Evans Bell

Thomas Evans Bell (11 November 1825 – 12 September 1887) was an English Indian army officer and writer. He used the pseudonyms Undecimus (in The Reasoner)[1] and Indicus (1865).[2]

Portrait

Life

The son of William Bell, he was educated in Wandsworth, London. In 1841 he went to Madras in the East India Company's service.[3] He was a secularist and supporter of George Jacob Holyoake, who gave Bell's name in 1856 on a short list of those who had done most for the free-thought movement, and he had a share in Holyoake's "British Secular Institute of Secularism and Propagandism".[1][4][5] In 1851 he spoke at the first Free Discussion Festival, at the City Road Hall of Science.[6] He was also one of John Chapman's authors.[7] Bell was strongly critical of the East India Company, and its impact on peasant proprietorship in India.[8]

After the Indian Rebellion of 1857, Bell lost his position in Nagpur, for complaining over the head of his immediate superior about the treatment of the Ranis of the Nagpur kingdom. In Madras in the early 1860s, he was secretary of the Madras Literary Society, and edited its Madras Journal in 1861. When Whitley Stokes moved to India, he successfully identified an anonymous translator of Omar Khayyám as Edward FitzGerald, much before this fact was generally known, and named him in the Journal. In 1864 Stokes attributed the Madras (pirate) edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam to Bell.[9]

Bell retired on half pay in 1866.[10] He was a member of the London National Society for Women's Suffrage in 1866.[11] In 1871 and 1875 he was on the council of the East India Association, where he supported trust as a principle of imperial policy.[12][13][14] He was on the Greek Committee of 1879.[15]

Works

Evans's works included:

  • Task of To-day (1852)[16]
  • The English in India (1859)[3]
  • The Empire in India (1864)[3]
  • The Rajah and Principality of Mysore: With a Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Stanley, M.P. (1865)[17]
  • The Mysore Reversion (1865)[3]
  • Remarks on the Mysore Blue Book (1866)[3]
  • Retrospects and Prospects of Indian Policy (1868)[18]
  • The Oxus and the Indus (1869)[3]
  • The Great Parliamentary Bore (1869).[3] On the treatment of the Nawabs of the Carnatic and family.[19]
  • Our Great Vassal Empire (1870)[3]
  • Is India a Conquered Country And, If So, what Then? (1870, pamphlet)[20]
  • Public Works and the Public Service in India (1871), with Frederick Tyrrell[21]
  • The Bengal Reversion (1872)[3]
  • Last Counsels of an Unknown Counsellor (1877, editor)[3]
  • The Annexation of the Punjaub and the Maharajah Duleep Singh (1882)[22]
  • Memoirs of General John Briggs (1886)[3]

Family

Bell married Emily Magnus (c. 1839–1893), another freethinker who was an actor and classical musician. They had a daughter Ernestine (1871–1959); an older daughter had died in an outbreak of typhoid at Barnes, London, where they had moved to be close to Henry Davis Pochin and his wife Agnes. Ernestine was cared for by guardians William and Hertha Ayrton after her parents deaths[23] and grew up to be an artist, writer and suffragette.[24] She married the doctor Herbert Mills (1868–1947) who shared her Fabian views.[10]

Notes
  1. Edward Royle (1974). Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement, 1791–1866. Manchester University Press. p. 307. ISBN 978-0-7190-0557-2.
  2. Weller, Emil (1886). Lexicon pseudonymorum: Wörterbuch der Pseudonymen aller Zeiten und Völker; oder, Verzeichniss jener Autoren, die sich falscher Namen bedienten (in German) (2nd ed.). Regensburg: Alfred Coppenrath. p. 277.
  3. Dictionary of Indian Biography. Ardent Media. 1971. pp. 33–4. GGKEY:BDL52T227UN.
  4. The History of the Fleet Street House: a report of sixteen years. Published by 'The Promoters of Free-thought'. 1856. JSTOR 60202777.
  5. Joseph McCabe, Life and Letters of George Jacob Holyoake vol. 1 (1908), p. 215; archive.org.
  6. Edward Royle (1974). Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement, 1791–1866. Manchester University Press. pp. 174–5. ISBN 978-0-7190-0557-2.
  7. Elizabeth Crawford (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866–1928. Routledge. p. 576. ISBN 978-1-135-43402-1.
  8. Citoyenneté, empires & mondialisation. Presses Univ Blaise Pascal. 2006. p. 99. ISBN 978-2-84516-313-3.
  9. Adrian Poole; Christine van Ruymbeke; William H. Martin; Sandra Mason (15 November 2013). FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám: Popularity and Neglect. Anthem Press. pp. 97–8. ISBN 978-1-78308-071-7.
  10. 2010 Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Lecture, V. Irene Cockroft
  11. Elizabeth Crawford (15 April 2013). The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey. Routledge. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-136-01054-5.
  12. Birdwood, George (1872). On competition and the Indian Civil Service: a paper read before the East India Association, Tuesday, May 21, 1872. Printed by W.J. Johnson. p. 2. JSTOR 60243628.
  13. Long, James (1876). The position of Turkey in relation to British interests in India. p. 32. JSTOR 60235578.
  14. Sabyasachi Bhattacharya (1 January 2005). The Financial Foundations of the British Raj: Ideas and Interests in the Reconstruction of Indian Public Finance 1858–1872. Orient Blackswan. p. 11. ISBN 978-81-250-2903-8.
  15. Committee., Greek (1879). Report of the meeting at Willis' rooms, Saturday, May 17th, 1879, in support of the claims of Greece. The Greek Committee. p. 4. JSTOR 60226976.
  16. Joseph Mazzini Wheeler (1889). A Biographical Dictionary of Freethinkers of All Ages and Nations. Library of Alexandria. p. 38. ISBN 978-1-4655-6286-9.
  17. Evans Bell (1865). The Rajah and Principality of Mysore: With a Letter to the Right Hon. Lord Stanley, M.P. T. Richards.
  18. Evans Bell (1868). Retrospects and Prospects of Indian Policy. Trübner.
  19. The Westminster Review. J. Chapman. 1869. p. 536.
  20. Evans Bell (1870). Is India a Conquered Country And, If So, what Then?. W. C. Johnson.
  21. Thomas Evans Bell; Frederick Tyrrell (1871). Public Works and the Public Service in India. Trübner.
  22. Evans Bell (1882). The Annexation of the Punjaub and the Maharajah Dulcep Singh. Trubner & Company.
  23. "Humanist Heritage: Ernestine Mills (1871-1959)". Humanist Heritage. Retrieved 4 December 2021.
  24. Crawford, Elizabeth (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-135-43401-4.
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