Constituency : Nottingham 1866-8
As in Windsor, the election in Nottingham had to be re-run with new candidates and the end result was a double Liberal victory.
John was the eldest son of Lord John Russell. Since his father's elevation to the peerage in 1861 he had been known as Viscount Amberley. He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge although he left without taking a degree. John had unorthodox religious views; he rejected Christ's divinity and argued that the Church of England should consider all theologies because all citizens paid towards its maintenance. Mill considered him a disciple and his father pushed him towards politics. In 1864 he married the daughter of the Liberal peer Baron Stanley . His father disliked the match, despite Stanley holding office in both his administrations, and at one point blocked them from seeing each other for 6 months. John stood for Leeds in the 1865 election.
John's religious views caused him all sorts of trouble. He refused to observe the Sabbath. In 1867 he introduced a bill to allow public meetings on scientific and religious questions to take place on a Sunday. Mill supported it. He was an advocate of women's rights and birth control as a way of checking the downward pressure on wages. which led to accusations of devaluing marriage, promoting abortion and insulting doctors.
John supported Gladstone's positions in the Second Reform Act debates. In 1868 he supported Mill's measure against corrupt practices at elections.
John was not happy at Nottingham where he had to compromise with money and ignorance and so contested South Devon in 1868 instead but was defeated. He gave up parliamentary politics to concentrate on writing on religion and philosophy. He championed Positivism. In 1870 he joined the Workmen's Peace Association but did not support total disarmament.
John engaged an amateur biologist, Douglas Spalding, who was recommended by Mill as a private tutor for his children. Spalding was consumptive and considered unfit for marriage so John agreed that he could sleep with his wife. In 1873 John suffered an epileptic fit. The family went abroad to Rome where his eldest son Frank caught diphtheria. He recovered but in the summer of 1874 both his wife and daughter died of the disease. He had them cremated and buried in the grounds of his home without religious ceremony which caused further outrage.
John had inherited his father's short stature and physical frailty. Depressed , he left his surviving children to the care of Spalding and other servants while he tried to finish his study of world religions, An Analysis of Religious Belief.
John died of bronchitis in 1876 aged just 33, predeceasing his father. He left his sons' guardianship to Spalding and another atheist to prevent them being raised as Christians but his parents successfully overturned the will in that regard. His mother ensured his book was published despite disapproval of the contents. His younger son became the renowned philosopher Bertrand Russell.
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