A name particularly associated from earliest times with the north of England, many of the Bells, along with their Scottish namesakes, gained notoriety as one of the unruly Border families.
• Others achieved high honours and distinction through more peaceful endeavours and pursuits that most notably include medicine, engineering and the sciences.
• Joseph Bell, born in 1837, was the surgeon recognised as having been the main inspiration for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous fictional sleuth Sherlock Holmes. It was while Bell, a pioneer in the field of forensic pathology, was a lecturer at the medical school of Edinburgh University that Doyle attended his classes.
