Bellingham Arthur Somerville was born on 17 November 1853 and baptized on 16 June 1854 in Dublin. He enlisted in the RIC at the age of 18 in 1872 and married Margaret Clinch, the daughter of William Clinch, banker and brewer of Witney, on 27th August 1879 in St Mary's Parish Church, Witney, Oxfordshire.
He appears in the 1891 census as a resident of Church Green, Witney, and is described as a “Retired, DI RI Constabulary aged 36”. Wondering what he could possibly have done to have been "retired" at such an early age, I discovered that he had been charged with murder after he had ordered his men to fix their sword-bayonets and charge a mob at Youghal when he thought that the lives of his own men were in danger. I suspect (but do not know for sure) if his early retirement was connected to this incident, in which one of the stone-throwing rioters, a man called Hanlon, was killed - the incident was well-recorded in the Irish press.
On a footnote, he subsequently become co-proprietor of Clinch's Eagle Brewery after old man Clinch was accused of taking money from the bank to prop-up the brewery business - and that is how an Irish policeman became the owner of an Oxfordshire Brewery!
