Husband: Charles RUSS died at age: 78
Born: 11 Nov 1876 at 70 New Bond Street London 1,2
Baptized: at St George's Hanover Square 3
Died: 26 Feb 1955 in Ealing 4
Buried: 1955 in West Hampstead Cemetery 5,6,7
Cause of death: Pneumonia
Education: 1888 Shebbear College, North Devon 8
Census: 31 Mar 1901 at 8 Torbay Park Paignton Devon 9
Education: 1901 Medical student 10
Graduated: 1903 from St Mary's Hospital 11
Occupation: 1903 - 1906 Resident Medical Offr Fulham Infirmary 12
Occupation: 1906 Bacteriologist at Queen Anne Street London 13,14
Occupation: 1906 - 1912 Senior assistant Clinical Laboratory of Pathology and Public Health 15
Occupation: 1912 Bacteriologist at 25 Beaumont St London 16,17
Occupation: 1915 volunteer X-ray section at Middlesex Hospital 18
Occupation: 1916 Published 'A New Treatment of Gonorrhea' 19
Occupation: 1917 Male Lock Hospital, 91 Dean Street 20
Occupation: 1923 Bacteriologist at 63 Wimpole Street London 21
Occupation: 1926 50 George Street, nr Baker Street 22
Occupation: 1927 Inventor 23,24
Resided: 1906 at 31 Lancaster Gds Ealing 25
Resided: 1908 - 22 Feb 1917 at Walden, Packhorse Rd Gerrards Cross Bucks 26,27,28,29
Resided: 1917 at 10 College Road Harrow 30
Resided: 1918 - 1921 at 276 Willesden Lane 31
Resided: 1926 at 10 Priory Crescent Lewes 32
Resided: 1928 in London 33
Resided: 1926 - 1932 in 54 Sutherland Ave Maida Vale 34,35
Resided: 1932 at 144 Albany Street 36
Resided: 1934-1946 in Old Cottage, Smugglers Lane, Crowborough Sussex 37,38,39
Resided: 1947-1955 at 7 Carlton Road W Perivale 40
Event: 1919 acquired motor cars 41
Event: 1921 bought 27 Beaumont Street 42
Event: Dec 1922 in Malta - honeymoon 43
Event: Sep 1924 sold 25 Beaumont Street 44
Event: May 1925 declared bankrupt
Event: 9 Jul 1931 opening night 'Hidden Power' 45
Father: Christian Carl Gottfried RUSS
Mother: Emily CALLAWAY
Other Spouse 1
Wife: Zoe CENTER died at age: 86 Married: 20 Dec 1922 in St Paul's Knightsbridge 46,47,48 Born: 9 Apr 1878 daughter of Staffordshire vicar Died: 16 Apr 1964 in Ealing 49 Buried: Apr 1964 in Stone Staffs 50 Resided: 1922 at 96 Knightsbridge 51 Resided: 1923 - summer 1924 at Melbury Lodge, Kempsey 52,53 Resided: Sep 1924 - 1926 rented flat at 146 Kenilworth Court, Lower Richmond Road, Putney 54 Resided: 1926 at 10 Priory Crescent Lewes 55 Father: Bennett BLAKEWAY Mother: Rose Sarah CARR Sources: (1) DK, 'Charles, at the age of eleven,....left home in 1888', 12. (2) Emily Callaway, Day Book, 'Charles born November 11th 1876 at 70 New Bond Street W. registered Dec 21st & christened at St George's Hanover Square, W'. (3) Emily Callaway, Day Book. (4) DK, 'On 18 February 1955.....eight days after its publication, his seventy-eight year old father Charles Russ, died of pneumonia in Ealing', 176. (5) ABR, Photos of the RUSS tombstones in West Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green Road, London N 6 - graves no: WC 234 and 235, 239. (6) John Cole - 2000: Turning then to my sister's recollections of attending our grandfather Charles Russ's funeral, Daphne says that Victor, Bun (Bernard), Connie and Joan were there, along with our mother Olive. Daphne says the coffin remained open to show the deceased with a neatly clipped beard. She has no recall of meeting Zoe, although Zoe surely must have been present. After the funeral Bun took Olive and Daphne to the ballet in London's West End and booked them into his expensive hotel that night [it probably was Brown's Hotel; Bun usually stayed there when in town]. Mother insisted on paying her and Daphne's hotel bill, rather than have it paid by Bun!. (7) Ind, Mike Russ - from his mother Edith: 2002 "My mother has always been slightly reticent about the family as she always felt she was disapproved of by some of her in-laws. She went to the funeral of my Grandfather Charles Russ, and told me that his second wife Zoe came to stay with us for a week shortly after the funeral. Other visitors that she remembers with fondness were Nora who came to see her prior to emigrating to Canada. She recalls that Victor was always kind, but that the only time she met all of the family was at the funeral of my grandfather, when she and my father stayed in the house in Ealing". (8) DK, 'Soon thereafter [death of Walter 13 Dec 1886] the eight surviving boys were dispatched to Shebbear College, a long-established boarding school in north Devon. Charles, at the age of eleven, and his younger brothers Emil, Percy and Sidney (who was just eight years old) left home in 1888. Ernest, Albert, Frederick and William soon completed the Russ contingent at Shebbear, a school founded by a Low Church group and later affiliated with the Methodist Church. The brothers often remained at school even during the holidays. Boarding school was primarily a privilege of the rich, but conditions at Shebbear did not betray the fact. The boys took to eating their peach stones to stave off hunger, a habit that little Sidney would maintain for the rest of his life. When at home, the brothers proved that they had absorbed their Latin lessons, calling their mother 'Mater'. But they were not coddled at home either. 'Pater' would not tolerate idleness or airs in his boys, who during holidays were put to work learning the furrier trade', 12. (9) Census 1901, Susanna Ketley: Hd - Lodging House Keeper: Charles Russ - visitor age 24 single - medical student - born London, RG13-2063-50-27 SN171. (10) Census 1901, RG13-2063-50-27 SN171. (11) ABR, 5. (12) Medical Directory, 31 Lancaster Gdns Ealing MB London 1903 MRCS LRCP Lond 1903 (St Mary's) Res Med Off Fulham Infirmary. (13) DK, 'Charles, a bacteriologist, worked as one of two qualified assistants in Dr G. L. Eastes's laboratory of pathology and public health', actually 1906-1912, 18[US] (14) Medical Directory, 62 Queen Anne Street, Clinical Laboratory for Pathology and Public Health - Dr G L Eastes - at Queen ANne ST until 1909. (15) NT, From 1906 until 1912 he worked as senior assistant at the Clinical Laboratory of Pathology and Public Health in Queen Anne Street , under the direction of a distinguished pathologist, Dr Thomas Eastes. 5. (16) DK, 'Charles then set up his own lab less than a mile away, on Beaumont Street, igniting a bitter dispute. Claiming Russ had violated a noncompete clause in his contract, Eastes sued his former assistant. The Chancery Court sided with Charles, deeming the contract, which he had never actually signed, flawed.', 18[US] (17) NT, [1912] promptly established himself in private practice nearby in Marylebone at 25 Beaumont Street, 5. (18) NT, 5. (19) DK, 24. (20) NT, 15. (21) DK, 'Although he hoped the eye study would pay off, his practice was failing. He abandoned this office at 25 Beaumont Street, his only consistent address over the previous decade, and set up at 63 Wimpole Street. To save money during the school holiday, the boys cleaned the office and washed the glass vessels and the instruments that Charles used in his bacteriological practice. But within a year, he would close this office as well.', 34[US] (22) NT, By 1925-26 Charles Russ's reduced financial circumstances had compelled him to leave his substantial practice in Wimpole Street for rented rooms at 50 George Street. 82. (23) DK, 'On 12 December 1927, he applied for a patent for an electric heater that prevented the water in car radiators from freezing, a device that Barney helped him demonstrate at an exhibition of inventions and which he apparently sold to an automobile manufacturer, who unfortunately ended up shelving it. In the fall of 1928, Charles would apply for a patent for winding and constructing electrical heating elements, the description of which filled three pages. Three months after that, he patented an 'improved protector for venereal discharges'', 40. (24) NT, Another of his ingenious devices, which might at least have worked but was fortunately never put to the test, was a self-locking apparatus designed for telephone boxes, whcih sealed their doors automatically if anyone telephopned the fire or ambulance services. 21. (25) Medical Directory. (26) DK, 'The house the Russes called Walden lay in a wooded area in rural Buckinghamshire, halfway between the towns of Chalfont St Peter and Gerrards Cross.', 18. (27) ABR, 7. (28) NT, After living some time in successive London homes, in 1908 Charles established hs growing family in a handsome country house situated in what was then an unspoiled rural backwater in the valley of the little River Misbourn, between Chalfont St Giles and Gerrards Cross in south-east Buckinghamshire. Its extensive grounds and fine trees had led a previous owner to name it 'Walden' after Thoreau's famous wilderness retreat. The interior of the huse reflected much of the splendour of grandfather Karl's house in St John's Wood, with ponderous family furniture, portraits, and silver laid out in lavish display. 4. (29) NT, That day Victor recorded in his diary: 'We moved to 10 College Road, Harrow. There were three vans and they did not take all the things. Daddy, Rogue and I took down curtain rings. We had dinner in the nursery. Mummy, Pat & Daddy went in the Morgan, the rest of us by train'. 10. (30) DK, 25. (31) DK, 'Charles could not bear to live in the house where Jessie had died, so he uprooted the family once again, moving to a terraced house at 276 Willesden Lane, in Willesden Green, also north-west of London.', 26. (32) DK, 'In May 1926....around this time Charles moved what was left of the family to Lewes ...10 Priory Crescent', 39. (33) DK, 'The Russes did not last long in Lewes. They soon moved back to London', 40. (34) DK, 'By now, the Russ family had moved again, to Sutherland Avenue in the Maida Vale area of London', 44. (35) NT, In 1926 the family moved from Putney to a house at 54 Sutherland Avenue in Maida Vale, which was to remain their London home for the next six years. (36) NT, In 1932 Charles and Zoe Russ decided to move from Sutherland Avenue to a larger and smarter house close to Regent's Park, at 144 Albany Street. ...The rooms where Dr Russ receive his patients were divided from the remainder of the house by double green baize doors. 117. (37) DK, 'By Easter 1940......Charles, Zoe and Joan now lived in Crowborough', 80. (38) NT, In the winter of 1934-35 Charles and Zoe Russ left London with their sole remaining child Joan to live at Crowborough in Sussex. 135. (39) Medical Directory, The Old Cottage, Smugglers Lane Crowborough, from 1940-1946 this is shown as his address. (40) Medical Directory, 7 Carlton Rod W Perivale tel 7153, 1947 - 1955. (41) NT, ....the works of his motor bicycle. From this he graduated to buying a Wolseley motor car known to the family as the 'Globe', a magnificnet machine with great brass carriage lamps on each side of the windscreen, which Bernard remembered as 'large enough to take the entire family, which was more like a charabanc or bus thatn a motor vehicle, for party purposes'. .... So long as he possessed means to indulge his hobby, Charles Russ found it all but impossible to avoid the temptation of a new car. Victor's diary for 1919 shows that Charles added a Morgan, a three-wheeler, to the 'Globe'. 6. (42) NT, However, he appears to have made sufficient profit from the sale [of 276 Willesden Lane] to purchase the house next to his premises in Marylebone. Henceforth the only property he owned consisted of the adjacent houses at 25 and 27 Beaumont Street, which served him both as residence and professional practice. 28. (43) NT, 48. (44) NT, presumably 27 also, 58. (45) NT, In the summer of 1931 Dr Russ, a lifelong devotee of the theatre and music hall, arranged public performance of a play he had written. ..The opening night was on 9 July. Entitled Hidden Power, the drama centred on a murder perpetrated by an anaesthetist during an operation, and attention principally focused on medical issues of a specialist nature. ...The production, which ran for two months, was a privately funded venture .. 115. (46) DK, 'On 20 December 1922, at St Paul's Church in Knightsbridge, Charles Russ, now forty-five, married Zoe Center, a year younger', 31. (47) ABR, 'During our [ABR] sojourn at Marylebone, Father met and married a wonderful lady. Zoe performed marvels in the household', 24. (48) NT, Precisley when Charles met Zoe is not known ....It seems that Charles pursued a fairly heady social life, while she was undoubtedly a good catch. At the time Zoe was living in a smart house overlooking Hyde Park at 96 Knightsbridge. She appears to have possessed a considerable inheritance in her own right, and her husband had been a man of independent means. Although it is doubtful if Charles ever fully recovered from the death of his first wife, the marriage was to prove a happy one. The couple were wed at St Paul's Church in Knightsbridge, where Charles's eldest son Godfrey, then a nineteen-year-old student at Northampton Polytechnic College, was a witness. 48. (49) DK, '[1964] in April of that year.... Zoe Russ had died a week after her eighty-sixth birthday, at a hospital in Ealing, and Patrick went to England to attend the funeral. He rode on the train with family members to Stafford, and then travelled on to the village of Stone for the service. Drifts of daffodils covered the countryside between Stafford and the churchyard where Zoe was buried. Showing no favouritism, she had left them each £50, including Patrick, the favourite son who had changed his name, Joan, who had married beneath herself, and Joan's daughter Frances, who was Zoe's goddaughter'', 197. (50) DK, 197. (51) NT, At the time Zoe was living in a smart house overloooking Hyde Park at 96 Knightsbridge, 48. (52) NT, Following her marriage to Charles, in 1923 Zoe purchased a home in the country. Melbury Lodge, a charming Victorian country house, is situated in the picturesque village of Kempsey, on the banks of the Severn four miles south of Worcester, Joan Russ thought Zoe bought Melbury Lodge - Bun believed she inherited it. 49. (53) NT, In the summer of 1924, having been the family home for little more than a year, Melbury Lodge had to be sold to meet Charles Russ's debts. His reduced circumstances after 1921 had not inhibited his penchant for flamboyant new cars, and although financial profligacy was undoubtedly the cause of his having to remove his children from their schools not long afterwards, it appears from Bernard's account that he advanced failing health (for which there appears not to be a trace of evidence) as his pretext for the disaster. 57. (54) NT, 58. (55) NT, In the second half of 1926 Zoe Russ, accompanied by her two youngest stepchildren, left London to live in the country. ......The new home of the Russ houusehold was a terraced house at 10 Priory Crescent. This pleasant Regency row is situated close to the ancient parish church of St John the Baptist in Southover, a quiet quarter with a distinctive character of its own. Name Index