February 24, 2024 • 34 mins
This 2017 episode features three unique women, all of whom are notable. They each have a surprising aspect to their stories, and they each have the name Belle.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Something that came up in passing in the research for
this week's episode on George Washington Williams was that he
knew Richard T. Greener, first black graduate of Harvard and
father of Belle DaCosta Green, and I thought, Hey, we
talked about her on the podcast. She is one of
the three women we discussed in this episode, Gertrude Belle,
(00:24):
Ellian Belle Da Costa Green, and Dido Elizabeth Bell. It
is Today's Saturday Classic and it originally came out on
December eleventh, twenty seventeen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
(00:49):
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Today we have another episode in which we're going to
devote some time to three unique women, all of whom
are notable in their way. And the two things that
they have in common is that each of them has
an element to their story that really surprised me in
some way, and the other is that they each have
the name Belle. If you're wondering, Hey, Tracy, why is
(01:15):
this not a six impossible episodes, It's because a lot
of the other bells were already taken. You will find
Belle Boyd, Bell Star, and Bell Ganness in the archive,
along with Gertrude Bell, whose name doesn't have the E
on the end, and even the Bell which he was
not a person. The three women today are Gertrude Bell Ellien,
(01:35):
Belle DaCosta Green, and Dido Elizabeth Bell. Dido Elizabeth Bell
is a frequent listener request, including more recently from Renee
and Melissa. And then the other two are people I
learned about kind of stumbled over in various travels. Gertrude
Bell Ellien, known as Trudy, was born on January twenty third,
(01:55):
nineteen eighteen. Her father, Robert, was a dentist who had
immigrated from Lithuania and moved to New York at the
age of twelve. Her mother, Bertha Cohen, had immigrated from
a part of Russia that is now Poland when she
was fourteen years old. The family was Jewish, and Robert
was from a long line of rabbis. Ellien grew up
in a Manhattan apartment adjacent to her father's dentistry practice,
(02:19):
and when she was six, a younger brother, Herbert, was
born Not long after that, the family moved to the Bronx,
which was at the time considered more of a suburb
than an actual part of New York City.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
In nineteen thirty three, Ellian graduated from high school, and
her family at that point was in pretty dire financial streets.
Like much of the rest of the country and in
some cases, the world, they had suffered huge losses in
the Great Depression, and her father had declared bankruptcy. Fortunately, though,
because Elien had been such an exceptional student, she was
(02:51):
accepted at Hunter College, which was at the time a
tuition free women's college.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Ellien's grandfather died of cancer that she graduated from high school,
and she wanted to pursue a career that would let
her fight the disease. But she also had kind of
an aversion to dissection, so she got around this difficulty
by studying chemistry.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Ellien graduated from Hunter College summa cum laude in nineteen
thirty seven, but in spite of her excellent academic record,
she couldn't find work as a chemist because of her gender.
She got a job teaching biochemistry to nursing students at
the New York Hospital School of Nursing but that was
only a temporary position, with the course only taught once
(03:35):
every nine months, and when she finally did find a
job working as a lab assistant, it was unpaid and
it slowly and gradually increased from zero to twenty dollars
a week. She saved as much money as she could,
and her parents gradually recovered from the Great Depression thanks
to her father's loyal dentistry patients, so by nineteen thirty
(03:56):
nine she had enough money to go back to school.
She enrolled at New York University and the chemistry department
as its only female master's degree student, earning her MS
in nineteen forty one, not long after the United States
entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
We often talk about World War two as a time
when more women were entering the civilian workforce because so
(04:19):
many men were entering the military, and that's often discussed
in terms of factory labor or wartime industries, but the
same concept applied to other jobs as well. So during
the war, Elian was finally able to get work as
a chemist, starting out in the Quaker Made Company's quality
control department. She didn't really.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Love doing this work, she was doing things like testing
the acidity of pickles, and it was pretty repetitive, but
it did give her a lot of practice at conducting
tests quickly and efficiently and doing them accurately. When she
felt like there wasn't anything else she could learn at
Quaker Maide, she looked for another job and was hired
in a research position at Johnson and Johnson, but that
(05:00):
company shuttered the research lab when she'd been there for
only about six months.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Then in nineteen forty four, she got a position doing
what she had really wanted to do since high school,
working as a research chemist at pharmaceutical company Burrow's Welcome,
where she started out as an assistant to doctor George H. Hitchings.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Side note that after many moves and name changes, Burrow's
Welcome is now glaxosmith Klein. This new role was really
ideal for her. Hitchings encouraged her to learn as much
as she could, including branching out from the field of chemistry.
He progressively gave her more and more responsibility, and often
when Hitchings got promoted, she got promoted into his old role.
(05:43):
By nineteen sixty seven, she had risen through the ranks
to become Burrow's Welcome's Head of Experimental Therapy, a position
that she would hold until the end.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Of her career. When Ellian started working at Burrow's Welcome,
a lot of pharmaceutical research was carried out basically on
a try, vile and error basis, but Elien and the
rest of their team took a different approach, examining and
then exploiting biochemical differences between healthy cells and pathogens so
that they could develop targeted drugs.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
While at burrows Welcome, Elien and Hitchings developed the first
successful chemotherapy for the treatment of childhood leukemia. They developed
the world's first anti rejection drug, which made kidney transplants
possible between people who weren't related to one another. Elian
also develops treatments for a number of other diseases, including gout, lupus, malaria, meningitis,
(06:35):
and arthritis. In the late nineteen sixties, after she had
become head of the Department of Experimental Therapy, Elien did
pioneering work in anti viral drugs. The conventional wisdom at
this point was that any drug that could successfully work
against viruses would be far too toxic to be tolerated
by the human body. The department's first breakthrough was a cyclovire,
(06:58):
invented by Howard Schaeffer. A cyclovier, used to treat herpes,
was the world's first truly successful targeted antiviral medication. There
were a few other antiviral drugs at this point, but
most of them had been developed as treatments for non
viral diseases, they were discovered to actually have some antiviral efficacy,
or they were broad spectrum treatments that were really hard
(07:20):
on the patient. Ellien's work with a cyclovier included refining
its development, as well as figuring out exactly why it worked,
and then applying those findings to other drugs.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Elien's techniques also led to the development of a zidathymidine,
more commonly known as AZT, which in nineteen eighty seven
became the first drug approved by the FDA for the
treatment of HIV. By the time AZT was developed, Elien
had retired and was serving as scientist emeritus and consultant,
so she had more of a supervisory role than a
(07:51):
hands on one. Early in her career at Burroughs Welcome,
Ellien had wanted to continue her education. She enrolled in
the PhD proget Brooklyn Polytechnic, going to school part time
while continuing to work. But after two years in the program,
the dean told her she needed to choose between her
job and her studies. She chose the job, and she
(08:12):
never finished her doctorate. So she rose to these incredible
heights with two strikes against her, the fact that she
was a woman and the fact that she didn't have
a PhD. Been her own words. Quote.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Years later, when I received three honorary doctorate degrees from
George Washington University, Brown University, and University of Michigan, I
decided that perhaps that decision had been the right one
after all.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
In nineteen eighty eight, Gertrude Bell Ellion and George H.
Hitchings were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In the words of the Nobel Assembly, they quote demonstrated
differences in nucleic acid metabolism between normal human cells, cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria,
and virus. On the basis of such differences, a series
(08:56):
of drugs were developed the block nucleic acid synthesis in
cancer cells and noxious organisms without damaging the normal human cells.
Ellien in that moment, became the fifth woman to earn
a Nobel Prize in medicine, the ninth woman to earn
a Nobel Prize in any science category, and one of
a very few people to earn a Nobel Prize in
(09:18):
the sciences without having a doctorate. As a side note,
also receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
nineteen eighty eight was James W. Black, who developed beta blockers,
which are used to treat high blood pressure and heart disease,
and eight two antagonists, which are used to treat peptic ulcers.
Ellien Is also listed on the patents for more than
(09:40):
forty drugs. She received more than twenty honorary doctoral degrees,
and in nineteen sixty eight she was awarded the Garvin
Medal from the American Chemical Society, and in nineteen eighty
five she earned the American Chemical Society Distinguished Chemist Award.
She also earned the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor,
the National Medal of Science in the Lemmelson MIT Lifetime
(10:02):
Achievement Award, among others. In nineteen ninety one, at the
age of seventy three, she became the first woman inducted
into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
She also served as a leader in several organizations dedicated
to health and research, including serving on the board of
directors of the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society,
and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. She was also a member
of the American Academy of Pharmaceutical Scientists, the National Academy
of Sciences, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association
(10:34):
of Cancer Research, also serving as its president. In addition
to all of this, she did a lot of outreach
to encourage children to study the sciences, especially girls. She
was an avid traveler and photographer, and she also loved
music that she subscribed to the Metropolitan Opera for forty years. Eventually,
brose Welcome moved its headquarters to Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
(10:57):
and Ellien moved as well. While in North Carolina, she
taught at both the University of North Carolina and at
Duke University in Durham. She died in Chapel Hill on Sunday,
February twenty first, nineteen ninety nine, at the age of
eighty one. I learned about her at the National Museum
of Jewish American History in Philadelphia. I had never heard
(11:19):
of her before, and it is amazing that she did
such important and groundbreaking work in the field of chemistry,
and especially in pharmaceutical chemistry without as would typically be
expected a PhD. Like for her to be at that
rank within the company without a PhD and also a woman,
is amazing. Yeah, we're going to talk about another fascinating
(11:42):
lady with the name Belle in just a moment, But
first we're going to pause and have a little sponsor break.
Beginning in about eighteen ninety, wealthy financier and banking titan
John Pierpont Morgan Senior started amassing a huge collection of
(12:03):
rare and antique books, artifacts and art, and other assorted
treasures at his home at two nineteen Madison Avenue in
New York City. He acquired a Gutenberg Bible on vellum,
the first of three Gutenberg Bibles that he would go
on to own. Also for Shakespeare, folios, signed manuscripts by
John Keats and Charles Dickens, a fourteen fifty nine edition
(12:27):
of The Man's Psalter.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
On and on a very impressive collection. It was extensive
and expensive as well as being impressive, so much so
that in nineteen oh two, he commissioned an architect to
build a library adjoining his home to house it all.
And while he did seem to have the knowledge, taste,
and money to build a good collection, he didn't really
(12:50):
have a head for curating or organizing it. For that,
he needed a librarian.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
That librarian was bell to Costa Green, who he high
in nineteen oh five when she was twenty two. Green
born on December thirteenth, eighteen eighty three, was of Portuguese heritage.
She'd been born in Virginia and grew up in Alexandria,
and she'd gone directly from public school to working at
the Princeton University Library in nineteen oh one or nineteen
oh two. Although she had no prior training as a librarian,
(13:19):
her time at Princeton had made her quite skilled at
cataloging and reference work, and she'd had a lifelong affinity
for rare books and illuminated manuscripts.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I would imagine that would seem like a dream job then,
at least that is the biography that she probably gave
to JP Morgan, who had been introduced to Green through
his nephew Junia Spencer Morgan, Associate librarian at Princeton, and
it is also the one she presented to the world
at large, and you will still find some of those
details in articles about her life.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Green did go to public school and work in a
Princeton University library, but biographer Heidi Artisan puts her birth
at November twenty one, six, eighteen seventy nine, in Washington,
d C. So slightly different place and also a little older.
From there, her family moved to New York in eighteen
eighty five, and then after graduating from high school, Green
(14:12):
went on to Teachers College, as well as possibly taking
a library apprenticeship at New York Public Library and a
bibliography course at Amherst College.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
And her name was not initially Belle Da Costa Green.
It was Bell Marion Greener. Her father, Richard T. Greener,
was the first black man to graduate from Harvard, the
first black librarian and professor at the University of South Carolina,
and a former dean at Howard University, a historically black
university in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Green may have had some Portuguese ancestry. Her parents both
had very like complexions, but the name the Costa and
the change of her last name from Greener to Green
both came after her father left the family and moved
to Russia to take on a consular post. Race that
was listed on Green's birth certificate was colored. It's virtually
(15:05):
certain that Belle da Costa Green could not have gone
on to the life that she had and the work
that she did had she presented herself to the world
as a black woman. Her father was able to rise
to some prominence, largely thanks to when he was born.
His admission to Harvard and his job at USC were
products of reconstruction happening during the brief window when the
(15:27):
nation made reluctant strides towards racial equality. But Bell de
Coosta Green went to work for JP Morgan in nineteen
oh six, well into the Jim Crow era. Even though
the South has a much more notorious reputation for segregation
and racist violence, segregation and racism were present in the
rest of the nation as well, although often in a
(15:47):
somewhat subtler way. We have a whole library of podcast
episodes called not Just in the South that relate to
this whole idea, which we will link to in our
show notes. So after her father's depart Green, along with
her mother and siblings, changed their last names with a brother,
adding DaCosta to his as well. They distanced themselves from
(16:09):
Richard T. Greener, his reputation and his color, and they
joined the white world. For Bell's part, she had far
more opportunity available to her as a white woman straight
out of high school than is the daughter of a
black Harvard graduate who had attended college and possibly completed
a library apprenticeship. Can I take just a moment to
talk about the idea of passing because it has come
(16:32):
up Yeah, previous episodes a couple of times, like the
idea of passing. So a person of color living within
the white world as a white person has its connotation
of deception and doing something wrong. But to be clear,
what is wrong is the society that made it impossible
for people of color to live the same life as
(16:54):
white people had access to. So what she was basically
doing here was just not playing by the rules that
white society was establishing for people of color, doing her
own thing. Yeah, it is one of those things that's
sometimes framed as sort of sneaky, but when you look
at it really as the comparative that Tracy laid out
(17:15):
in these notes of like, here's a woman who is educated,
she has all of these skills, she is super smart.
But if she presents herself as black, she will never
get this job. Versus saying, oh no, I'm just an
enthusiast straight out of high school, but I'm white and
gets the job. Like that's a pretty clear indicator of
why passing became something that people tried to do. Yes, So,
(17:37):
for her first three years working for Pierpont Morgan, Green
spent most of her time sorting out this collection he
had accumulated, organizing catalog and curating this whole haphazard mess
into an actual private library, and then from there, while
still acting as his personal librarian, she started traveling around
the world on his behalf, basically as an acquisitions agent.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
In this Green was highly confident and completely confident. Particularly
in her early career. There was quite a bit of
media coverage that painted her as a flibbertygibbet, but she
carried herself with such assurance that it increasingly offset the
fact that she was, to everyone else's eye, a twenty
somethingter woman who had never been to college. She was
(18:21):
also quite spylish and fashionable, playing up her so called
quote exotic appearance. Reportedly saying, quote, just because I am
a librarian doesn't mean I have to dress like one.
She was openly flirtatious with everyone, and she had a
string of lovers, rumored to include women and men. She
was briefly engaged to a few of the latter. There
(18:42):
were rumors that she was involved with Morgan himself, which
she neither confirmed nor denied, just saying we tried when
asked about it, like, what does that even mean? I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Her longest and most important relationship was with married art
historian Bernard Berenson, who she wrote more than six hundred
letters to between nineteen ten and nineteen forty four. Green
also neither confirmed nor denied speculation about whether she had
quote crossed the color line, which went on throughout her life. Instead,
she lived exuberantly and passionately, presenting herself as a mysterious,
(19:20):
intriguing woman with a sharp tongue and shrewd bargaining skills,
who also became highly internationally respected for her work as
a librarian and her ability to negotiate for new acquisitions.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Belle de Costa.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Green expanded Pierpont Morgan's holdings into one of the finest
private library collections in the world. By the time Morgan
died in nineteen thirteen, his library contained six hundred rare
and valuable volumes. It included an incredible collection of medieval
and Renaissance manuscripts, along with a sizable collection of books
(19:55):
printed by William Caxton, in large part thanks to Green
negotiating a private purchase the night before an entire set
was supposed to be sold at auction, and one of
her most famous acquisitions, she secured another caxpan An edition
of La Morte d'erteur for forty two eight hundred dollars,
which is a lot of money, but it is a
(20:16):
whole lot less than the one hundred thousand dollars that
Morgan had offered her to had authorized her to pay
for it. After Morgan's death, Green's future was briefly uncertain.
His son, JP Morgan Junior, known as Jack, was not
particularly interested in his father's collection, but in about nineteen
twenty he changed his mind, and Green resumed her travels
(20:38):
to Europe to continue acquiring manuscripts, books and art, now
hoping to develop the Morgan collection until it rivaled the
world's finest public institutions and make it into something that
the public could access. Jack Morgan ultimately agreed with this goal,
and the Morgan Library became a public institution in nineteen
twenty four, at which point Green became its He became
(21:00):
its first director. For the next twenty four years, Bell
de Costa Green worked to transform the Morgan Library into
an internationally recognized center for academic study. She developed an
information services department, a copying services department. She arranged public
lectures and publications. She also continued to travel and acquire
(21:20):
new works until nineteen thirty six, when her health started
to decline.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
She worked at the Morgan Library until her retirement in
nineteen forty eight, and she died on May tenth, nineteen fifty.
Although she was seventy one and the people in her
life thought she was more like sixty seven, people wondered
whether she had been ill or whether her lifestyle had
contributed to her early death. She was a lifelong smoker
(21:45):
and a heavy drinker, and she'd always burned the candle
at both ends in a life of passion, travel and adventure.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The Morgan Library, which is now the Morgan Library and Museum,
held an exhibition the year before her death which featured
more than two a few hundred and fifty of the
most notable items she had acquired for the library, and
today her presence is still definitely felt there. There's including
a piece about her in the free audio tour that
(22:13):
you can get if you go to the Morgan, which
is how I first learned about Harry. It was actually
on my second trip to the Morgan. For whatever reason,
my first time there, I hadn't flipped through to that
part and I was there my second time around with
my husband and he came over to me was like, hey,
have you listened to this about the librarian? Listen to
(22:33):
the one about the librarian. She sounds amazing, So we
have one more amazing woman to talk about after one
more quick sponsor break. Hanging in Schoon Palace in Perth,
Scotland is a striking and beautiful portrait of two young women.
(22:57):
The woman on the right is in a pink gown
with a gauzy white overlay. It's pretty traditional, maybe even
a little bit old fashioned for the time. She's holding
a book in one hand and the other woman's farm
in the other. Her expression is a little reserved, but
it has kind of a playful, little smile. The woman
on the left is dressed more exotically, a white satin
(23:17):
dress with a silken blue shawl flowing back from her arms,
and a white turban decorated with a fashionable ostrich bloom
in a little gold embellishments. She's carrying a basket of
fruit and holding one finger up to her cheek, wearing
a decidedly mischievous expression. Given their clothing, their jewelry, and
the setting, both women are clearly wealthy. They're also obviously
(23:40):
fond of one another. The painting's composition suggests that they
might be sisters and in what's most striking about the portrait,
which dates back to the late seventeen seventies, is that
the woman on the right is white and the woman
on the left is black. In a dramatic departure from
what would have been accepted at the time and what
is really depicted in paintings from the time, it presents
(24:02):
them as near equals.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
That woman on the left is Dido Elizabeth Bell, and
on the right is her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. Both
were grand nieces of William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield
and the Lord Chief Justice of Britain, who, along with
his wife, raised them at the estate of Kentwood House.
Their fathers were two of Lord Mansfield's nephews. Lady Elizabeth
(24:26):
Murray's father was an ambassador and her mother had died
when she was still a baby, which is why she
was being raised at Kenwood House. Dido.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Elizabeth Bell's father was a British Navy officer, Sir John Lindsay.
Her mother was an enslaved woman named Maria, who Lindsay
either stole or rescued, depending on who you ask, from
a Spanish vessel in the Caribbean. We know virtually nothing
concrete about Maria's life. We don't know whether she was
(24:55):
bound from Africa to the Caribbean when Lindsay encountered the
ship she was on, or whether she had already been
in the colonies and then was being transported elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
We don't even know what ship it was.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
We also know virtually nothing about her connection to John Lindsay.
It was extremely common for a ship's crew to rape
enslaved women in transit, but it was unheard of for
a British officer to return home with an enslaved woman
who was carrying his child. Which, according to what the
one surviving second hand account that we have, is what
(25:29):
John Lindsay did.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It would have been simple enough for Lindsay to set
Dido and her mother up with comfortable living arrangements somewhere
in London, the city's black community numbered about fifteen thousand
in the eighteenth century, but instead he acknowledged his daughter
and made arrangements for her to be brought up as
a lady in a manner befitting his family and his station,
(25:51):
and in seventeen seventy two, roughly eleven years after Dido's birth,
he gave her mother land in Pensacola, Florida, suggesting both
that she was free and that they had an ongoing
relationship in the years after Dido's birth in seventeen sixty one.
There is just so much we don't know here.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Belle and her cousin were raised, not quite as equals,
but much closer to one another than one would have
expected given Bell's birth and color. Lord and Lady Murray
had no children, and while there's some debate about exactly
what Bell's position was in the family, they seemed to
have raised both girls as daughters. Household accounts show orders
(26:31):
for things like bedding and dresses being ordered in paars.
Dido was able to read and write, and seems to
have had the same education that Elizabeth did.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
At the same time, there were clear differences in their stations.
Both ladies received an allowance, but Dido's was thirty pounds
a year Elizabeth's was one hundred. At least some of
the time, Dido was not allowed to eat with the
family when they were entertaining guests, and she was also
expected to work. She super the dairy and the poultry yard,
(27:02):
and took dictation for Lord Murray's letters. All of this
was pretty typical for how the aristocracy treated quote poor
relations and out of wedlock children who they actually liked,
but it was not at all typical for how the
aristocracy treated people of color. Bell's life at Kenwood House
and her relationship with the Lord Chief Justice drew some criticism.
(27:23):
Lord Mansfield was already the subject of some scrutiny. He
was a scot from a line of Catholic Jacobites, although
he had distanced himself from Scotland and from his Scottish
family in his young adulthood. Having his nephew's multi racial
natural daughter living in his home and treating her with
obvious familial affection raised even more eyebrows. This was particularly
(27:44):
true when it came to Lord Mansfield's work as Lord
Chief Justice, especially when it came to cases relating to slavery.
In seventeen seventy two, Lord Mansfield heard what's known as
the Summrset case. Charles Stewart, a customs official from Boston,
had brought his enslaved servant, James Somerset with him to England.
(28:04):
Somerset escaped, was recaptured, and was forced onto a ship
bound for Jamaica to be sold back into slavery.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So the question was whether the capture and sale of
Somerset was lawful. After a lengthy and often delayed process,
Mansfield ruled, quote, no master ever was allowed here to
take a slave by force to be sold abroad because
he deserted from his service, or for any other reason whatsoever.
Therefore the man must be discharged. This meant that enslaved
(28:35):
people who had escaped their enslavement in England could not
be recaptured and sold back into slavery, and more specifically,
that James Somerset was free.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Mansfield's ruling also noted that there was nothing in English
common law specifically establishing slavery as legal, so the decision
was widely misunderstood at the time as freeing all slaves
in Britain immediately. There continues to be some debate about
how it was put into practice at the time, but
this was certainly more of a starting point than an
(29:07):
ending point, bolstering the movement for abolition throughout the British Empire.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
So naysayers suggested that Mansfield's decision was influenced by the
fact that Dido Elizabeth Bell was living in his home
as a member of his family. It's certainly possible or
even probable, that her place in his life shaped his views.
At multiple points he described slavery as odious and unnatural,
but his work as Lord Chief Justice was really dedicated
(29:35):
to meticulously interpreting, clarifying, consolidating and following the law, particularly
commercial law, and there are other cases where it's hard
to imagine that he was thinking of Bell at all.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
For example, he was also involved in the case of
the Zong Massacre, was a seventeen eighty one incident in
which the crew of a slave ship threw more than
one hundred sick and dying in slaved people overboard during
an epidemic, claiming that this was necessary because the ship
was running out of water. The ship's owners filed an
insurance claim over the loss of their enslaved property, which
(30:12):
was granted. Lord Mansfield held a hearing regarding the insurer's
appeal in seventeen eighty three. Lord Mansfield did suggest that
a new trial might be in order, largely because of
evidence that the ship's captain and crew had passed up
the opportunity to take on fresh water and had continued
culling the enslaved people after rains had replenished the water supply,
(30:35):
But he didn't really consider the question of whether this
was murder. He approached it strictly from the perspective that
the people on board were insured property, even at one
point comparing them to horses. The insurers may be worried
that another trial might lead to murder convictions stop pursuing
the case, even though Mansfield, down in their favor didoh
(30:57):
Elizabeth Bell lived with Lord Mansfield until his death in
seventeen ninety three. At that point, his wife Elizabeth had
also died, and the younger Lady Elizabeth Murray had married
and left the house. Lord Mansfield left Bell five hundred
pounds upon his death, plus one hundred pounds a year
for the rest of her life. In his will, he
(31:17):
also confirmed that she was free, so that there would
be no doubt about it in anyone else's mind.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's also the way that he phrased that was not
that he granted her her freedom, but that he confirmed it,
so he was basically confirming something that already existed. The
following year, Dido married a Frenchman named John Divinier, and
they lived on land that had been left to her
by her father, who by this point had also died,
leaving one thousand pounds to his children, named in his
(31:46):
will as Elizabeth and John. It's widely believed that this
Elizabeth is died oh Elizabeth Bell and not another Elizabeth,
even though Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Was a really common name in that family.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Obviously, John would have been either her brain or a
half brother by another woman. John Lindsay had no children
with his wife.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Dido and her husband John had at least three children together,
and could have lived comfortably on her income. There's little
else about her in the historical record, but she died
at the age of forty two in July of eighteen
oh four.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Her father's obituary in the London Chronicle, though, suggests that
she was admired outside the family, and also sums up
her story a little bit. It describes her as quote
a mulatto who has been brought up in Lord Mansfield's
family almost from her infancy, and whose amiable disposition and
accomplishments have earned her the highest respect from all his
Lordship's relations and visitants. There is also a highly fictionalized
(32:45):
dramatization of her life, a film that came out a
couple of years ago that's simply titled Bell.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I watch that. It's enjoyable, but it.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Is highly fictional, highly fictional life also at times maybe
a little melodramatic.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
What a movie melodramatic?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Ever, So, those are the three astonishing Bells that I
found talk about on the podcast today. I'm not gonna
disguise the fact I unabashedly love all of them. Thanks
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
(33:22):
episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete. Now
our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at miss
d History, and you can subscribe to our show on
Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else
(33:46):
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
into your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Something that came up in passing in the research for
this week's episode on George Washington Williams was that he
knew Richard T. Greener, first black graduate of Harvard and
father of Belle DaCosta Green, and I thought, Hey, we
talked about her on the podcast. She is one of
the three women we discussed in this episode, Gertrude Belle,
(00:24):
Ellian Belle Da Costa Green, and Dido Elizabeth Bell. It
is Today's Saturday Classic and it originally came out on
December eleventh, twenty seventeen. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
(00:49):
to the podcast. I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Today we have another episode in which we're going to
devote some time to three unique women, all of whom
are notable in their way. And the two things that
they have in common is that each of them has
an element to their story that really surprised me in
some way, and the other is that they each have
the name Belle. If you're wondering, Hey, Tracy, why is
(01:15):
this not a six impossible episodes, It's because a lot
of the other bells were already taken. You will find
Belle Boyd, Bell Star, and Bell Ganness in the archive,
along with Gertrude Bell, whose name doesn't have the E
on the end, and even the Bell which he was
not a person. The three women today are Gertrude Bell Ellien,
(01:35):
Belle DaCosta Green, and Dido Elizabeth Bell. Dido Elizabeth Bell
is a frequent listener request, including more recently from Renee
and Melissa. And then the other two are people I
learned about kind of stumbled over in various travels. Gertrude
Bell Ellien, known as Trudy, was born on January twenty third,
(01:55):
nineteen eighteen. Her father, Robert, was a dentist who had
immigrated from Lithuania and moved to New York at the
age of twelve. Her mother, Bertha Cohen, had immigrated from
a part of Russia that is now Poland when she
was fourteen years old. The family was Jewish, and Robert
was from a long line of rabbis. Ellien grew up
in a Manhattan apartment adjacent to her father's dentistry practice,
(02:19):
and when she was six, a younger brother, Herbert, was
born Not long after that, the family moved to the Bronx,
which was at the time considered more of a suburb
than an actual part of New York City.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
In nineteen thirty three, Ellian graduated from high school, and
her family at that point was in pretty dire financial streets.
Like much of the rest of the country and in
some cases, the world, they had suffered huge losses in
the Great Depression, and her father had declared bankruptcy. Fortunately, though,
because Elien had been such an exceptional student, she was
(02:51):
accepted at Hunter College, which was at the time a
tuition free women's college.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Ellien's grandfather died of cancer that she graduated from high school,
and she wanted to pursue a career that would let
her fight the disease. But she also had kind of
an aversion to dissection, so she got around this difficulty
by studying chemistry.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Ellien graduated from Hunter College summa cum laude in nineteen
thirty seven, but in spite of her excellent academic record,
she couldn't find work as a chemist because of her gender.
She got a job teaching biochemistry to nursing students at
the New York Hospital School of Nursing but that was
only a temporary position, with the course only taught once
(03:35):
every nine months, and when she finally did find a
job working as a lab assistant, it was unpaid and
it slowly and gradually increased from zero to twenty dollars
a week. She saved as much money as she could,
and her parents gradually recovered from the Great Depression thanks
to her father's loyal dentistry patients, so by nineteen thirty
(03:56):
nine she had enough money to go back to school.
She enrolled at New York University and the chemistry department
as its only female master's degree student, earning her MS
in nineteen forty one, not long after the United States
entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
We often talk about World War two as a time
when more women were entering the civilian workforce because so
(04:19):
many men were entering the military, and that's often discussed
in terms of factory labor or wartime industries, but the
same concept applied to other jobs as well. So during
the war, Elian was finally able to get work as
a chemist, starting out in the Quaker Made Company's quality
control department. She didn't really.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Love doing this work, she was doing things like testing
the acidity of pickles, and it was pretty repetitive, but
it did give her a lot of practice at conducting
tests quickly and efficiently and doing them accurately. When she
felt like there wasn't anything else she could learn at
Quaker Maide, she looked for another job and was hired
in a research position at Johnson and Johnson, but that
(05:00):
company shuttered the research lab when she'd been there for
only about six months.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Then in nineteen forty four, she got a position doing
what she had really wanted to do since high school,
working as a research chemist at pharmaceutical company Burrow's Welcome,
where she started out as an assistant to doctor George H. Hitchings.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Side note that after many moves and name changes, Burrow's
Welcome is now glaxosmith Klein. This new role was really
ideal for her. Hitchings encouraged her to learn as much
as she could, including branching out from the field of chemistry.
He progressively gave her more and more responsibility, and often
when Hitchings got promoted, she got promoted into his old role.
(05:43):
By nineteen sixty seven, she had risen through the ranks
to become Burrow's Welcome's Head of Experimental Therapy, a position
that she would hold until the end.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Of her career. When Ellian started working at Burrow's Welcome,
a lot of pharmaceutical research was carried out basically on
a try, vile and error basis, but Elien and the
rest of their team took a different approach, examining and
then exploiting biochemical differences between healthy cells and pathogens so
that they could develop targeted drugs.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
While at burrows Welcome, Elien and Hitchings developed the first
successful chemotherapy for the treatment of childhood leukemia. They developed
the world's first anti rejection drug, which made kidney transplants
possible between people who weren't related to one another. Elian
also develops treatments for a number of other diseases, including gout, lupus, malaria, meningitis,
(06:35):
and arthritis. In the late nineteen sixties, after she had
become head of the Department of Experimental Therapy, Elien did
pioneering work in anti viral drugs. The conventional wisdom at
this point was that any drug that could successfully work
against viruses would be far too toxic to be tolerated
by the human body. The department's first breakthrough was a cyclovire,
(06:58):
invented by Howard Schaeffer. A cyclovier, used to treat herpes,
was the world's first truly successful targeted antiviral medication. There
were a few other antiviral drugs at this point, but
most of them had been developed as treatments for non
viral diseases, they were discovered to actually have some antiviral efficacy,
or they were broad spectrum treatments that were really hard
(07:20):
on the patient. Ellien's work with a cyclovier included refining
its development, as well as figuring out exactly why it worked,
and then applying those findings to other drugs.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Elien's techniques also led to the development of a zidathymidine,
more commonly known as AZT, which in nineteen eighty seven
became the first drug approved by the FDA for the
treatment of HIV. By the time AZT was developed, Elien
had retired and was serving as scientist emeritus and consultant,
so she had more of a supervisory role than a
(07:51):
hands on one. Early in her career at Burroughs Welcome,
Ellien had wanted to continue her education. She enrolled in
the PhD proget Brooklyn Polytechnic, going to school part time
while continuing to work. But after two years in the program,
the dean told her she needed to choose between her
job and her studies. She chose the job, and she
(08:12):
never finished her doctorate. So she rose to these incredible
heights with two strikes against her, the fact that she
was a woman and the fact that she didn't have
a PhD. Been her own words. Quote.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Years later, when I received three honorary doctorate degrees from
George Washington University, Brown University, and University of Michigan, I
decided that perhaps that decision had been the right one
after all.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
In nineteen eighty eight, Gertrude Bell Ellion and George H.
Hitchings were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In the words of the Nobel Assembly, they quote demonstrated
differences in nucleic acid metabolism between normal human cells, cancer cells, protozoa, bacteria,
and virus. On the basis of such differences, a series
(08:56):
of drugs were developed the block nucleic acid synthesis in
cancer cells and noxious organisms without damaging the normal human cells.
Ellien in that moment, became the fifth woman to earn
a Nobel Prize in medicine, the ninth woman to earn
a Nobel Prize in any science category, and one of
a very few people to earn a Nobel Prize in
(09:18):
the sciences without having a doctorate. As a side note,
also receiving the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in
nineteen eighty eight was James W. Black, who developed beta blockers,
which are used to treat high blood pressure and heart disease,
and eight two antagonists, which are used to treat peptic ulcers.
Ellien Is also listed on the patents for more than
(09:40):
forty drugs. She received more than twenty honorary doctoral degrees,
and in nineteen sixty eight she was awarded the Garvin
Medal from the American Chemical Society, and in nineteen eighty
five she earned the American Chemical Society Distinguished Chemist Award.
She also earned the American Cancer Society Medal of Honor,
the National Medal of Science in the Lemmelson MIT Lifetime
(10:02):
Achievement Award, among others. In nineteen ninety one, at the
age of seventy three, she became the first woman inducted
into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
She also served as a leader in several organizations dedicated
to health and research, including serving on the board of
directors of the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society,
and the Multiple Sclerosis Society. She was also a member
of the American Academy of Pharmaceutical Scientists, the National Academy
of Sciences, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association
(10:34):
of Cancer Research, also serving as its president. In addition
to all of this, she did a lot of outreach
to encourage children to study the sciences, especially girls. She
was an avid traveler and photographer, and she also loved
music that she subscribed to the Metropolitan Opera for forty years. Eventually,
brose Welcome moved its headquarters to Chapel Hill, North Carolina,
(10:57):
and Ellien moved as well. While in North Carolina, she
taught at both the University of North Carolina and at
Duke University in Durham. She died in Chapel Hill on Sunday,
February twenty first, nineteen ninety nine, at the age of
eighty one. I learned about her at the National Museum
of Jewish American History in Philadelphia. I had never heard
(11:19):
of her before, and it is amazing that she did
such important and groundbreaking work in the field of chemistry,
and especially in pharmaceutical chemistry without as would typically be
expected a PhD. Like for her to be at that
rank within the company without a PhD and also a woman,
is amazing. Yeah, we're going to talk about another fascinating
(11:42):
lady with the name Belle in just a moment, But
first we're going to pause and have a little sponsor break.
Beginning in about eighteen ninety, wealthy financier and banking titan
John Pierpont Morgan Senior started amassing a huge collection of
(12:03):
rare and antique books, artifacts and art, and other assorted
treasures at his home at two nineteen Madison Avenue in
New York City. He acquired a Gutenberg Bible on vellum,
the first of three Gutenberg Bibles that he would go
on to own. Also for Shakespeare, folios, signed manuscripts by
John Keats and Charles Dickens, a fourteen fifty nine edition
(12:27):
of The Man's Psalter.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
On and on a very impressive collection. It was extensive
and expensive as well as being impressive, so much so
that in nineteen oh two, he commissioned an architect to
build a library adjoining his home to house it all.
And while he did seem to have the knowledge, taste,
and money to build a good collection, he didn't really
(12:50):
have a head for curating or organizing it. For that,
he needed a librarian.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
That librarian was bell to Costa Green, who he high
in nineteen oh five when she was twenty two. Green
born on December thirteenth, eighteen eighty three, was of Portuguese heritage.
She'd been born in Virginia and grew up in Alexandria,
and she'd gone directly from public school to working at
the Princeton University Library in nineteen oh one or nineteen
oh two. Although she had no prior training as a librarian,
(13:19):
her time at Princeton had made her quite skilled at
cataloging and reference work, and she'd had a lifelong affinity
for rare books and illuminated manuscripts.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
I would imagine that would seem like a dream job then,
at least that is the biography that she probably gave
to JP Morgan, who had been introduced to Green through
his nephew Junia Spencer Morgan, Associate librarian at Princeton, and
it is also the one she presented to the world
at large, and you will still find some of those
details in articles about her life.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Green did go to public school and work in a
Princeton University library, but biographer Heidi Artisan puts her birth
at November twenty one, six, eighteen seventy nine, in Washington,
d C. So slightly different place and also a little older.
From there, her family moved to New York in eighteen
eighty five, and then after graduating from high school, Green
(14:12):
went on to Teachers College, as well as possibly taking
a library apprenticeship at New York Public Library and a
bibliography course at Amherst College.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
And her name was not initially Belle Da Costa Green.
It was Bell Marion Greener. Her father, Richard T. Greener,
was the first black man to graduate from Harvard, the
first black librarian and professor at the University of South Carolina,
and a former dean at Howard University, a historically black
university in Washington, d C.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Green may have had some Portuguese ancestry. Her parents both
had very like complexions, but the name the Costa and
the change of her last name from Greener to Green
both came after her father left the family and moved
to Russia to take on a consular post. Race that
was listed on Green's birth certificate was colored. It's virtually
(15:05):
certain that Belle da Costa Green could not have gone
on to the life that she had and the work
that she did had she presented herself to the world
as a black woman. Her father was able to rise
to some prominence, largely thanks to when he was born.
His admission to Harvard and his job at USC were
products of reconstruction happening during the brief window when the
(15:27):
nation made reluctant strides towards racial equality. But Bell de
Coosta Green went to work for JP Morgan in nineteen
oh six, well into the Jim Crow era. Even though
the South has a much more notorious reputation for segregation
and racist violence, segregation and racism were present in the
rest of the nation as well, although often in a
(15:47):
somewhat subtler way. We have a whole library of podcast
episodes called not Just in the South that relate to
this whole idea, which we will link to in our
show notes. So after her father's depart Green, along with
her mother and siblings, changed their last names with a brother,
adding DaCosta to his as well. They distanced themselves from
(16:09):
Richard T. Greener, his reputation and his color, and they
joined the white world. For Bell's part, she had far
more opportunity available to her as a white woman straight
out of high school than is the daughter of a
black Harvard graduate who had attended college and possibly completed
a library apprenticeship. Can I take just a moment to
talk about the idea of passing because it has come
(16:32):
up Yeah, previous episodes a couple of times, like the
idea of passing. So a person of color living within
the white world as a white person has its connotation
of deception and doing something wrong. But to be clear,
what is wrong is the society that made it impossible
for people of color to live the same life as
(16:54):
white people had access to. So what she was basically
doing here was just not playing by the rules that
white society was establishing for people of color, doing her
own thing. Yeah, it is one of those things that's
sometimes framed as sort of sneaky, but when you look
at it really as the comparative that Tracy laid out
(17:15):
in these notes of like, here's a woman who is educated,
she has all of these skills, she is super smart.
But if she presents herself as black, she will never
get this job. Versus saying, oh no, I'm just an
enthusiast straight out of high school, but I'm white and
gets the job. Like that's a pretty clear indicator of
why passing became something that people tried to do. Yes, So,
(17:37):
for her first three years working for Pierpont Morgan, Green
spent most of her time sorting out this collection he
had accumulated, organizing catalog and curating this whole haphazard mess
into an actual private library, and then from there, while
still acting as his personal librarian, she started traveling around
the world on his behalf, basically as an acquisitions agent.
Speaker 1 (17:59):
In this Green was highly confident and completely confident. Particularly
in her early career. There was quite a bit of
media coverage that painted her as a flibbertygibbet, but she
carried herself with such assurance that it increasingly offset the
fact that she was, to everyone else's eye, a twenty
somethingter woman who had never been to college. She was
(18:21):
also quite spylish and fashionable, playing up her so called
quote exotic appearance. Reportedly saying, quote, just because I am
a librarian doesn't mean I have to dress like one.
She was openly flirtatious with everyone, and she had a
string of lovers, rumored to include women and men. She
was briefly engaged to a few of the latter. There
(18:42):
were rumors that she was involved with Morgan himself, which
she neither confirmed nor denied, just saying we tried when
asked about it, like, what does that even mean? I
don't know.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Her longest and most important relationship was with married art
historian Bernard Berenson, who she wrote more than six hundred
letters to between nineteen ten and nineteen forty four. Green
also neither confirmed nor denied speculation about whether she had
quote crossed the color line, which went on throughout her life. Instead,
she lived exuberantly and passionately, presenting herself as a mysterious,
(19:20):
intriguing woman with a sharp tongue and shrewd bargaining skills,
who also became highly internationally respected for her work as
a librarian and her ability to negotiate for new acquisitions.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
Belle de Costa.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Green expanded Pierpont Morgan's holdings into one of the finest
private library collections in the world. By the time Morgan
died in nineteen thirteen, his library contained six hundred rare
and valuable volumes. It included an incredible collection of medieval
and Renaissance manuscripts, along with a sizable collection of books
(19:55):
printed by William Caxton, in large part thanks to Green
negotiating a private purchase the night before an entire set
was supposed to be sold at auction, and one of
her most famous acquisitions, she secured another caxpan An edition
of La Morte d'erteur for forty two eight hundred dollars,
which is a lot of money, but it is a
(20:16):
whole lot less than the one hundred thousand dollars that
Morgan had offered her to had authorized her to pay
for it. After Morgan's death, Green's future was briefly uncertain.
His son, JP Morgan Junior, known as Jack, was not
particularly interested in his father's collection, but in about nineteen
twenty he changed his mind, and Green resumed her travels
(20:38):
to Europe to continue acquiring manuscripts, books and art, now
hoping to develop the Morgan collection until it rivaled the
world's finest public institutions and make it into something that
the public could access. Jack Morgan ultimately agreed with this goal,
and the Morgan Library became a public institution in nineteen
twenty four, at which point Green became its He became
(21:00):
its first director. For the next twenty four years, Bell
de Costa Green worked to transform the Morgan Library into
an internationally recognized center for academic study. She developed an
information services department, a copying services department. She arranged public
lectures and publications. She also continued to travel and acquire
(21:20):
new works until nineteen thirty six, when her health started
to decline.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
She worked at the Morgan Library until her retirement in
nineteen forty eight, and she died on May tenth, nineteen fifty.
Although she was seventy one and the people in her
life thought she was more like sixty seven, people wondered
whether she had been ill or whether her lifestyle had
contributed to her early death. She was a lifelong smoker
(21:45):
and a heavy drinker, and she'd always burned the candle
at both ends in a life of passion, travel and adventure.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
The Morgan Library, which is now the Morgan Library and Museum,
held an exhibition the year before her death which featured
more than two a few hundred and fifty of the
most notable items she had acquired for the library, and
today her presence is still definitely felt there. There's including
a piece about her in the free audio tour that
(22:13):
you can get if you go to the Morgan, which
is how I first learned about Harry. It was actually
on my second trip to the Morgan. For whatever reason,
my first time there, I hadn't flipped through to that
part and I was there my second time around with
my husband and he came over to me was like, hey,
have you listened to this about the librarian? Listen to
(22:33):
the one about the librarian. She sounds amazing, So we
have one more amazing woman to talk about after one
more quick sponsor break. Hanging in Schoon Palace in Perth,
Scotland is a striking and beautiful portrait of two young women.
(22:57):
The woman on the right is in a pink gown
with a gauzy white overlay. It's pretty traditional, maybe even
a little bit old fashioned for the time. She's holding
a book in one hand and the other woman's farm
in the other. Her expression is a little reserved, but
it has kind of a playful, little smile. The woman
on the left is dressed more exotically, a white satin
(23:17):
dress with a silken blue shawl flowing back from her arms,
and a white turban decorated with a fashionable ostrich bloom
in a little gold embellishments. She's carrying a basket of
fruit and holding one finger up to her cheek, wearing
a decidedly mischievous expression. Given their clothing, their jewelry, and
the setting, both women are clearly wealthy. They're also obviously
(23:40):
fond of one another. The painting's composition suggests that they
might be sisters and in what's most striking about the portrait,
which dates back to the late seventeen seventies, is that
the woman on the right is white and the woman
on the left is black. In a dramatic departure from
what would have been accepted at the time and what
is really depicted in paintings from the time, it presents
(24:02):
them as near equals.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
That woman on the left is Dido Elizabeth Bell, and
on the right is her cousin, Lady Elizabeth Murray. Both
were grand nieces of William Murray, first Earl of Mansfield
and the Lord Chief Justice of Britain, who, along with
his wife, raised them at the estate of Kentwood House.
Their fathers were two of Lord Mansfield's nephews. Lady Elizabeth
(24:26):
Murray's father was an ambassador and her mother had died
when she was still a baby, which is why she
was being raised at Kenwood House. Dido.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
Elizabeth Bell's father was a British Navy officer, Sir John Lindsay.
Her mother was an enslaved woman named Maria, who Lindsay
either stole or rescued, depending on who you ask, from
a Spanish vessel in the Caribbean. We know virtually nothing
concrete about Maria's life. We don't know whether she was
(24:55):
bound from Africa to the Caribbean when Lindsay encountered the
ship she was on, or whether she had already been
in the colonies and then was being transported elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
We don't even know what ship it was.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
We also know virtually nothing about her connection to John Lindsay.
It was extremely common for a ship's crew to rape
enslaved women in transit, but it was unheard of for
a British officer to return home with an enslaved woman
who was carrying his child. Which, according to what the
one surviving second hand account that we have, is what
(25:29):
John Lindsay did.
Speaker 1 (25:31):
It would have been simple enough for Lindsay to set
Dido and her mother up with comfortable living arrangements somewhere
in London, the city's black community numbered about fifteen thousand
in the eighteenth century, but instead he acknowledged his daughter
and made arrangements for her to be brought up as
a lady in a manner befitting his family and his station,
(25:51):
and in seventeen seventy two, roughly eleven years after Dido's birth,
he gave her mother land in Pensacola, Florida, suggesting both
that she was free and that they had an ongoing
relationship in the years after Dido's birth in seventeen sixty one.
There is just so much we don't know here.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
Belle and her cousin were raised, not quite as equals,
but much closer to one another than one would have
expected given Bell's birth and color. Lord and Lady Murray
had no children, and while there's some debate about exactly
what Bell's position was in the family, they seemed to
have raised both girls as daughters. Household accounts show orders
(26:31):
for things like bedding and dresses being ordered in paars.
Dido was able to read and write, and seems to
have had the same education that Elizabeth did.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
At the same time, there were clear differences in their stations.
Both ladies received an allowance, but Dido's was thirty pounds
a year Elizabeth's was one hundred. At least some of
the time, Dido was not allowed to eat with the
family when they were entertaining guests, and she was also
expected to work. She super the dairy and the poultry yard,
(27:02):
and took dictation for Lord Murray's letters. All of this
was pretty typical for how the aristocracy treated quote poor
relations and out of wedlock children who they actually liked,
but it was not at all typical for how the
aristocracy treated people of color. Bell's life at Kenwood House
and her relationship with the Lord Chief Justice drew some criticism.
(27:23):
Lord Mansfield was already the subject of some scrutiny. He
was a scot from a line of Catholic Jacobites, although
he had distanced himself from Scotland and from his Scottish
family in his young adulthood. Having his nephew's multi racial
natural daughter living in his home and treating her with
obvious familial affection raised even more eyebrows. This was particularly
(27:44):
true when it came to Lord Mansfield's work as Lord
Chief Justice, especially when it came to cases relating to slavery.
In seventeen seventy two, Lord Mansfield heard what's known as
the Summrset case. Charles Stewart, a customs official from Boston,
had brought his enslaved servant, James Somerset with him to England.
(28:04):
Somerset escaped, was recaptured, and was forced onto a ship
bound for Jamaica to be sold back into slavery.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
So the question was whether the capture and sale of
Somerset was lawful. After a lengthy and often delayed process,
Mansfield ruled, quote, no master ever was allowed here to
take a slave by force to be sold abroad because
he deserted from his service, or for any other reason whatsoever.
Therefore the man must be discharged. This meant that enslaved
(28:35):
people who had escaped their enslavement in England could not
be recaptured and sold back into slavery, and more specifically,
that James Somerset was free.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Mansfield's ruling also noted that there was nothing in English
common law specifically establishing slavery as legal, so the decision
was widely misunderstood at the time as freeing all slaves
in Britain immediately. There continues to be some debate about
how it was put into practice at the time, but
this was certainly more of a starting point than an
(29:07):
ending point, bolstering the movement for abolition throughout the British Empire.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
So naysayers suggested that Mansfield's decision was influenced by the
fact that Dido Elizabeth Bell was living in his home
as a member of his family. It's certainly possible or
even probable, that her place in his life shaped his views.
At multiple points he described slavery as odious and unnatural,
but his work as Lord Chief Justice was really dedicated
(29:35):
to meticulously interpreting, clarifying, consolidating and following the law, particularly
commercial law, and there are other cases where it's hard
to imagine that he was thinking of Bell at all.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
For example, he was also involved in the case of
the Zong Massacre, was a seventeen eighty one incident in
which the crew of a slave ship threw more than
one hundred sick and dying in slaved people overboard during
an epidemic, claiming that this was necessary because the ship
was running out of water. The ship's owners filed an
insurance claim over the loss of their enslaved property, which
(30:12):
was granted. Lord Mansfield held a hearing regarding the insurer's
appeal in seventeen eighty three. Lord Mansfield did suggest that
a new trial might be in order, largely because of
evidence that the ship's captain and crew had passed up
the opportunity to take on fresh water and had continued
culling the enslaved people after rains had replenished the water supply,
(30:35):
But he didn't really consider the question of whether this
was murder. He approached it strictly from the perspective that
the people on board were insured property, even at one
point comparing them to horses. The insurers may be worried
that another trial might lead to murder convictions stop pursuing
the case, even though Mansfield, down in their favor didoh
(30:57):
Elizabeth Bell lived with Lord Mansfield until his death in
seventeen ninety three. At that point, his wife Elizabeth had
also died, and the younger Lady Elizabeth Murray had married
and left the house. Lord Mansfield left Bell five hundred
pounds upon his death, plus one hundred pounds a year
for the rest of her life. In his will, he
(31:17):
also confirmed that she was free, so that there would
be no doubt about it in anyone else's mind.
Speaker 2 (31:24):
It's also the way that he phrased that was not
that he granted her her freedom, but that he confirmed it,
so he was basically confirming something that already existed. The
following year, Dido married a Frenchman named John Divinier, and
they lived on land that had been left to her
by her father, who by this point had also died,
leaving one thousand pounds to his children, named in his
(31:46):
will as Elizabeth and John. It's widely believed that this
Elizabeth is died oh Elizabeth Bell and not another Elizabeth,
even though Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
Was a really common name in that family.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
Obviously, John would have been either her brain or a
half brother by another woman. John Lindsay had no children
with his wife.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
Dido and her husband John had at least three children together,
and could have lived comfortably on her income. There's little
else about her in the historical record, but she died
at the age of forty two in July of eighteen
oh four.
Speaker 2 (32:20):
Her father's obituary in the London Chronicle, though, suggests that
she was admired outside the family, and also sums up
her story a little bit. It describes her as quote
a mulatto who has been brought up in Lord Mansfield's
family almost from her infancy, and whose amiable disposition and
accomplishments have earned her the highest respect from all his
Lordship's relations and visitants. There is also a highly fictionalized
(32:45):
dramatization of her life, a film that came out a
couple of years ago that's simply titled Bell.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I watch that. It's enjoyable, but it.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Is highly fictional, highly fictional life also at times maybe
a little melodramatic.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
What a movie melodramatic?
Speaker 2 (33:02):
Ever, So, those are the three astonishing Bells that I
found talk about on the podcast today. I'm not gonna
disguise the fact I unabashedly love all of them. Thanks
so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since this
(33:22):
episode is out of the archive, if you heard an
email address or a Facebook RL or something similar over
the course of the show, that could be obsolete. Now
our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at miss
d History, and you can subscribe to our show on
Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else
(33:46):
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you missed in History Class
is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
into your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Tracy V. Wilson
Holly Frey
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