Bell was born on 17 December 1864 at
Chambéry in the Savoie department of south-east France. He was the son of Henry Jean Antoine Joudou, a timber merchant, and Scotswoman Martha Bell. He had one sibling: Eléonore Marthe Joudou-Bell (1867-1951). Hesketh Bell's ancestry has been extensively researched. Bell was privately educated in the Channel Islands, and in Paris and Brussels. In May 1882 he started work in Barbados, as third clerk in the office of the Governor of Barbados and the Leeward Islands, a post he was offered by family friend Sir
William C. F. Robinson. From then on he rose through the system in the following posts: • 1885-1889 – Grenada Inland Revenue Department • 1890-94 – Supervisor of Customs in the Gold Coast • Receiver General and Treasurer of the Bahamas • 1899-1905 – Administrator Of Dominica • 1905-08 – Commissioner (later, Governor) of the Uganda Protectorate • 1909-11 – Governor of Northern Nigeria • 1912-16 – Governor of the Leeward Islands • 1916-24 – Governor of Mauritius In December 2007,
New Vision, a Ugandan online newspaper, posted a piece entitled "Hesketh Bell's Ugandan descendants" in which 72-year old Ketty Karuyonga Bell, said to be a great-granddaughter of the former Governor, tells her story. Hesketh Bell, who never married, is alleged to have had a son with a Mutooro woman, Maria Nyamuhaibona. The boy, John Dick Bell, is said to have been born on 18 December 1905. Hesketh Bell reportedly sent support for the boy, until he learned that John had had a serious accident when he was 10; support then stopped. John, who had 12 children, died of a heart attack in 1953. Bell's many achievements in Uganda have been summarised as a teaching aid. One of the most important was a scheme for suppressing
sleeping sickness, which Bell proposed in August 1907. After the Treasury authorized the funds for the work, the natives were moved from the fly-infested district on the shores of Lake Victoria to healthy locations inland. The sick were placed in segregation camps to undergo the so-called
atoxyl treatment; an estimated 20,000 people were dealt with. The shores of
Lake Victoria were cleared of all vegetation, thus removing the presence of the
tsetse fly. Hesketh Bell's vision for Uganda included major development of its railway. By 1909 to had battled hard for approval of two schemes: first, a line from
Jinja, on the north shore of
Lake Victoria to Kakindu and then to
Lake Kioga; and, second, a direct line from
Kampala to
Lake Albert. Bell retired to
Cannes in 1924, but he still travelled widely. In 1925-26 he made an extensive semi-official tour of the Far East to study French and Dutch systems of colonial government. for which he was awarded the Gold Medal of the
Royal Empire Society. During the Second World War, Bell returned to live in the Bahamas, but was a frequent visitor to London, where he was a member of the
Conservative Club in
St James's.In 1951, Bell’s will was signed and witnessed in Monaco, where he also had a home. In it he: • directed that his bust, by , be offered to the Government of Mauritius "in the hope that it may be placed in some suitable place in ‘Bell Village’" which he founded in 1915. • bequeathed his portrait by
de Laszlo to the Government of Mauritius. • directed that his diaries and accompanying scrap-books be offered to the Trustees of the British Museum. • bequeathed the sum of £50 to each of four godsons: • Peter Myers of 'Greenways', Wadlands Brook Road near East Grinstead. He was Peter S F Myers, born in 1926, son of Harold Hawthorn Myers and Muriel Letitia Swinfen Eady (daughter of
Charles Swinfen Eady, 1st Baron Swinfen). • James Lightfoot of Belgrave Lodge, Belgrave Square, Monkstown, County Dublin, of whom nothing is known. • Henry Morcom of 6 Chester Street, London SW1. He was Henry Richard Morcom (1922-2008), son of
Alfred Morcom and Sylvia Millicent Birchenough (daughter of Sir John
Henry Birchenough, 1st Baronet). • Robert Hesketh Dolbey, of 37 Grosvenor Square, London W1. He was Robert Hesketh Gay Dolbey (1928-2011), son of Robert Valentine Dolbey of
Sutton and Virginia Gay of
Battle Mountain, Nevada. • left £300 and his typewriter, radio, clothes and other items to The Marchesa Stella Vitelleschi of Villa Moderno, Monaco. • left £1,000 and the balance of his estate to his niece, Mrs Marjorie Leonora Apperson. ==Death==