Partner David Webster
Queer Places:
39 Weymouth St, Marylebone, London W1G 8NA, UK
James "Jimmy" Cleveland Bell (born 1910) was the managing director of the women's and children's ranges of Horrockses fashions. He spotted Pat Albeck's talent and commissioned her to work for the leading fashion label Horrockses. ‘My first job in the 50s was working for Jimmy Cleveland Bell. Peter [Rice] was working in the theatre and I was in fashion. My boss was quite unusual, he let me do anything I wanted. He said, ‘You’ve just been to Venice on holiday. So I designed a pattern inspired by the fish market there.”’
He shared a house, 39 Weymouth Street, with David Webster. Modern, it had an enormous double-height drawing room in which they held open house after the opera, with the major singers attending—it was Webster who had persuaded Callas to Covent Garden for her legendary Tosca.
Webster joined a local department store, Lewis's, where he rose swiftly to become general manager of the group's smaller Liverpool store, the Bon Marché, and then of the main Lewis's store in 1939. In 1931 while on business for Lewis's he met his lifelong partner, James Cleveland Bell, who became a successful businessman.
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