Amy Bell

Portrait of Bell, from Margaret Bateson's book Professional Women Upon Their Professions: Conversations (1895)

Amy Elisabeth Bell (13 February 1859 – 11 March 1920) was the United Kingdom's first woman stockbroker.

Early life

Bell was born in Bangkok, Siam (now Thailand) in February 1859, to Charles and Charlotte Bell. Charles Bell had been vice consul of the British trade mission in Siam since 1857, arriving with his family in Bangkok two years after the British pressured the King of Siam to sign the Bowring Treaty, opening the country to foreign trade. Bell was orphaned when she was only six months old, with both Charles and Charlotte dying within a week of each other in September 1859 from unknown causes (likely disease). Bell was left in the care of Charlotte's brother John Goodeve in England, a medical student at Queen's College, Cambridge. He in turn placed Bell in the care of his childless uncle, Dr Henry Hurry Goodeve, and his wife Isabel, who adopted Bell as their child. She lived a comfortable childhood in their prestigious estate, Cook's Folly, overlooking Avon Gorge, near Bristol.

Her adoptive parents encouraged her intellectual development, including hiring a Swiss governess as a tutor. Bell had a fascination with finance from an early age, believing that her "highest recreation was to study the quotations of the money market." In later life she recalled an incident where an elderly gentleman expressed his annoyance with her interest in the stock pages of his copy of The Times by telling her, "Run away, little girl – I am busy with my lessons, and you must go to yours." She replied, "What's your lesson is my play."

When Bristol University admitted its first female students in 1876, Bell, at 17, was one of the first three women (alongside Marian Pease and Emily Pakeman) to earn a scholarship. She later won a Goldsmiths scholarship to study at Newnham College, Cambridge. However, due to recurring bouts of poor health (which would persist throughout her life, until her death), she was unable to complete her full studies at either Bristol or Newnham. The 1881 census records her as living back at home at Cook's Folly, unmarried and unemployed.

Career

When Henry Goodeve died in 1884, Bell was an executor of his estate. She used her inheritance as capital to establish her own stockbroking business in Bristol, but by 1886 moved to London. That year's edition of The Englishwoman's Review noted that Bell, "whom we mentioned on a former occasion as intending to settle in London in the hitherto untried profession for a woman of stock and share broker, has an office at 1, Russell Chambers, Bury Street, Bloomsbury." Women were barred from joining British stock exchanges at the time, and the London Stock Exchange (LSE) would only admit its first female members in 1973. Bell got around this issue by establishing working relationships with male members of the LSE, who could perform trades on her behalf. Bell's clients were mostly women, often with only small sums to invest – both factors that made them unappealing as clients to established firms. She never advertised, relying on word-of-mouth to source new clients, and her only employee was a female secretary.

Stockbroking in the late 19th century was neither as professionalized nor as regulated as it is today, and it is difficult to say with any certainty who the "first" woman stockbroker was – the line between professional and hobbyist stockbroking was blurry, and even more so outside of London in the UK's many regional exchanges. (The same is true of other countries, although there are some examples of women founding stockbroker firms before Bell – such as Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin in New York City in 1870.) However, Bell is marked out by the fact that she did fully found and manage her own stockbroking business, and she was also perceived as the "first" or "only" British woman stockbroker in a number of contemporary reports. The Queen journalist and suffragist Margaret Bateson interviewed Bell around 1893, including the piece as one of a series of profiles for her book Professional Women Upon Their Professions: Conversations (1895). Bateson describes Bell as having been working as a stockbroker for "seven years" by that point, "and during the greater part of that time the only lady stockbroker in this country." Bell explained her professional perspective at length:

“I want,” she says, “to make women understand their money matters and take a pleasure in dealing with them. After all, is money such a sordid consideration? May it not make all the difference to a hard-working woman when she reaches middle life whether she has or has not those few hundreds? As a whole I find women are delightful clients, sensible, punctual, and courteous; but, of course, there are exceptions; some are at once both cautious and reckless. ... Many women are quite astonished when I explain business details to them, and ask 'But is that really all?' So many women, you see, are not allowed to have the command of their capital. But in this, as in other ways, I rejoice to see that women are daily becoming more independent.”

Bell's success was tempered by her poor health, however, which forced her into early retirement sometime in the 1900s.

Personal life & legacy

Bell never married, or had children. She lived in Gray's Inn after moving to London, and after her retirement she became part of London's women's suffrage social scene, forming friendships with many of its prominent figures. When she died in March 1920 from heart failure, caused by influenza, she was staying at 3 Alexandra Road, Hampstead – the home of Elizabeth Ashurt Biggs' sister, Maude. Bell received a glowing obituary in the feminist newspaper Common Cause:

"In her, workers for the women's cause have lost one of their pioneers. Her position was for many years unique, inasmuch as she was the first woman stockbroker, though, of course, as a penalty for her sex, the Stock Exchange excluded her from its membership. ... She opened an office on her own account in the city where, by her perfect straightforwardness, her genuine interest in the world's affairs, and her attractive personality, she won the sympathy of men of her own class and standing. ... She was also a woman of considerable literary taste, a great reader of poetry, and exceedingly fond of travel. Her mind, in short, was intensely alive."

In 1923, when Common Cause reported that a "Miss D G Mortimer" had become the first woman to be admitted as a member to the Provincial Stock and Sharebrokers' Association, Bell was again cited as the most notable antecedent: "In her steps a few other women have followed, but their exclusion from the ranks of recognized stockbrokers has prevented them from obtaining the remuneration that was their due."