John Russell, 4th Earl Russell

Who was John Russell, 4th Earl Russell?

John Conrad Russell, 4th Earl Russell was the eldest son of the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell and his second wife, Dora Black. He was the great-grandson of the 19th century British Whig Prime Minister Lord John Russell.

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, 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 went insane and was diagnosed as schizophrenic. 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 mad. 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.