Hon. Edith Mary Gell

Daughter of 8th Viscount Middleton-Lord Lieutenant of Surrey; and of the Hon.Augusta Fremantle, daughter of 1st Baron Cottesloe.

Born 1860. Married at Pepperharrow 1889. Died April 17 1944.

Edith Lyttelton Gell (b 1860, m1889, d1944)

In 1889 Philip Lyttelton Gell married the Hon. Edith Brodrick, daughter of the 8th Viscount Midleton of Peper Harow, Surrey, and sister of William St John Fremantle Brodrick, 1st Earl Midleton (1856-1942), a distinguished politician who was Secretary of State for War from 1900-1903 and Secretary of State for India from 1903-1905. Edith shared her husband’s interests and took an active role in political and Church of England fundraising and charitable activities, nationally as well as locally.

An indefatigable writer of devotional poems, hymns, and moralistic pageants and tracts, Edith Lyttelton Gell strongly supported traditional family values. She was prominent in organisations such as the Mothers’ Union, the Central Church Union and the Union of Women Workers. Derbyshire church matters were another interest and she involved herself in both Carsington and Wirksworth parishes. Deeply conventional in outlook, Edith Lyttelton Gell for many years published or circulated her writings amongst her extended family and social circle. She reached a wider readership with her memoirs ‘Under Three Reigns’.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of her papers relates to the work Edith Lyttelton Gell undertook to complement her spouse’s involvement in Rhodesia. Females were thought to outnumber males in the population of Britain and, to address this ‘surplus’, emigration was widely promoted as a remedy not only for the scarcity of well paid employment for women but also for the shortage of potential husbands. Edith was a member of the British Women’s Emigration Society and in 1901 became Chair of the South African Emigration Expansion Committee. She played a key role both in encouraging women to settle in the new country of Rhodesia and in vetting their suitability. She provided practical advice to intending female emigrants and her correspondence in the opening years of the 20th century includes much on the management and staffing of the Salisbury Hostel in Bulawayo, a facility for new women arrivals.

A not exhaustive list of her writings:-

The Menace of Secularism.

Womanhood at the Crossroads

Cloud of Witness 1898.

Under Three Reigns, An autobiography.1927.

The Happy Warrior 1915.

The More Excellent Way 1898.

The Vision of Righteousness.

Wedded Life.1917.