1876-1954
Edward was a partner in his father’s Buccleuch mill, a town councillor and a major in the territorial army (1st/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 her husband was wounded, so any rumour was unrelated to his subsequent injury.
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. His sons Willie and Gilbert joined the family tweed manufacturing business and both were elected as Common Riding cornets, in 1922 and 1924 respectively. Willie left manufacturing to become a local farmer.
Edward’s son John became an artist and had a lifelong limp after being shot in the hip by Gilbert by mistake in 1918.
Edward’s elder daughter Maisie was a shorthand typist and moved away from Langholm. His second daughter Eleanor had two children who were adopted by other families, then left her job and Langholm without notice at age 25. She stayed at Arthur Lightbody‘s Langholm Hotel in Southampton for a few weeks, sending the bill to her father who declined to pay it. Later she emigrated to Australia, married there, and returned to the UK with her husband and child, shortly after her father died.
Edward succeeded John Cairns as provost in 1931, holding the position until 1940.
Like his father, Edward was a trustee of the Thomas Hope Hospital. He was the golf club captain in 1926-1935 and president in 1944-1953.
In 1939, at age 64, he married provost John Cairns’s second daughter, Bessie, aged 51.
He died at his home, Hillside, in 1954, aged 79, outlived by his second wife by six years.