1. Dora Winifred Russell, Countess Russell was a British author, a feminist and socialist campaigner, and the second wife of the philosopher Bertrand Russell.
24 Facts About Dora Russell
1. 2.
Dora Russell worked for the UK-government-funded Moscow newspaper British Ally, and in 1958 she led the "Women's Peace Caravan" across Europe during the Cold War.
3.
Dora Russell went to a private co-educational primary school near her parents' home and won a junior scholarship to Sutton High School.
4.
Dora Russell supported Rose Witcop and Guy Aldred and who were prosecuted for publishing Margaret Sanger's Family Limitation which was a guide to contraception.
5.
In 1924 Russell campaigned for birth control with the support of Katharine Glasier, Susan Lawrence, Margaret Bonfield, Dorothy Jewson, H G Wells and John Maynard Keynes and founded the Workers' Birth Control Group which provided advice on birth control to working-class women.
6.
Dora Russell campaigned in the Labour Party for birth control clinics, but the party was afraid of losing the support of Roman Catholic voters.
7.
Dora Russell said that she hated the Labour Party after the leadership overruled her lobbied support at the 1925 convention.
8.
In 1927 Dora Russell founded a progressive school called Beacon Hill School, with Bertrand Dora Russell, in which they tried to teach children to leave behind superstition and the irrational views of previous generations.
9.
Dora Russell expressed her views on education in a book called In Defence of Children.
10.
Dora Russell ran the school on her own until World War II.
11.
Dora Russell was still speaking on peace issues on 2 April 1981, when she addressed a Merseyside Peace Week.
12.
On 20 May 1958 Dora Russell set out from Edinburgh with fifteen other women on what became known as the "Women's Peace Caravan".
13.
Dora Russell first met Bertrand Russell in 1916 when joining him on a weekend walking tour.
14.
However, the pair did not embark on a relationship before 1919, when Dora Russell invited her to join him during his summer holidays.
15.
Black and Dora Russell visited Soviet Russia in 1920, soon after the Bolshevik revolution.
16.
Dora Russell was unimpressed by Vladimir Lenin, but Black, like many English socialists at the time, saw a vision of a future ideal civilisation.
17.
Dora and Russell were married on 25 September 1921 at Battersea Town Hall, with Eileen Power and Frank Russell acting as witnesses.
18.
Dora Russell, who was seven months pregnant with the couple's first child, John, wore black during the ceremony.
19.
Dora Russell had at first rejected Russell's offer of marriage.
20.
Dora Russell regarded these as essential for women to gain control over their own lives, and eventually become fully emancipated.
21.
Dora Russell's husband was a supporter of radical views but she said that she was expected to do the "bottle-washing".
22.
Dora Russell published her book on the inadequate education of women and inequality with the title Hypatia or Woman and Knowledge in 1925.
23.
Dora Russell noted that during the divorce her husband used all of his privilege to gain advantage.
24.
Dora Russell died at Porthcurno, Cornwall, on 31 May 1986, aged 92.