From sinner to saint: the fall and rise of Laura Bell

THOUGH largely forgotten today, Laura Bell once laid claim to being one of most famous women in London.

She was a stunning beauty and had the brains to match - and from an early age she knew that a mundane life in the Antrim countryside was not for her.

She wanted excitement and money, and she had a good idea how to get both.

You see, men loved her. No, they adored her. And her suitors, like her gowns, were from the very top drawer of 19th century society.

We’re talking seriously big names here. She was wooed by Napoleon III and turned the head of famously pious PM William Gladstone. The Maharajah even went to war for her. No, seriously.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

This story begins in 1829 in the sleepy hinterland between Glenavy and Crumlin.

Laura’s father was a bailiff on the estates of the Third Marquee of Hertford, though some sources suggest he was a policeman. Both eminently respectable occupations - but a deathly bore to a young woman pining for more.

She had an ‘unsupervised childhood’ and grew to be a free spirit.

And she wanted out, and when she turned 18 her father finally relented and allowed her to move to Belfast to take up work as a drapery assistant.

Ms Bell soon realised that work was not to her liking and she was sacked - though there were whispers that ‘flirtation’ with the boss had reached the ears of his wife.

She then tried the stage, but the kicks proved too high and pay just too low.

Then the eureka moment. One day she looked at herself in the mirror - at that long, golden hair, that graceful figure, that striking face - and she decided that she was going to capitalise on those assets.

She had grown bored of Belfast, so she set out for Dublin where she soon achieved a certain amount of fame and notoriety for her beauty and extravagant manner of living.

Her personal charms soon secured her a luxuriously furnished house, a carriage drawn by a pair of magnificent white horses and a handsome allowance from a besotted businessman.

There was also talk of a relationship with Dr William Wilde, Oscar’s father.

They would not be the last.

For her part, Laura was happy to be a demimondaine. A courtesan. If wealthy men willingly emptied their pockets after dropping their trousers, that was their loss.

Too ambitious to remain contented for long, in 1850 the 21-year-old set her sights on the bright lights of London.

And she started as she intended to go on, moving to Knightsbridge.

Quickly her beauty became the talk of the town. There was just something about her. These were not showy, flamboyant good looks. No, there was a sweet, demure quality about that face - and those big blue eyes seemed ‘trustfully innocent’.

She was soon in demand by artists as a model. Indeed, a painting of her entitled ‘The Nun’ became the Royal Academy’s ‘picture of the year’.

Dressmakers, jewellers and florists ‘couldn’t have bowed lower if she had been Queen Victoria herself’.

Indeed, both were ‘royals’ after a fashion, as Laura had been dubbed ‘The Queen of London Whoredom’ because of her links with a string of wealthy noblemen and dukes.

But her ‘life of open and extravagant profligacy’ did not damage her growing celebrity. Indeed, it seems it only heightened it.

Crowds mobbed her carriage as it travelled through Hyde Park. At theatre first nights opera glasses were focused more continuously on her than the stage. One night in 1852 when she went to the Opera the entire ‘house’ stood up to watch her depart - which reportedly ‘scandalized’ the Queen, who was seated in the next box.

Thackeray, the famous writer, named the pure heroine of his latest novel, ‘Pendennis’, after her. A song called ‘Laura, Laura, we adore her’ was a best seller.

In short, she had arrived.

But with the capital in her thrall, the local woman decided to pay a visit to the city of love - and during her stay in Paris she caught the eye of the first President of France.

Yes, for a time Laura managed to capture the fickle affections of Napoleon!

It did not last and she soon drifted back to London - and it was there that she met Jang Bahadur, Prime Minister to the Maharajah of Nepal and the Nepalese Ambassador to Britain.

He was fabulously rich, and over the next 90 days he reportedly lavished her with gifts valued at £250,000 - serious money today, but a fortune back then.

Their romance ended when Bahadur was summoned home but before parting he gave Laura a magnificent emerald ring. And a promise.

If she ever needed his help, all she had to do was send it back to him and he would do anything in his power to help her.

Now it so happened that when the Indian Mutiny broke out in 1857 and Laura made this pledge known to the Indian Office - and soon the country girl from Antrim found herself involved in the intricacies of international diplomacy.

She was persuaded to send the ring back to Nepal and to accompany it with a request that the Government of Nepal should either throw in its lot with the British or remain neutral.

Nepal did not join with the Mutineers and its crack Ghurka Regiments swore allegiance to the British flag forever.

Jang Bahadur personally led his Hyderabad warriors and influenced other Indian rulers to follow his example. That’s devotion for you.

Back in London, however, Laura decided that it was time to ‘settle down’, and she married Captain Augustus Frederick Thistlethwayte. He was highly connected and, as luck would have it, had just been left a sizeable fortune.

The Captain was a colourful character too. He had the habit of firing his pistol through the ceiling of his bedroom every morning when he wanted to summon up his servant.

After the honeymoon they settled in his mansion at Grosvenor Square, where they entertained distinguished guests including the Dukes of Devonshire and Newcastle.

And then the serious spending began.

Laura was soon whittling away her husband’s fortune away at such a rate that he several times advertised that he did not consider himself responsible for her debts.

It even ended before the courts, when Mr Thistlethwayte successfully contested an action brought against him for unpaid clothes bills. Embarrassed, he also pegged his wife’s dress allowance at £500 a year.

And then Laura surprised everyone. She announced that she had found God and would devote the rest of her days to converting sinners.

She was, she said, ‘a sinner saved by grace through faith in the Lamb of God’.

It started with revival meetings at her home, but soon she was hiring the cavernous Regent Street Polytechnic where ‘with blazing eyes and quivering lips’ she would hold forth by the hour.

But, as always, she did it her way.

When preaching she always wore a plain black silk dress, with white collar and cuffs, and draped a black silk veil over her golden locks. But diamonds still twinkled on her neck and every finger was adorned with fantastic jewels.

And she held the people spellbound.

“Her intellectual capacity was almost phenomenal and to this was added a very practical imagination,” said one who saw her in action.

“Her appearance on the platform of the Polytechnic was realisation of beauty and art.

“The magnificent jewels she wore round her neck and the flashing rings on her hands with which she gesticulated, added to the soft tone of a beautiful voice made a great impression upon those who listened to her.”

Another spectator agreed that the tools that had served her so well as a courtesan, were now being brought to her fervent oratory.

“The lustre of her eyes was only surpassed by the sparkling of an array of large diamond rings which adorned her fingers as she raised them in eloquent exhortation to follow the path that alone leads to salvation.”

Some were not convinced. During one fiery address about the folly of a life of sin, one ‘street walker’ called out: “Come, come Laura. You haven’t done so badly!”

Her husband did not share her calling and he spent more and more time shooting, hunting and fishing on his Highland estate.

With his wife’s new-found religious fervour, divorce was out of the question - but their unconventional marriage did eventually end. In tragic circumstances.

One night in 1887 a single shot rang out in Grosvenor Square. Augustus Thistlethwayte was found dead, revolver in hand, behind the locked door of his bedroom.

It was later claimed that he kept the loaded gun on a shelf by his bed as protection from burglars. Could he have knocked it to the ground and it went off?

Who knows. Laura certainly did not. She had been sound asleep in her own bedroom at the time.

The gossip mongers had a field day, but the death was quietly hushed up without an inquest.

He left his wife £100,000 and the wealthy widow decided to leave the ghosts behind her by moving to rural Hampstead, where she built ‘a delightful house’.

Despite her loss, Laura’s faith remained unshakeable. She even referred to herself as ‘God’s Ambassadress’. Indeed, it was said that ‘nobody ever appealed to her for help in vain’.

She campaigned against animal cruelty too, donating large sums to welfare charities.

With actions and words, any doubts about her conversion from sinner to the ‘Saint of Hampstead’ soon faded. Her calling seemed genuine, if somewhat exhibitionist.

Somehow she had shed her past - and she even came to the attention of the Prime Minister.

William Gladstone often visited her for tea and ‘improving conversation’ and they remained friends right up until her death.

Indeed, she was the first person to know about his resignation from the premiership in 1892 - even before Queen Victoria.

It was a curious friendship. His public face was that of stern and unyielding moral rectitude. Yet he had a lifelong taste for ‘rescuing’ prostitutes.

It was said he found a ‘singular arousal’ in his relationship with the ex-demimondaine. Make of that what you will.

For her part, Mrs Thistlethwayte was a shining example of propriety.

There were no noisy parties and few visits not linked to the Lord’s work. She walked daily from school to slum, distributing gifts, food and religious tracts from a heavy basket.

Indeed, many were flabbergasted when stories of her past life re-emerged when she died in 1894 at the age of 65.

The London Weekly Dispatch was keen to remind its readers about the ‘once notorious and beautiful Laura Bell’.

‘The young woman’s portrait was in all the shops, her sayings and still more her doings, in everybody’s mouth’, they wrote.

‘As Mrs Thistlethwayte, [she] played the part of Maddalena Penitente very prettily, preaching, distributing tracts in the parks, lecturing to young girls at Craven Chapel and to the young shopmen of large firms - when the principals would admit so elegantly-dressed a preacher.

‘She had completely realised the possibility of woman equally with man rising on stepping stones of a dead self to higher things, and of living down an unenviable reputation’.

From the Antrim countryside to the heart of the British establishment. From sinner to saint. A mass of contradictions, none of them dull.

It was a truly remarkable life - and one that should not be lost to the mists of time.