The Dictionary of Australasian Biography/Bell, Hon. Sir Joshua Peter
Bell, Hon. Sir Joshua Peter, K.C.M.G., M.L.C., sometime President of the Legislative Council, Queensland, was born in the county of Kildare in Ireland in 1826. The family having emigrated to New South Wales in 1830, he was educated at Sydney College and at the King's School, Parramatta. In 1847 he, with his father and brothers, acquired a large property known as Jimbour, near Dalby, in the present colony of Queensland. Sir Joshua first entered the Queensland Assembly in 1863, and continued to hold a seat till he was nominated to the Legislative Council, of which he became President in March 1879. Sir Joshua was Colonial Treasurer in the first ministry formed (under Sir Robert Herbert) after the separation of Queensland from New South Wales, succeeding the late Mr. Moffatt. This post he continued to hold till July 1866, for the last six months of the time under the Premiership of the late Mr. Macalister, in whose second ministry he was Secretary for Public Lands from August 1866 to August 1867. Sir Joshua was again Treasurer in the Palmer Ministry from March 1871 till he resigned with his colleagues in Jan. 1874. He married in 1862 Margaret Miller, daughter of William McTaggart D'Orsey, M.D., who survived him. Sir Joshua, who administered the government of Queensland during the absence on leave of Sir Arthur Kennedy from March to Nov. 1880, died in December of the following year, when he was succeeded in the Presidency of the Legislative Council by Sir Arthur Palmer. He had just previously been created K.C.M.G.