Edward was a partner in his father’s Buccleuch Mill, a town councillor and a major in the territorial army (1/5th KOSB). He was hit in the chest by a bullet or shrapnel in Gallipoli on 12th July 1915 and lay for hours in no-man’s land until rescued by his assistant Private William Murray.

A false rumour of his death at Gallipoli may have been passed on to his wife Eleanor Little (1873-1915), who committed suicide by swallowing carbolic acid, aged 42. Her demise was three days before Edward was wounded, so any contributory rumour was independent of his subsequent wounding. Their three sons and two daughters were aged five to fifteen (one son had died in infancy). Soon afterwards the Duke of Buccleuch wrote a letter of condolence to Edward’s father, condemning unspecified rumours.

Edward and his children moved to live with his parents Arthur and Jane Bell at Hillside. Edward’s sons Willie and Gilbert joined the family tweed manufacturing business and both were elected as Common Riding cornets, in 1922 and 1924 respectively. John became an artist and had a lifelong limp after being shot in the hip by Gilbert by mistake in 1918.

Maisie became a shorthand typist and moved away from Langholm. Eleanor left her job and Langholm without notice at age 25 and went to stay at Arthur Lightbody‘s hotel in Southampton for a few weeks, sending the bill to her father who declined to pay it. Many years later she emigrated to Australia.

Edward succeeded John Cairns as provost in 1931, holding the position until 1940. In 1939, at age 64, he married John Cairns’s second daughter, Bessie, aged 51, five months after the death of his mother. They had known each other for decades, so perhaps his mother had opposed a marriage.

Like his father, Edward was also a trustee of the Thomas Hope Hospital.