Lord Ampthill, who died on April 23 aged 89, was a theatrical impresario and deputy speaker of the House of Lords, but was perhaps best known as “the Russell baby”, whose paternity and conception were at the heart of one of the most sensational divorce cases of the last century and the subject of legal argument for more than 50 years.
Lord Ampthill at his London home Photo: Daily Mail/Rex
Geoffrey Russell, as he was until he was confirmed as the inheritor of the Ampthill barony in 1976, was the son of Christabel Hart, a soldier’s daughter who married in 1918 — against his family’s wishes — John Russell, heir to the 2nd Lord Ampthill. The barony had been created in 1881 for the diplomatist Lord Odo Russell, brother of the 9th Duke of Bedford, who was ambassador to Berlin and a friend of Bismarck.
John Russell was a gangling naval midshipman, nicknamed “Stilts”, who enjoyed going to fancy dress balls in drag. The unusually free-spirited Christabel, meanwhile, spent her evenings elsewhere in London dancing with a string of what her husband referred to as “detestable young men”, and sometimes spending the night in their company.
She denied any impropriety in these encounters, and once said she had married John because she thought other men would pester her less. She also said she chose him because he was unlikely to “bother” her: the marriage was — by both parties’ accounts — never fully consummated, and Christabel made John promise that they would have no children in the early years.
But in June 1921 she discovered — after a visit to a clairvoyant — that she was five months pregnant with Geoffrey. John denied paternity and promptly sued for divorce, claiming that no physical contact whatever had taken place between them since the previous August.
It transpired, however, that the couple had shared a bed for two nights just before Christmas 1920, at the Ampthill seat in Bedfordshire. According to Christabel, John had taken the opportunity to attempt what was referred to in accounts of the case as “incomplete” or “partial” intercourse — as it seems he had done on numerous previous occasions, which she described as “Hunnish scenes, usually preceded by threats to shoot himself and once to shoot my cat, which often slept on the bed”.
John was nevertheless convinced that he could not be the father of the child, and named two of Christabel’s men friends, Gilbert Bradley and Lionel Cross, as co-respondents. But matters were thrown into confusion by medical evidence that Christabel, despite her pregnancy, still showed “all the signs of virginity”.
Among the possibilities considered were that conception had somehow been achieved while John was sleepwalking, or (the celebrated “Sponge Baby” theory) by Christabel soaking herself in a bath which John had recently vacated. John himself asked a doctor, in all seriousness, whether a child born in October 1921 could have been conceived in August 1920.
Coverage of these speculations reputedly provoked King George V to object that “the pages of the most extravagant French novel would hesitate to describe what has now been placed at the disposal of every girl or boy reader of the daily newspapers”. The law was subsequently changed to prevent full reporting of divorce evidence.
At the first divorce hearing, the jury dismissed the possibility of Christabel’s adultery with Bradley or Cross, but failed to reach agreement on the possibility that Geoffrey’s father might still have been someone other than John — who proceeded to sue again, citing a new co-respondent, Edgar Mayer. A second jury found Christabel guilty of adultery with “a man unknown”, though not with Mayer, and granted John his divorce.
Christabel had by now achieved special notoriety in London society — when she dined at the Berkeley Hotel, fellow diners stood on their chairs to get a better look. But she refused to give up her fight for Geoffrey’s legitimacy.
Her first appeal was rejected, but in 1924 she took the case to the House of Lords, where deliberations hinged on a dictum of Lord Mansfield in 1777 that it was inadmissible for a husband or wife to give evidence of “non-access” which would have the effect of bastardising a child born in wedlock. The great advocate Lord Birkenhead, presiding, upheld this view, and the divorce was rescinded.
Christabel and John remained married in name until 1937, when she agreed to give him a divorce — which became absolute shortly after he had succeeded as the 3rd baron. Christabel, Lady Ampthill, as she then styled herself, spent most of the rest of her life hunting in Ireland.
After John’s death in 1973 the case was given another public airing, in franker terms than had been permissible in the 1920s. Geoffrey’s petition to the Queen for a writ of summons to the House of Lords was contested by the 3rd baron’s undoubted son (also called John) by his third wife — obliging the Committee of Privileges to decide between the two claimants.
It emerged during the hearing in February 1976 that Geoffrey had renounced his and his successors’ interest in the Ampthill family trusts in return for a £30,000 pay-off. More crucial, however, was the revelation that blood samples had been taken from Geoffrey, Christabel and the 3rd baron which might have been conclusive if Geoffrey’s solicitors had not belatedly refused to allow his to be tested.
According to the rival claimant’s barrister, this refusal followed an intervention by Christabel “because she knew perfectly well that the child was not Lord Ampthill’s”. Christabel herself died in Ireland a few days before the hearing, which found no grounds to overturn the previous Lords ruling on Geoffrey’s legitimacy.
Geoffrey duly took his seat as a cross-bencher, observing that he had taken a long time to reach the House and intended to make the most of his time there. Conscientious, amiable, diffident in manner, he was well liked by fellow peers.
He made his mark as chairman of the House catering committee, and in 1980 became a deputy chairman of committees. He was a deputy speaker from 1983, and chairman of committees from 1992 to 1994. In 1987 he became chairman of its Channel Tunnel Bill committee, which heard objections from Kent residents affected by the project. These included worshippers of the ancient Norse god Odin, who claimed their rites would be disrupted by passing trains: Lord Ampthill expressed sympathy, but pointed out the prohibitive cost of re-routing the line to avoid their sacred site near Maidstone.
Geoffrey Denis Erskine Russell was born on October 15 1921 and went to Stowe. After school he spent some months in Hungary, Switzerland and Monte Carlo before joining the Irish Guards. He was commissioned in 1941, and embarked for France with the Guards Armoured Division in June 1944; he was wounded and returned to England for hospitalisation, but went on to serve with Allied land forces in Norway in the autumn of 1945.
On demobilisation, Russell took a job at Fortnum & Mason, the Piccadilly grocers, where he was appointed general manager: angry customers who demanded to see him were shocked to find him so young, he observed. But in April 1951 he resigned abruptly following the ousting of Fortnum’s chairman, Col Ian Anderson, in a boardroom upheaval which resulted in control of the company passing to the Canadian bakery millionaire Garfield Weston. “I have nailed my flag to Ian Anderson’s mast,” was Russell’s parting shot.
He went on to become chairman of the New Providence Hotel Co, which developed a luxury hotel at Nassau in the Bahamas, and from 1953 he made a career in theatrical management, becoming managing director and owner of Linnet & Dunfee, the company which produced the first staging of Salad Days, several of Terence Rattigan’s plays and a string of other West End successes.
On one occasion, in 1970, Russell caused a stir in the theatre world by complaining to Scotland Yard that a production of Council of Love by a rival impresario, Donald Albery, at the Criterion, was blasphemous. The play, starring Warren Mitchell as the devil, was reported to involve “bare-breasted girls in an orgy during Mass”.
Having left the theatre business in 1981, Ampthill joined the board of United Newspapers — publisher of the Yorkshire Post and other provincial titles, and a wide range of magazines — as an ally of David Stevens (Lord Stevens of Ludgate). After United bought the Express titles, Ampthill was also deputy chairman both of Express Newspapers from 1989 and of United itself from 1991.
He was chairman of Dualvest, an investment trust venture, and a director of Leeds Castle Foundation. He was appointed CBE in 1986.
He married first, in 1946 (dissolved 1971), Susan Winn, a granddaughter of the 2nd Lord St Oswald and the 1st Lord Queensborough; Susan’s mother Olive was, by her third marriage, Lady Baillie, the celebrated chatelaine of Leeds Castle. Geoffrey and Susan had three sons (of whom one predeceased him) and a daughter. He married secondly, in 1972, Elizabeth Mallon (dissolved 1987).
The heir to the peerage is his son David, who was born in 1947.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/theatre-obituaries/8474838/Lord-Ampthill.html
Among the possibilities considered were that conception had somehow been achieved while John was sleepwalking, or (the celebrated “Sponge Baby” theory) by Christabel soaking herself in a bath which John had recently vacated. John himself asked a doctor, in all seriousness, whether a child born in October 1921 could have been conceived in August 1920.
Coverage of these speculations reputedly provoked King George V to object that “the pages of the most extravagant French novel would hesitate to describe what has now been placed at the disposal of every girl or boy reader of the daily newspapers”. The law was subsequently changed to prevent full reporting of divorce evidence.
At the first divorce hearing, the jury dismissed the possibility of Christabel’s adultery with Bradley or Cross, but failed to reach agreement on the possibility that Geoffrey’s father might still have been someone other than John — who proceeded to sue again, citing a new co-respondent, Edgar Mayer. A second jury found Christabel guilty of adultery with “a man unknown”, though not with Mayer, and granted John his divorce.
Christabel had by now achieved special notoriety in London society — when she dined at the Berkeley Hotel, fellow diners stood on their chairs to get a better look. But she refused to give up her fight for Geoffrey’s legitimacy.
Her first appeal was rejected, but in 1924 she took the case to the House of Lords, where deliberations hinged on a dictum of Lord Mansfield in 1777 that it was inadmissible for a husband or wife to give evidence of “non-access” which would have the effect of bastardising a child born in wedlock. The great advocate Lord Birkenhead, presiding, upheld this view, and the divorce was rescinded.
Christabel and John remained married in name until 1937, when she agreed to give him a divorce — which became absolute shortly after he had succeeded as the 3rd baron. Christabel, Lady Ampthill, as she then styled herself, spent most of the rest of her life hunting in Ireland.
After John’s death in 1973 the case was given another public airing, in franker terms than had been permissible in the 1920s. Geoffrey’s petition to the Queen for a writ of summons to the House of Lords was contested by the 3rd baron’s undoubted son (also called John) by his third wife — obliging the Committee of Privileges to decide between the two claimants.
It emerged during the hearing in February 1976 that Geoffrey had renounced his and his successors’ interest in the Ampthill family trusts in return for a £30,000 pay-off. More crucial, however, was the revelation that blood samples had been taken from Geoffrey, Christabel and the 3rd baron which might have been conclusive if Geoffrey’s solicitors had not belatedly refused to allow his to be tested.
According to the rival claimant’s barrister, this refusal followed an intervention by Christabel “because she knew perfectly well that the child was not Lord Ampthill’s”. Christabel herself died in Ireland a few days before the hearing, which found no grounds to overturn the previous Lords ruling on Geoffrey’s legitimacy.
Geoffrey duly took his seat as a cross-bencher, observing that he had taken a long time to reach the House and intended to make the most of his time there. Conscientious, amiable, diffident in manner, he was well liked by fellow peers.
He made his mark as chairman of the House catering committee, and in 1980 became a deputy chairman of committees. He was a deputy speaker from 1983, and chairman of committees from 1992 to 1994. In 1987 he became chairman of its Channel Tunnel Bill committee, which heard objections from Kent residents affected by the project. These included worshippers of the ancient Norse god Odin, who claimed their rites would be disrupted by passing trains: Lord Ampthill expressed sympathy, but pointed out the prohibitive cost of re-routing the line to avoid their sacred site near Maidstone.
Geoffrey Denis Erskine Russell was born on October 15 1921 and went to Stowe. After school he spent some months in Hungary, Switzerland and Monte Carlo before joining the Irish Guards. He was commissioned in 1941, and embarked for France with the Guards Armoured Division in June 1944; he was wounded and returned to England for hospitalisation, but went on to serve with Allied land forces in Norway in the autumn of 1945.
On demobilisation, Russell took a job at Fortnum & Mason, the Piccadilly grocers, where he was appointed general manager: angry customers who demanded to see him were shocked to find him so young, he observed. But in April 1951 he resigned abruptly following the ousting of Fortnum’s chairman, Col Ian Anderson, in a boardroom upheaval which resulted in control of the company passing to the Canadian bakery millionaire Garfield Weston. “I have nailed my flag to Ian Anderson’s mast,” was Russell’s parting shot.
He went on to become chairman of the New Providence Hotel Co, which developed a luxury hotel at Nassau in the Bahamas, and from 1953 he made a career in theatrical management, becoming managing director and owner of Linnet & Dunfee, the company which produced the first staging of Salad Days, several of Terence Rattigan’s plays and a string of other West End successes.
On one occasion, in 1970, Russell caused a stir in the theatre world by complaining to Scotland Yard that a production of Council of Love by a rival impresario, Donald Albery, at the Criterion, was blasphemous. The play, starring Warren Mitchell as the devil, was reported to involve “bare-breasted girls in an orgy during Mass”.
Having left the theatre business in 1981, Ampthill joined the board of United Newspapers — publisher of the Yorkshire Post and other provincial titles, and a wide range of magazines — as an ally of David Stevens (Lord Stevens of Ludgate). After United bought the Express titles, Ampthill was also deputy chairman both of Express Newspapers from 1989 and of United itself from 1991.
He was chairman of Dualvest, an investment trust venture, and a director of Leeds Castle Foundation. He was appointed CBE in 1986.
He married first, in 1946 (dissolved 1971), Susan Winn, a granddaughter of the 2nd Lord St Oswald and the 1st Lord Queensborough; Susan’s mother Olive was, by her third marriage, Lady Baillie, the celebrated chatelaine of Leeds Castle. Geoffrey and Susan had three sons (of whom one predeceased him) and a daughter. He married secondly, in 1972, Elizabeth Mallon (dissolved 1987).
The heir to the peerage is his son David, who was born in 1947.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/theatre-obituaries/8474838/Lord-Ampthill.html
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