On the 19th July 1827 his beloved brother-in-law and assistant, John Shaw, died. His suffering from this loss was intense. In his discoveries, his first great object had always been “to convince Johnnie.” This faithful brother-in-law was fortunately replaced by another, Alexander Shaw, afterwards surgeon to the Middlesex Hospital, notable in after times as a defender of his fame and expounder of his doctrines. In the same year was matured the project long incubating, of a new London University (now University College), in which Charles Bell was to be the head of the Medical School. He delivered the inaugural lecture, and for some years took an active part in its organisation. The arrangements, however, which were made by the governing body were in many respects inconsistent with the high ideal of teaching which Charles Bell had, and with the freedom of procedure to which he had been for so many years accustomed at the Windmill Street School. Consequently in 1830 he finally retired from the new College, and felt in some respects stranded, for discovery and teaching were his very life. Practice was to him an irksome necessity. Thus a time of life in which practical success might have made him wealthy was characterised by depression and sadness, principally relieved by a very unusual recreation for a hard-worked London practitioner, namely, fly-fishing. He was first attracted to this sport by spending a day at Panshanger with his bosom friend, John Richardson. The evident delight of his friend in this occupation, and the freshness and relaxation which it afforded, convinced him that he had found the thing he wanted to sweep from his mind the cobwebs of professional life. Lady Bell says, “He was often on the waterside before sunrise—indeed, before he could see his flies; and he did enjoy these morning hours. I came down with his breakfast, bringing books and arrangements for passing the whole day, even with cloaks and umbrellas, for no weather deterred us. He liked me to see him land his fish, and waved his hat for me to come.” In the intervals of angling many of the best parts of his popular works on the Hand and on Animal Mechanics were written.