ABSTRACT
The repercussions of the City College controversy were to make life in America for Russell and his family extremely difficult and uncertain. As Russell has observed: 1
‘A typical American witch-hunt was instituted against me and I became taboo throughout the whole of the United States. I was to have been engaged in a lecture tour, but I had only one engagement, made before the witch-hunt had developed. The Rabbi who had made this engagement broke his contract, but I cannot blame him. Owners of halls refused to let them if I was to lecture, and if I had appeared anywhere in public, I should probably have been lynched by a Catholic mob, with the full approval of the police. No newspaper or magazine would publish anything that I wrote, and I was suddenly deprived of all means of earning a living. As it was legally impossible to get money out of England, this produced a very difficult situation, especially as I had my three children dependent upon me. Many liberal-minded professors protested, but they all supposed that as I was an earl I must have ancestral estates and be very well off. …’
