page_title: Elizabeth Gould Bell
section_title: Early Life and Family
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Gould Bell / Early Life and Family
caption_attribution_description: English: Lieutenant Hugo Bell Fisher, Elizabeth Gould Bell's son and war hero.
context_page_description: Elizabeth Gould Bell was one of the first women to qualify as a doctor in Ireland, in the Northern province of Ulster. She was an advocate for feminist ideals, and became one of the first women to work with the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving as a doctor in Malta.
context_section_description: Elizabeth Gould Bell was born in Newry, County Armagh, in Ireland in 1862. Her father, Joseph Bell of Killeavy Castle, was a well-known Clerk for the Newry Poor Law Union. Bell's mother, Margaret Smith Bell, was from a farming family located in Carnegat, a town close to Newry.
  Elizabeth Gould Bell was one of five siblings. She had two brothers; one of her brothers is known to have been Joseph Bell, a Clerk of the Newry Poor Law Union. Gould Bell also had two sisters, one of whom was named Margaret Bell and also a doctor. Together, Margaret and Elizabeth would go on to become the first women to obtain a medical degree in Ireland. Margaret was a general practitioner in Manchester, for which job she was one of the first women as well. Through Margaret, Elizabeth Gould Bell had a nephew. He was born Douglas Priestly Bill Boyd and later went on to become a radiologist.
  In 1896, Elizabeth Gould Bell married general practitioner Dr. Hugo Fisher, at the Fitzroy Presbyterian Church in Belfast. She soon was left widowed, however, when Fisher died of typhoid fever in 1901.
  The couple had one son, Lieutenant and Doctor Hugh Bell Fisher, who was born on 5 April 1897 in Belfast. He was a twenty-year-old medical student at Queen's University, Belfast, his mother's alma mater, and a member of the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers, when he died of battle wounds in a hospital in Belgium after fighting in the Battle of Passchendaele, on 23 November 1917.
caption: Elizabeth Gould Bell's son, Lieutenant Hugh (Hugo) Bell Fisher (1897-1917). He died after being wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele.
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