Christabel Russell

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.