Emily Evans Bell with her travel diary after return from the Grand Tour; portrait by Ludovici RA, 1867 (courtesy Irene Cockroft). In the painting, Emily wears her long, dark hair loose as she must have worn it when travelling. As she was travelling with her husband, loose hair would have been socially acceptable. Had she been travelling unaccompanied, loose hair might be taken to signify loose morals. In an early photograph of Emily, her hair is worn in a profusion of long curls impossible to achieve without the services of a skilled lady’s maid.


  • The amazing story of the honeymoon of two Victorian residents of Barnes enthralled members of the Barnes and Mortlake History Society.

Speaker Irene Cockroft’s relationship to her subjects is person as the lady was Irene’s great-great aunt.

Major Thomas and Mrs Emily Evans Bell married in Kensington in 1866 and went on a six month Grand Tour of Europe by steam ship and train travelling first class all the way. In their luggage were an inflatable bath and flea powder. Mrs Bell had to learn to do her own hair before she left in order to dispense with her maidservant.

  • Major Thomas Evans Bell, who had served in India at the time of the Mutiny, acted as an undercover agent for the British government on his honeymoon. Italy was occupied by Austrian and French forces but was on the brink of unification under King Victor Emmanuel with the help of Garibaldi. Major Bell was able to pass on to the British consul by electric telegram available at railway stations, military intelligence about what was happening on his route, like the blowing-up of the railway bridge ahead of them. His wife, Emily, innocently recorded in her diary the many times the Major claimed to have mislaid his possessions, necessitating a report to the consul.
  • Emily was 26 when she married. She had been a classical actress and was a freethinker who worked hard for women’s suffrage. She kept a diary recording her impressions of the places she visited during her honeymoon, from which Irene read with much amusement. For instance in one particularly dirty hotel the Major reported to Emily there was a notice in the men’s washroom: “Do not bathe animals in this water”. In Rome such was the size of St Peter’s that she likened the processions there to swarms of caterpillars and the Pope to a silkworm. She complained of the dreadful tin leaves the Pope had had placed on certain parts of the statues in the Vatican. She enjoyed a meal in a trattoria and asked her diary why there were not trattorias in London.
  • The honeymoon was cut short by the imminence of the Franco-Prussian War. The couple returned to Kensington and soon had two daughters. Thomas knew Major Charles Boileau who was building villas along Bridge Road Barnes, later known as Castelnau after the Boileau family estate. This area was much quieter than Kensington. By 1877 Major Bell and his wife and young daughters had moved to what was then 14 Castelnau (the numbers changed as more villas were added). It was a relatively short walk away from the large house at Barn Elms which had been leased by their friends the Pochins. The two families were campaigners for universal suffrage.
  • Sadly Barnes was not a healthy place at that time. There were outbreaks of typhoid and cholera probably caused by unsuitable storage of manure used on market gardens, and bad drainage. Both daughters caught typhoid; the elder died and was buried in Brompton Cemetery; the younger survived and grew up to be a suffragette.
  • It was because of the prevalence of typhoid, cholera and smallpox that Barnes Vestry was charged with building a local fever hospital in 1878. Work eventually began in 1889 on the site in South Worple Way which we now know as Barnes Hospital.