Biography of Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford 1907-1982

In Feb 1906 [his father] Jack Russell 25th Baron de Clifford (age 21) and [his mother] Evelyn Chandler aka Eva Carrington (age 19) were married. She by marriage Baroness de Clifford.

On 31 Jan 1907 Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford was born to Jack Russell 25th Baron de Clifford (age 22) and Evelyn Chandler aka Eva Carrington Lady de Clifford (age 20).

On 01 Sep 1909 [his father] Jack Russell 25th Baron de Clifford (age 25) died in a car accident at Small Dole, Bramber [Map]. He was buried at St Peter's Church, Cowfold [Map]. His son Edward (age 2) succeeded 26th Baron de Clifford.

On 10 Mar 1926 Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford (age 19) and Dorothy Evelyn Meyrick were married. He was nineteen and required the consent of his mother in order to marry, but fearing that such consent would be withheld he made out that he was in fact twenty-two and the son of an engineer named Jack Russell. When this subterfuge was discovered, which wasn't difficult given that details of the marriage was announced in all the newspapers, he was was brought before the Lord Mayor of London, sitting as a magistrate, and fined the maximum penalty of £50 for making a false oath and ordered to pay an additional ten guineas in costs.

On 08 Jun 1928 [his son] John Russell 27th Baron de Clifford was born to Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford (age 21).

On 26 Feb 1930 [his son] William Southwell Russell was born to Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford (age 23).

In 1935 Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford (age 27) became the last peer to be tried in the House of Lords for a felony, manslaughter, the result of a car accident. He was found not guilty. One foggy night in the summer of 1935, when he was driving along the Kingston bypass at 3.30am on the 15th August in his "supercharged Lancia sports car", and suffered a head on collision with a "cheap four-seater Frazer-Nash" driven by Douglas George Hopkins. Mr Hopkins, who was returning home from a party with his sister Sheila and her friend Rosemary Reynolds, was killed at the scene. There seems to little doubt that Edward was indeed driving on the wrong side of the road, and the jury at the subsequent inquest were unanimously of the opinion that Hopkins had died as a result of the wilful negligence of the Baron de Clifford. He was therefore charged with manslaughter at New Malden police station and later committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court on a charge of "feloniously killing and slaying Douglas George Hopkins by driving a motor recklessly at the Kingston Bypass road on August 15. However the authorities soon realised, that as a peer of the realm charged with a felony, the only tribunal which had jurisdiction to judge the 26th Baron de Clifford was the House of Lords. This caused something of a conundrum as it had been some time since the House of Lords had been placed in the position of acting as a court sitting in judgement on one of its members, and its first priority was to establish a Select Committee to examine the precedents for such a trial. Oddly enough the last time such a trial had been convened was in 1901 was when Edward's distant cousin the 2nd Earl Russell had been up before his peers on a charge of bigamy.

The trial of the Baron de Clifford (age 28) opened on the 12th December 1935 social occasion. Admission was by ticket only, in fact much of the deliberations of the Select Committee had been taken up in deciding on the distribution of said tickets, whilst there was much prior disussion as to whether or not it was obligatory for peers to wear cocked hats. In any event the trial began with the Lord Chancellor, Douglas McGarel Hogg (age 63), 1st Viscount Hailsham, presiding as the Lord High Steward for the occasion, with the Attorney-General Thomas Inskip (later the 1st Viscount Caldecote) appearing for the prosecution, and Henry Curtis-Bennett leading the defence.

The trial itself proved to surprisingly brief. The prosecution's case consisted of the testimony of three witnesses (the two passengers in the Fraser-Nash and the police constable who's attended the accident), after which the defence put forward the claim that there was no case to answer. Russell's barrister argued that the "mere fact that a motorist was on the wrong side of the road was no evidence of negligence, still less of criminal negligence". He then proceeded to explain that the other car that had been travelling at an unsafe speed and was out of control and claimed that Edward had swerved onto the opposite side of the road in an attempt to avoid a collision, only to find that it switched to the right side of the road, resulting in the accident which terminated the life of Douglas George Hopkins. Or as Henry Curtis-Bennett put it; "In the agony of the moment, just before the collision, he did as he thought best!" This was a novel and ingenious argument which, to the surprise of most observers, was readily endorsed by the assembled jury of peers who proceeded to declare the 26th Baron de Clifford not guilty.

In 1973 Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford (age 65) and Dorothy Evelyn Meyrick were divorced.

In 1979 [his mother] Evelyn Chandler aka Eva Carrington Lady de Clifford (age 92) died.

On 03 Jan 1982 Edward Russell 26th Baron de Clifford (age 74) died. His son [his son] John (age 53) succeeded 27th Baron de Clifford.