George Jewell

In the north cloister of Westminster Abbey is a memorial tablet to George Jewell, schoolmaster, near his grave. The Latin inscription can be translated:

George Jewell M.A. one-time Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and one of the Masters of the Royal School of this neighbourhood [Westminster School]. He died 6th June 1725 in the course of his 31st year. The bitterness of death has departed.

He was a son of John Jewell of Battersea, gardener, who later lived in the parish of St Martin in the Fields. He attended the school as a pupil from 1708 and had a brother John.

Lucia Bourne

George's wife Lucia was buried with him in the cloister on 16th March 1767 aged 76. They had no children. She married secondly at the Chapel Royal in Whitehall Vincent Bourne, celebrated Latin poet and usher at Westminster School. He kept a School boarding house and built himself houses in Millbank and Barton streets and was buried in Fulham churchyard 1747. Their daughter Lucia was baptised in 1729 and became one of the sisters of St Katherine's Hospital near the Tower of London. She died a spinster in Pimlico and was buried in the cloister 11th March 1807 aged 78. Their son Thomas died in 1751 having been educated at Westminster and served in the East India Company.

Further reading

"The Record of Old Westminsters" edited by Barker & Stenning.