Records of Philip Lyttelton Gell, son of John Philip and Eleanor Isabella Gell nee...

D8760/F/GPL

Records of Philip Lyttelton Gell, son of John Philip and Eleanor Isabella Gell nee Franklin, grandson of Sir John Franklin

1873-1922

The records currently listed consist mostly of material formerly held in the Franklin papers under reference number D3311. He was very interested in his Franklin heritage, as was his wife, Edith, who wrote a book on Sir John Franklin's first wife.

There are several boxes of material held under reference number D3287 among Boxes 90-131, which include correspondence with his wife, other family correspondence, personal papers, business records. There are also particular series of records relating to his involvement with the British South Africa Company (D3287/BSA), British Exploration of Australasia Ltd (D3287/BXA), and the Rhodesian Trading Co. Ltd (D3287/RTC), as well as correspondence with the politican Alfred Milner, later Viscount Milner (D3287/MIL).

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Philip Lyttelton Gell (1852-1926) was the second son and third child of John Philip Gell and his wife Eleanor Isabella (nee Franklin), the daughter of Sir John Franklin and his first wife Eleanor Anne (nee Porden). He studied at King's College, London, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he made several influential contacts which would greatly aid his career as a businessman. Having initially started training for the bar, he moved into the publishing business, first with Cassell and Co., then at the Clarendon Press, with whom he was British editor for Oxford University Press, 1884-1896. He left publishing and went into the field of South Africna business. He became a company director of the British South Africa Company and became its Presiden, 1920-1923. When he resigned, he became interested in colonial industrial undertakings in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe and Zambia) and Australia. He was the first chairman of Toynbee Hall, the Universities' Settlement in the East End of London providing charitable services to the poor of the area. He also served as literary executor for Benjamin Howett, Master of Balliol College. He married Edith Mary Brodrick in 1889: they did not have any children. He purchased the Hopton Hall estate in 1920. After the death of his wife in 1944, the Hopton Hall estate passed to his nephew, Philip Victor Willingham Gell.