General Notes

Joseph William Bell (9 April 1884--27 Sept 1918) was born at 6 Kassassin Terrace, Eastney.  At the death of his mother (1886), he was two years old, so he was placed in the Lancaster Workhouse for six years before he came to Barnardo's, a private home for orphans and waifs. 

Joseph William seems then to have been reunited with his father for a short time.  But on July 10, 1895, Joseph Bell (42 years old) died in the Birkenhead Borough Hospital from "blood poisoning" (infection) "as a result of an accident to his foot" at the docks.

On November 9, 1895, Mrs. A. Bell, working "in service" with an eighteen-month-old baby and a mother unable to support her, brought Joseph William Bell back to Barnardo's.  In the information given at his admittance, Joseph William is said to have had a brother George Bell (15 years old) living with Uncle William Bell (a fellmonger at Skerton, Lancaster); a sister, Susan Shawyer Bell (21 years old) working, as a servant at Cheetham, Manchester; and another sister, (Sarah) Elizabeth Bell (13 years old), at the Rosendale Girls Home near Manchester.  Joseph William's Uncle George Bell (45 years old)  was listed as a joiner and widower with seven children at Birkenhead.  Barnardo's placed Joseph William in one of their homes in London, and on April 4, 1896, sent him on the S.S. Scotsman to Portland and then to Ashgrove, Ontario, where he was placed with Mr. Isaac Hunter.

(Note:  I (John Craven) have read elsewhere that the history of "Home boys" (orphans) placed by Homes (British orphanages) in this manner is not usually a story of compassion.  In E. Annie Proulx's novel, The Shipping News, the life of the Home boys placed largely in Ontario, Canada, was often one of the "slave labor" that built Canada.  That statement probably is an exaggeration, but the Home boys' lives were often miserable.  They were "worked to the bone, treated like dirt, half starved and crazed with lonesomeness."  Proulx cites the worst case of one Home boy, Lewis Thorn.  He:

     "...never had a bed of his own, had to sleep in the musty hay, had no shoes or boots and wrapped his feet in rags. They fed him potato peels and crusts, what they'd give to the pig. They beat him every day until he was the color a dark rainbow, yellow and red and green and blue and black. He worked from lantern light to lantern light while the farmer's children went to school and socials. His hair grew down his back, all matted with clits and tangles....He was lousy and dirty. The worst was the way they made fun of him, scorned him because he was a Home boy, jeered and made his life hell.  In the end they cheated him of his little wage and finally turned him adrift in the Ontario winter when he was thirteen. He went on to another farmer who was worse, if it can be. Never, never once in the years he worked on the farms---and he slaved at it because he didn't know anything else until he was killed in an accident when he was barely twenty---never once did anyone say a kind word to him since he got off the ship in Montreal." )

     Joseph William Bell seems not to have been treated as badly as Lewis Thorn, but his life cannot have been a very pleasant one.)

     Mrs. A. Bell wrote him in Canada three times, and on May 2, 1901, Joseph William wrote asking Barnardo's for some of the money he had earned while working for Mr. Hunter, which was held in trust for him by Barnardo's.  Joseph William wanted to send his step-mother some money and buy some clothes and a bicycle.  In 1904 there was an enquiry from his sister Elizabeth from Belsize Grove, Hampstead.  And twice in 1905 his brother George (living in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales) wrote inquiring about him. 

In Winnipeg, Canada, Joseph William Bell married Elsie Clara Holland (b. 1 April 1893), who was born in Tamworth, Staffordshire, England.  Her father was Joseph Holland of Tamworth, and her mother was born Clara Maria Jackson of Glascote.  In World War I Joseph William joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force and, after a couple of years, he was killed in action.  He died 27 Sept 1918 in France.  At one time he seems to have been a coachman.  He and Elsie had one son.

  Recorded Events in His Life

• Fact: went to an orphanage and was adopted out to Canada, in October 1886. ¹