1917 she … Gertrude Bell was just three at the time, and the death led to a lifelong close relationship with her father, Sir Hugh Bell, 2nd Baronet , a progressive capitalist and mill owner who made sure his workers were well paid and cared for. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE (14 July 1868 – 12 July 1926) was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist[2] who explored, mapped, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making due to her knowledge and contacts, built up through extensive travels in Syria-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, and Arabia. [24] She drew maps to help the British army reach Baghdad safely. Her mother died shortly after the birth of her younger brother in 1871, and her father remarried five years later. Bell should never have acquiesced in the inclusion of the Kurdish-dominated province of Mosul in Iraq. She had become fluent in Arabic, Persian, French and German, and also spoke Italian and Ottoman languages.. Contrasting them with previous massacres, she wrote that the massacres of preceding years "were not comparable to the massacres carried out in 1915 and the succeeding years. She often acquired a team of locals which she directed and led on her expeditions. She was born into a wealthy family and was an excellent student. Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell was born on July 14, 1868, in Durham, England. Lawrence and the British used the information in forming alliances with the Arabs. Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was part proper Victorian and part modern woman. INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS OF GERTRUDE BELL. 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