Josephine Bell

Josephine 'Jo' Bell was a woman who worked and died as a flight sergeant in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force during World War II. She was a kind-hearted ghost and the best friend of Bhuvana 'Boo' Chodhari. Jo spent her monotonous days as a ghost sweeping loose pieces of rubbish off of the street and protecting bystanders from thieves.
==Appearance==
Jo had medium-length, dark brown hair that was tightly curled up and around the edges of her military hat. She always appeared in a brown wool suit, and she later revealed to Rory that her attire was, indeed, the actual women's military uniform of the 1940s. 
Category:Ghosts
Category:Female Characters
Category:The Name of the Star
Category:Deceased
== BiographyCategory:Characters ==
=== Human Life ===
While alive, Jo had been a Flight Sergeant of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force. During World War II, Jo also worked in communications at a small telegraph office where she sent reports from London using coded messages. Jo was killed during the Luftwaffe raid on the 10th of May, 1941. A bomb destroyed a row of houses at the end of the street from her building, and Jo and her coworkers emerged to check the damage. Upon hearing that there were survivors trapped beneath the rubble, Jo proceeded to help dig them out. However, the buildings could not withstand the massive structural damage from the bombing. While Jo was trying to rescue a young girl, the top floor of the house collapsed in on them both and Jo was crushed. Now a ghost, Jo tends to linger on the same street where she died over seventy years ago.
=== Car Crash Incident ===
Two years prior to events in The Name of the Star, Jo watched as a car swerved off the street and crashed into a bollard. Jo immediately raced towards the site to find two injured teenage girls. One of the girls, Bhuvana, was panicked but still conscious. The near-death experience had given Bhuvana (Boo) the Sight, and allowed her to see Jo standing there. Jo coaxed the frightened girl out of the vehicle and to safety. Jo and Boo were close friends ever since. 
=== Role in Copy-Cat case ===
In The Name of the Star, Rory realised that she could see ghosts when she witnessed a passerby walk straight through Jo's body. When the Shades neglected to inform Jo about Newman's attack on Boo, Rory took it upon herself to deliver the news to her. This upset Jo, but Rory observed that she coped with the shock by keeping busy and talking. Rory shared her fear that Newman was out to get her, and Jo comforted her by assuring Rory that all ghosts are "just people". 
On the 9th of November, Jo was present at an all-night vigil that was held in London's East End to honour all of the murder victims. Opposite the site was a multi-storey carpark, and Jo climbed to an upper level at around 2:45am. From there, she tossed hundreds of flyers over the wall and onto the crowd below. The flyers read: 
THE EYES WILL COME TO YOU
TERMINUS TERIMNUS
Men would be angels, angels would be gods.
—Alexander Pope, “Essay on Man”
Due to the ongoing nature of the Ripper investigation, the vigil site (which was also the site of one of the original Jack the Ripper murders at Room Thirteen) was heavily guarded by police. The surrounding officers immediately responded by closing off the carpark and searching for the flyer thrower. They searched every floor, but did not find Jo because none of the officers had the Sight. Jo reemerged on the ground floor and managed to walk right past three uniformed officers, unnoticed by everyone except for a lone Shade named Jessie Johnson.
Later, Jo traveled to Wexford Sixth-Form College of her own volition to help defend against Newman. When Newman slashed Rory's abdomen and watched her begin to bleed out, Jo forced her way quickly through the bathroom door, and came to Rory's rescue by plucking a terminus out of the latter's hand and aiming it at Newman for his role in Boo's hospitalisation. While knowing that the device has the power to terminate any ghost on contact, Jo activated it and terminated both of them. Boo and Rory mourn her loss, but some of the Shades are reluctant to acknowledge Jo because she was 'one of them'.
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