Gertrude Bell

Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell (1868-1926) adventurer, ethnologist, cartographer, diplomat, etc. etc. etc. was born on July 14, 1868 in Washington Hall Durham County, England. In her youth she was educated at home but eventually became the first woman to obtain first-class honors at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.

In the beginning of her life she took part in the social life of London interspersed with many tours on the continent. Finally in Jerusalem she learned Arabic and became enamored of Arabic culture. The Arabs called her "Daughter of the Desert."

1915

Her intimate knowledge of the area placed her at the service of British Intelligence during World War I and in 1915 she joined the Arab Bureau in Cairo, where she was to ferret out information that would help to mobilize Arabs against Turkey.

1921

Winston Churchill became the Colonial Secretary in 1921. In the same year he called for a conference to determine the future of Mesopotamia, at which she was the only woman in a group of 40 experts. The same year her recommendation placed King Faysal I on the throne as the first king of Iraq. Establishing herself as an expert in colonial administration, she published in the same year a Review of the Civil Administration in Mesopotamia. For the remaining years of her life she was Iraq's Director of Antiquities.

1926

Bell took an overdose of sleeping pills and died in her beloved Baghdad on July 12, 1926. The purported reasons were ill health and loneliness, but I suspect that the real malady was similar to the one that caused Alexander the Great to weep when he realized that there were no more lands to conquer. She had reached the apex of her career and there were no more worlds to conquer.

1927

A year later her papers, consisting of about 1,600 letters to her parents, 16 travel journals and 40 other items, were published as a testament to her accomplishment as an extraordinary woman of her time.

---

Resource:

http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues98/apr98/bell.html