Dora Winifred Russell (née Black)

Sitter in 6 portraits
Following her first class Tripos degree from Girton College, Cambridge, Russell became an ardent supporter of women's suffrage and campaigns for peace. She married the recently divorced Bertrand Russell following the discovery that she was pregnant with their son John Russell. In 1924, she helped to found the Worker's Birth Control Group and published Women and Knowledge. The couple set up Beacon Hill School, their vision to establish an educational setting without discipline and religious teaching. During the 1950s, Russell became a member of the Six Point Group and in 1954 visited the United Nations Commission in New York on behalf of the Women's International Democratic Federation. She continued to campaign for peace and, in 1958, travelled from Europe to Moscow with the Women's Caravan of Peace to protest against nuclear weapons.