Alwin Shutt Bell

Lieutenant Alwin Shutt Bell was born in 1835, the son of James and Elizabeth Bell. He was baptised at Beverley in Yorkshire on 6 July 1835.

He appears on the 1851 census staying with his mother and two sisters at a lodging house in Filey. In 1861 the family were living at Crown Terrace in Scarborough. James Bell, Alwin’s father, gave as his occupation ‘Late Major East York Militia.' Alwin described himself as simply a ‘Gentleman.' At the time of the 1871 census, he – together with his mother and two sisters – was lodging at 4 Royal Terrace, Melcombe Regis in Dorset. He now described himself as a ‘Lieutenant [in] HM 3rd West India Regt.’ According to the London Gazette, he joined the regiment as an Ensign on 17 November 1863, though he later transferred to the 2nd West India Regiment when he became a Lieutenant. Like his father, he had previously served in the East York Militia.

In February 1868 he was on active duty at Falmouth in Jamaica, according to an inked inscription on the reverse of this carte. A second, longer inscription in pencil reads: 'Dear Pip, This carte was all thro' the Cyclone on board the Solent as well as here during the Earthquake / Yours in haste / Alwin / Port Royal Nov 13th, 1867.'

In 1861 Alwin gave an account to the British Archaeological Association of the discovering of a large Roman amphora by fishermen near the Goodwin Sands. In addition to his interest in antiquities, he appears to have also been a keen ornithologist and an avid collector of birds’ eggs. His collection even included an egg of the great auk, extinct since 1844, which on his death in 1877 he left to the Scarborough Philosophical Society, an early predecessor of the Scarborough Museums Trust. It was somehow broken in 1906 but was subsequently repaired and still forms part of the Scarborough Collections today.

He died unmarried on 24 September 1877, aged only 42, at 16 York Place in Harrogate and was buried at Humbleton in Yorkshire on 28 September 1877. According to The Hull Packet and East Riding Times, the cause of death was 'chronic dysentery contracted during the late Ashante campaign.'

Photographed by Matthew Turner Kendall of Filey.