He practiced medicine in the Manahawkin section of Stafford Township and was one of the local volunteers to rescue shipwrecks across Barnegat Bay.

[2] The frustrating experience of watching a ship full of passengers perish because the volunteers could not reach them that he first thought of creating a life-saving service.

During his first term, he added a single line to an appropriations bill allocating $10,000 for equipment to be used for responding to ships in distress close to shore.

As a result of this appropriation, a series of light house stations were set up in New Jersey between Sandy Hook and Little Egg Harbor.

Late in his first year as Governor, Newell was involved in a major controversy over the execution of James P. Donnelly, an Irish Catholic medical student sentenced to death by a Protestant judge and jury.

Donnelly, from a New York City, was convicted of murdering Alfred S. Moses and sentenced to death in Monmouth County.

He supported many of the same policies he did while he was governor of New Jersey: strengthening life-saving systems on the Pacific Ocean, lower taxes, temperance, and forced acculturation of Native Americans.

In 1899, at the age of 82, he returned to Allentown, continuing the practice of medicine, and took an active role in the Monmouth County Historical Association.

[1] Following his death, Governor Foster McGowan Voorhees draped the State House in black as a show of mourning.