Alexander Russel

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Alexander Russel
Scotsman Office built 1860 at the time of Russel
The huge monument to Alexander Russel in Dean Cemetery

Alexander Russel (or sometimes Russell)

FRSE (1814–1876) was a Scottish newspaper editor, who spent nearly 30 years as the editor of The Scotsman
.

Early life

Russel was born on 10 December 1814 in

Tait's Magazine, gave Russel the opportunity of contributing to that magazine.[1]

In 1839 Russel was appointed editor of the

his son.[1]

The Scotsman

After two years in Cupar, Russell became editor of a new journal in Kilmarnock. John Ritchie, one of the founders of the

biweekly Edinburgh paper The Scotsman, was impressed with his articles, and invited him to become assistant to Charles Maclaren, the editor of The Scotsman which Russel joined in March 1845. In 1848 he became its editor.[1]

Russel's journalism became identified with The Scotsman. His editorial line supported the

Thomas Babington Macaulay's re-election for Edinburgh in 1852; but in the same year Duncan McLaren successfully sued the paper for libel. From June 1855 The Scotsman became a daily paper. The Reform Club elected Russel an honorary member in 1875, "for distinguished public services".[1]

In 1860 he oversaw the relocation of the Scotsman offices from the

Peddie & Kinnear.[2]

Later life

In 1865 he was living at 2

Ramsay Gardens at the top of the Royal Mile.[3]

Russel attended and described the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Serious illness in 1872 compelled him to winter in the south of France.

In 1870 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, his proposer being Archibald Campbell Swinton.[4]

He lived his final years at 9 Chester Street in Edinburgh's fashionable West End.[5]

He died suddenly, of

angina pectoris, on 18 July 1876. Russel was noted as a conversationalist as well as a writer, but not as a public speaker, and he declined in 1872 an invitation to become a candidate for the lord-rectorship of Aberdeen.[1]

His monument (a huge red granite obelisk by Stewart McGlashan) forms the centrepiece of the north section of Dean Cemetery in Edinburgh. His wife, Jessie MacWilliam (1821-1870) lies with him, as does his son, Charles MacLaren Russel, who was drowned in the Ettrick Water on 23 September 1869, aged only nine.

Works

Francis Jeffrey.[1] His son was the cricketer John Russel
.

Family

Russel was twice married with children by both marriages. His first wife was Jessie McWilliam. His second wife was a widow, Mrs Helen Evans (née Carter), one of the Edinburgh Seven, with whom he had three children including feminist and writer Helen Archdale. Another daughter married Francis Dalzell Finlay the younger, proprietor of the Belfast newspaper the Northern Whig.[1][6] A son, Patrick, was a first-class cricketer.

Publications (as author)

Jumps in Jura (1856)

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e f g Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Russel, Alexander" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 49. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  2. ^ Buildings of Scotland: Edinburgh by Gifford, McWilliam and walker
  3. ^ Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1865
  4. ISBN 0-902-198-84-X. Archived from the original
    (PDF) on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 26 April 2018.
  5. ^ Edinburgh Post Office Directory 1875
  6. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/24292. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1897). "Russel, Alexander". Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 49. London: Smith, Elder & Co.

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