The Singing Preacher

He got his nickname from a group of loud, drunken sailors in a flophouse in downtown New York. It was early 1872, and a young man named Fred Bell, who was working for the Water Street Mission, came upon the sailors singing and drinking. Bell knew the song. He'd been a sailor once as a teenager - like many of his exploits, it hadn't worked out - and Bell adored singing. He always had, since he was a boy in Yorkshire, England.

One of the sailors said Bell had a "singing face," and asked for a song. Bell said he would but only if they promised to be totally quiet. They were, and Bell moved them all to tears, singing hymn after hymn.

And from then on, Frederick Bell was known as the Singing Preacher.

By the mid 1870s thousands were cramming the Brooklyn Academy of Music to hear Bell preach and sing hymns in his rousing voice. He was entertaining, theatrical, dramatic. Hundreds were turned away at the door. Bell, by then minister of a Brooklyn Methodist church, said that he wanted to raise money for his very own church - a church big enough for all that wanted to hear him. It would need to hold about 5000 people, he said.

Charles Frederick Jackson Bell was born about 1846 in Sheffield, West Yorkshire, England. His father James was a confectioner. Fred grew up mainly in the nearby town of Rotherham, with his parents James and Emma, and siblings Thomas, Betsy and Emmeline. Fred first ran away from home at the age of 15. Until his conversion at age 23, he led a troubled and peripatetic life, as a sailor, a soldier and a boxer. He drank to excess and was often away from his wife Sarah, whom he had married about 1866 (they would have two children together: Annie born about 1870, and Frank born about 1874 in New York City).

Early in 1869, Fred converted to Primitive Methodism, a branch of the mainstream (Wesleyan) Methodist Church that had developed about 1810 in Staffordshire, England. They were known for their love of Camp Meetings, open-air festivals of prayer and song which were banned in the Wesleyan church by 1807. The Primitives tended also to be working-class and more evangelistic in nature, and their branch of the Methodist Church translated well in America from about the 1840s on, in the wake of the Second Great Awakening. And a man like Fred Bell - rebellious, charismatic, and musically inclined - was ideally suited to make his name in America. He says in his 1881 book, Midnight in the Slums of New York, that he wanted to experience the freedom and openness of the United States.

And so in October 1871, the little family emigrated to the United States. Fred had been working as a confectioner in Rotherham, and he sought this work in New York. But soon he was working for the Rev. W.H. Boole of the Water Street Mission. By late 1872, Bell was in charge of the Home For Women run by the Mission. The Home, at 273 Water Street, was housed in the former "rat-pit" (fighting arena) of a notorious character named Kit Burns.

By 1874 Bell was in Williamsburgh, Brooklyn, as the minister of the First Primitive Methodist Church. He also preached at a Camp Meeting in Sing Sing, NY that summer, and was said to be very popular there; the "reformed European pugilist" was a "powerful speaker" indeed. He was a powerful singer, too: as Bell put it, "the best way to a man's heart is through his throat."

By the fall of 1875 and into 1876, he was drawing crowds at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But by February 1876, there was a scandal brewing - even as Rev. Bell sang hymns for the adoring crowds. By that spring, he would be discharged from his pulpit in disgrace. And no one was happier to see Bell packing his bags than a woman in his parish named Mary Morris...

[to be continued...]

SELECTED SOURCES*

"The Mission at Kit Burns' Rat-Pit," New York Times, Dec. 19, 1872, p. 5.
"New-York and Suburban News," New York Times, Feb. 24, 1873, p. 8.
"Sing Sing," New York Times, Aug. 23, 1874, p. 5.
"New-York and Suburban News," New York Times, April 13, 1875, p. 8.
"The Revival Movement," New York Times, Oct. 28, 1875, p. 8.
"Brooklyn's Singing Preacher," New York Times, Nov. 22, 1875, p. 8.

[The Brooklyn Eagle coverage picks up during the Morris scandal of early 1876, and will be listed later]

Bell, Reverend Frederick. Midnight in the Slums of New York (Nottingham, 1881).

Freedman's Bank [NYC] Records: #3636 (Nov. 20,1871); #4533 (May 25, 1872); #6734 (Jul. 26, 1874); all under name Charles Frederick Jackson Bell.

British Census records:

James Bell household, 1851 UK Census, Rotherham, YKS; ED 5d, Household # 114; Class H0107, Piece 2343, Folio 294, p. 30.

James Bell household, 1861 UK Census, Rotherham, YKS; ED 8, Household # 119; Class RG 9, Piece 3504, Folio 49, p. 21.

Frederick Bell household, 1871 UK Census, All Saints Rotherham, YKS; ED12; Household # 186, Class RG 10, Piece 4703, Folio 122, p. 26. [Frederick Bell 25y Grocer and Confectioner, b Sheffield; Sarah Bell 25y b Rotherham; Annie E. Bell 8 months b Rotherham] Census taken April 2, 1871; the Bells left for America that October.

IMAGES:

Sights and Sensations of New York frontispiece (1872) from NYPL Digital Gallery.
Picture of Fred Bell from frontispiece of his book, Midnight in the Slums of New York.
Picture of Water Street at Dover (roughly the location of the Home for Women at 273 Water St), from NYPL Digital Gallery.
Picture of the Concert Hall, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, from NYPL Digital Gallery.

*NOTE: The source materials for Bell are massive: hundreds of mentions in the Times and the Eagle, his own book, and mentions of him in various other books and publications. In addition, there are census records both in the US and Britain, as well as other records (such as the Freedman's Bank records which were quite helpful in confirming places, date and the names of immediate family members). I am also looking into coverage of his exploits in the newspapers of (at least) San Francisco; Buffalo, NY; Columbus, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and several towns in England. Therefore to list every source I have looked at would take up enormous amounts of space, as well as patience (yours and mine both!).

Furthermore, at every turn, people and topics crop up who demand time: the fascinating history of Primitive Methodism, for example, and people like Kit Burns and W.H. Boole. I hope that I will someday be able to publish a treatment of Bell - and other people in my long posts - that does him, and them, justice.