Christabel Russell (1895–1976), born Christabel Hulme Hart, started a successful fashionable dress shop in London in 1920. She designed the dresses herself and the business expanded to employ nearly forty staff. Before her marriage she habitually went to dances and parties and she received, and refused, many offers of marriage. She went on to become an accomplished horsewoman and in later life took to travelling the world.
However she is best known for her central role in a series of court cases starting in 1921, eventually reaching the House of Lords in 1924, in which her husband, John Russell, unsuccessfully attempted to divorce her on grounds of her alleged adultery. She gave birth to a son shortly before the first case came to court. Medical evidence was given that despite her pregnancy she was still a virgin and John Russell sought to prove he could not have been the father because he had never succeeded in having intercourse with his wife. Christabel spoke of "Hunnish scenes" in the bedroom on one of the rare occasions they shared a bed. The newspapers were full of salacious details of the evidence given in court which appalled King George V and in 1926 a law was brought in to restrict reporting of divorce cases.
Early life
Christabel Hulme Hart was born on 22 June 1895 to John Hart, colonel of the Leinster Regiment, and Blanche Hart (née Blanche Anstruther Erskine). She started her childhood at Tadley in Hampshire but the family soon moved to Swallowfield in Berkshire. Her elder sister Gwnydd had been born in 1894 and the girls were taught at home by a governess though Christabel received most of her education from her father. Christabel learned to ride at the age of five and by the age of six could gallop on horseback away from her parents while fox hunting.
During the Great War she worked at Woolwich Arsenal making munitions and she became promoted to inspector of gun carriages, in charge of 2000 women workers at a salary of £400 (). Later she became buyer for the armaments company W G Armstrong Whitworth. In the evenings she partied and danced, this leading to many marriage proposals that she always accepted and then rejected a few days later. She claimed never to have been in love or to have had any romantic involvements.
Christabel was tall and athletic, and was described as boyish but not mannish. In the 1920s she was very modern woman, a "flapper": highly fashionable in her speech, bobbed hairstyle and way of dressing. She was "exceedingly unconventional": driving a car and motorcycle and flying an aircraft. Most people considered her beautiful: she was certainly elegant and drew attention.
In 1915 three midshipmen from HMS Defence placed an advertisement in The Times seeking young ladies to correspond with. Such an idea would have been socially unacceptable before the war but it was now possible for unmarried young women to be companions for wartime officers who might not have long to live. Hundreds of letters arrived in reply and, after rejecting all who had not enclosed a photograph, the officers selected Christabel and arranged to meet her in London. For ten days the foursome dined and went to nightclubs for which one of the officers, John Russell paid for all the expenses. Christabel stayed in contact with all three men and on 18 October 1918 she married Russell at St Jude's Church, Kensington. On the day before the wedding Christabel had made her fiancé promise there would be no sex and no children for at least a year or two. Russell's parents, Oliver Russell, 2nd Baron Ampthill and Margaret, Baroness Ampthill did not attend the wedding because they had heard rumours about her being "fast", fearing their son had got her pregnant, and thinking the marriage was beneath their dignity. However, they did allow the couple to stay with them at their Oakley estate for part of their honeymoon.
The Russells moved to a small house in Chelsea and, with John mostly away on submarine duties, Christabel resumed her extensive socialising but without the awkwardness of marriage proposals. Her husband gave her the book Married Love by Marie Stopes in the forlorn hope it would improve their sexual relationship. Despite keeping her physical distance she seemed to love him romantically writing "I'm miserable without you and want to howl, how I wish you were here to put your arms around me and kiss my tears away ...".