Lucy’s ancestors were esteemed, but her childhood was difficult. By the time of her birth in July 1948, her parents’ relationship had already begun to deteriorate, and when she was four years old, her parents left her and her sisters, Anne and Sarah, in the care of Bertrand Russell and his fourth wife, Edith Russell (neé Finch). She would never live with her parents again; John and Susan divorced in 1955 and both experienced serious mental health crises which left them unable to look after their children. The years after Lucy’s parents’ departure were marked by a bitter family custody dispute which would leave the two sides of her family—Bertrand Russell and Edith against John Russell and Dora—permanently divided.

Lucy was five years old when the custody dispute began. Bertrand and Edith Russell, with whom the children still lived, initially desired to have the girls made wards of the court on the basis of parental neglect, an initiative which was strongly opposed by Dora Russell (née Black), their grandmother (Monk 356). By 1954, Lucy’s parents had separated, and John, her father, had been hospitalized following a schizophrenic breakdown (Monk 359-360). Subsequently, John Russell moved into his mother Dora’s home, Carn Voel, in Cornwall, where he lived for the rest of his life. Susan Russell, Lucy’s mother, lived the remainder of her life in North Wales. She commenced a new relationship with another writer, Christopher Wordsworth, and spent time in and out of psychiatric hospitals, always living in poverty (Monk 391).

When John and Susan divorced in 1955, John Russell retained custody of his children, though they did not live with him. In 1960, Bertrand and Edith Russell sought to further secure the girls’ situation by seeking full custody of them (Monk 394). A protracted legal dispute ensued, and in the end, Bertrand and Edith won full custody (1961), with John Russell retaining visitation rights (Monk 400).

Lucy and her sisters received a traditional education for children of the British upper class; they attended private boarding schools, including Kingsmuir School in Sussex, Moreton Hall in Shropshire, and Dartington Hall in Dartington. They spent their summer holidays with Bertrand and Edith at Plas Penrhyn, Russell’s home in North Wales. Lucy excelled in her primary school studies, demonstrating an interest in mathematics, like her grandfather, and a strong aptitude for languages. Her papers, held at the Bertrand Russell Archives at McMaster University Library, reveal her interest in literature and art as well.

Lucy Russell’s archive contains letters sent to Lucy and her sisters from their relatives about the custody dispute, as well as letters they sent one another in an attempt to make sense of the situations around them. Lucy and her sisters remained, for a time, in a tight information loop, and often struck a defiant note in their recounting of the narratives their adult caretakers had told them. “We are not going to carry on the sordid traditions of our ancestors,” Anne wrote to her younger sisters in 1962 upon learning of her mother’s remarriage.