John Russell, 4th Earl Russell

John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell (16 November 1921 – 16 December 1987) was the eldest son of the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell (the 3rd Earl) and his second wife, Dora Black. He was the great-grandson of the 19th century British Whig Prime Minister Lord John Russell. He succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father on 2 February 1970.

Married on 28 August 1946 to Susan Doniphan Lindsay, daughter of the poet Vachel Lindsay, he had two daughters, Lady Sarah Elizabeth Russell, born on 16 January 1946, and Lady Lucy Catherine Russell (21 July 1948 – 11 April 1975), neither of whom married or bore children. John Russell had a distinguished early career, working for the FAO among other organisations, but in later life he was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Moreover, there was evidences that his father had an affair with his wife and this exacerbated his mental disorder and ensuing divorce.^[1] This made him the only person in the United Kingdom to be denied the vote on two counts, first, for being a peer and, second, for being insane. He made a speech in the House of Lords that was considered so outlandish that to this day it is the only speech unrecorded by Hansard.

John Russell was succeeded as Earl by his half-brother, the historian Conrad Russell, 5th Earl Russell.

References

1. Rogers, N., & Thompson, M. (2004). Philosophers behaving badly. London: Peter Owen

• Monk, Ray (2004). "Russell, Bertrand Arthur William, third Earl Russell (1872–1970)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/35875. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by the Earl Russell