Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/155

 lavs which regulate the process of iron-smelting. He showed that no advantage can possibly accrue from an increase in height or capacity of the furnace beyond the limits which would permit of the gases leaving the throat at a temperature of about 300 centigrade. The accumulated experience of the forty years since Bell wrote has abundantly confirmed the general validity of his conclusions.

Bell's next separate publications were the fruit of his study of the American iron industry. Their titles were * Notes of a Visit to Coal and Iron Mines and Works in the United States' (1875), and 'Report on the Iron Manufacture of the United States of America, and a Comparison of it with that of Great Britain' (1877). To a volume on the American industry, published by the Iron and Steel Institute in 1890, he contributed a paper, 'On the American Iron Trade and its Progress during Sixteen Years.' In 1884 was published, in London and New York, Bell's second great scientific treatise, 'The Principles of the Manufacture of Iron and Steel,' for which he received in 1892 the Howard quinquennial prize of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He had acted as a juror at the Paris Exhibition of 1878, when he received the legion of honour, and this work was his report made at the request of the board of management of the British Iron Trade Association, on the condition of the manufacture of iron and steel, as illustrated by the Paris exhibits. The book reviewed the economic condition of the industry as well as the scientific aspects of the actual manufacturing processes. At the close he made an authoritative comparison of the economic conditions of the principal iron-producing countries, a favourite subject of his study, while a suggestive review of the problems connected with the elimination of impurities from pig iron included an account of his own experiments on the phosphorus elimination in the manufacture of steel in the Bessemer converter [see ]. Bell evolved a method of elimination which was for a time used at Woolwich, at Krupp's works in Essen (where, however, it had been independently invented), and also in the United States But it was superseded by the final development of the basic Bessemer process patentee by Messrs. Thomas & Gilchrist in 1879.

Bell also found time for many offices in public life. He was twice mayor of Newcastle-on-Tyne, in 1854-5 and again in 1862-3, and deputy lieutenant and high sheriff for the county of Durham in 1862-3. In 1868 he contested in the liberal interest without success the constituency of North Durham, but was returned with Sir Charles Mark Palmer [q. v. Suppl. II] on 14 Feb. 1874. This election was declared void on petition, and Bell was defeated at the following bye-election. On 29 July 1875 he was, however, returned for the Hartlepools, and he sat in parliament for that constituency till the dissolution of 1880, but took little part in its proceedings. In recognition of his many services to science and industry, he was elected F.R.S. in 1875, and on 21 July 1885, on the nomination of Gladstone, he received a baronetcy. He was made an hon. D.C.L. of Durham (1882), LL.D. of Edinrargh (1893) and Dublin, and D.Sc. of Leeds University (1904). He was an active promoter and supporter of the Armstrong College at Newcastle, and a tower which he gave to the building is called by his name.

His intellectual vigour was unimpaired to the end of his long life ; he died on 20 Dec. 1904 at his residence, Rounton Grange, Northallerton, and was buried at Rounton.

Bell's wife died in 1886, and in her memory he dedicated to public uses his house, Washington Hall, and its grounds ; it is now used as a home for waifs and strays of that city under the name of Dame Margaret's Home. Of his two sons and three daughters his eldest son, Hugh Bell, succeeded him both in the baronetcy and in the direction of the firm. His second son, Charles Lowthian, 6. 24 March 1853, died on 8 Feb. 1906. His second daughter married the Hon. Edward Lyulph Stanley, now Lord Sheffield.

Bell's portrait was twice painted by Henry Tanworth Wells in 1865 and in 1894; the earlier picture now belongs to Lord Sheffield, and the later picture was presented by 'friends in Great Britain, Europe and America' to the corporation of Middlesbrough. Sir Hugh Bell possesses a replica of the second portrait, together with a painting by Sir William Richmond, R.A., which was presented to Bell by the electors of the Hartlepools. A fifth portrait, by Frank Bramley, A.R.A., was painted for the North Eastern Railway Company, and is in the company's offices at York. 