The British Ministerial Freak

The last time we looked at Fred Bell, Singing Preacher and ex-pugilist with an eye for women, he was in trouble in Brooklyn in the late 1870s. He went back to England after his trouble with Mary Morris, where he soon became embroiled in another incident, this time involving the female servants of a friend of his.

He was still in England in 1881, married to his second wife, Annie Jane Gatenby (who described herself on the 1881 census as an "Authoress"). He had founded his own Church of the People, in Nottingham, and did well there until "a fresh scandal with his cook" arose. He returned to the US with "a woman not his wife," sometime in the mid-1880s, while Annie Jane stayed in England.

You will not be at all surprised to learn that he soon found himself in more trouble. By this time he was also calling himself "Professor" Frederick Bell, presumably in between pastoral appointments. He was in Lima, Ohio and in San Francisco, for brief sojourns. By 1889, he was established in Columbus, Ohio.

In Columbus, Bell had been pastor of the Central Christian Church, about 1888. He soon was "expelled" or "allowed to resign" - it is not clear which, in late 1888 or early 1889. The church elders met with Bell and said that they were concerned about stories that were beginning to reach them. One of them, Elder Flinn, said he had evidence to prove Bell was "a first-class fraud," at which point Bell grabbed Flinn by the throat and started choking him. Not surprisingly, this did not encourage the church elders to keep him on.

Bell stayed in Columbus through the spring of 1889, preaching in "one of the opera houses" on Sundays. He had done this in Brooklyn after he was expelled from the Park Avenue Primitive Methodist Church, too, preaching at the Academy of Music.

The New York Times reported that while he was in Columbus, he was attempting to divorce Annie Jane, whom he had "abandoned" in England. She, however, had "checkmated" Fred and filed for divorce herself.

The Rev. Thomas E. Foster of Columbus, who was a Methodist like Bell, disliked him very much. Foster had even written to Annie Jane "to get her side of the story." Foster promptly gave her information to the local paper. Bell was not happy. He mentioned, in his Sunday performance, that "he knew something about Mr. Foster that would not look well in print."

Foster retaliated by having something else printed in the paper about Bell, calling him "the British ministerial freak." This article repeated Annie Jane's charges and also hinted that Bell was courting a young lady in Columbus. The article also hinted that (as the New York Times put it) "Bell could not hope to win the confidence of people so long as he courted the applause of disreputable women and drank beer with them."

Matters came to a head on May 28, 1889. Bell was on a streetcar when he saw Foster in a carriage heading in the other direction. Bell jumped off the streetcar and ran after the carriage, shouting "I'll do you in the neck."

Foster grabbed a piece of roofing iron he had with him (!!)* and got ready to fight Bell. The horse, not surprisingly, was very upset and ran off. But the horse stopped a few blocks away and Bell overtook Foster's carriage, prepared for a pugilistic event. Luckily for Foster, a policeman was nearby and arrested Bell. Bell was taken to prison and released on $10 bail. I don't know whether this incident involved any jail time or fines for Bell. It probably did. Some day I will get hold of the Columbus newspapers and find out. Until then, we'll assume that he got out of this mess, as he usually did, by leaving town.

Bell kept a reasonably low profile for a few years after this - until 1895, to be exact. That is the year in which he was at the center of the most serious trouble he had ever been in - the tragic death of a woman named Emily Hall.

[To be continued]

*Unfortunately it is not clear why Foster was lugging roofing iron around; he may have been aware that Bell, who was not above choking a church elder, might be looking for him.

SOURCES

Image from the Columbus Dispatch, of a streetcar in that city in the 19th century.

"A Street Encounter Between Two Ministers," New York Times, May 28, 1889, p. 1.
"Preachers Come to Blows," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 29, 1889, p. 1