Gertrude Bell (70 page)

The following notes bring some of the amounts mentioned in this book and other, related amounts up to today's values in sterling, by adjusting for the changes in the U.K. Retail Price Index to 2004 (with the U.S. dollar equivalent of $1.80 to the £). Amounts for wages and salaries are also adjusted for the changes in U.K. average earnings.

Around 1900, when Florence Bell was compiling
At the Works
, a family with two to three children on the lowest wage spent about £50 a year on rent, a limited diet, heat and clothing, insurance and tobacco, but had nothing to spare. A skilled ironworker was paid in basic wages about the same as a clerk in an office, on average £100 a year. This could be increased by overtime pay for working more than eight hours per day, plus bonuses, to above £150. That gives an RPI-adjusted purchasing power today of £9,600 ($17,300). If adjusted by the rise in average earnings that would be £50,000 ($90,000), reflecting the very different standard of living enjoyed by similar workers in developed countries today.

In 1904 Hugh Bell inherited £750,000 from his father's estate; £45 million ($81 million), RPI-adjusted.

Gertrude budgeted her journey to Hayyil in 1913 at £601 (including the cost of travelling back through the Syrian desert); this is £35,000 ($59,477), RPI-adjusted. Her seventeen camels with their equipment at £13 each cost £221, but this was recoverable when they were sold after the journey—about £13,000 ($23,400) today. She described the cost of the journey, a net £23,000 ($40,000) today, as practically the whole of her income for the following year. This income derived from investments and proceeds from her books as well as an allowance from her father.

Lawrence's offer of £2 million to the Turkish army commander to lift his siege of Kut would be about £100 million ($180 million) today and was about the same amount as Churchill arranged for the British Admiralty to pay for 51 per cent of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company in 1914. In 1921, Churchill aimed to reduce British military expenditure in Iraq from £20 million to £7 million a year, in today's terms a reduction of £287 million ($517 million), RPI-adjusted. By 1921 the British administration of Iraq had spent £8
million governing and developing the country, all raised from local taxes: £200 million ($360 million), RPI-adjusted.

Gertrude's government salary in 1925 was £835 a year: £69,000 ($124,000), RPI-adjusted, but £120,000 ($216,000) if inflated by the change in U.K. average-earnings. Her bequest of £6,000 to found a British School of Archaeology in Iraq would be £208,000 ($374,000) today.

Extracts have been taken from Gertrude Bell's letters to her family, held in the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle (RL); these extracts are identified as “GLB letters.” “Gertrude hardly ever dated her letters except by the day of the week, sometimes not even that,” wrote her stepmother, Florence, when she was compiling
The Letters of Gertrude Bell
(London: Ernest Benn, 1927) after her death. A great many of the letters can be found in Lady Bell's book.

Extracts are also taken from Gertrude Bell's diaries, identified as “GLB diary,” also held by the University of Newcastle.

Copies of Gertrude's papers are littered with crossed-out pencilled dates and question marks, evidence of the many attempts by curators to determine their sequence.

The letters and diaries are available at
www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk

Occasionally, to make a point more forcefully, two or more quotations from different letters or texts of Gertrude Bell have been brought together in the narrative and occasionally brought forward.

xviii
“She was, I think, the greatest woman of our time”: Janet E. Courtney,
An Oxford Portrait Gallery

3
“Sharif's son Faisal offers hope”
: Janet Wallach,
Desert Queen
, p. 297

4
“from a needle to a ship”
: From Sir Hugh Bell's speech of 10 Jan. 1910, during his campaign for a Liberal parliamentary seat

5
Lowthian wrote several scientific books
: Papers on Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell discovered at Mount Grace Priory

5
a comprehensive and logical assessment
:
The Iron Trade of the United Kingdom
, Literary and Philosophical Society, Gallery, 669–1/13: 1875

6
An illustrated family alphabet:
In the possession of Dr. William Plowden

6
“Your scones are lovely”
: Anecdote about Margaret Bell, in conversation with Mrs. Susanna Richmond

8
“Free Trade is like the quality of mercy”
: From Hugh Bell's campaign speech of 10 Jan. 1910

10
They met the twenty-two-year-old Florence
: Biographical details about Florence Bell from Kirsten Wang, “Deeds and Words: The Biography of Dame Florence Bell, 1851–1930,” unpublished MS in the possession of Dr. William Plowden

11
“looking beautiful, but very sad”
: Florence's daughter Elsa, Lady Richmond, reporting a conversation with her mother, in Wang, “Deeds and Words”

11
One biographer of Gertrude
: Anne Tibble,
One Woman's Story