Wimploe Street now has a new plaque just a few doors up from that of Elizabeth Barret Browning. The new blue plaque commemorates the life of neurologist James Samuel Risien Russell.
He was one of the first black British consultants. Born in Demerara (Guyana) he was sent to Scotland as a teenager and later studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. He ran a private neurologist practice in Wimpole Street from 1902 to the end of his life in 1939.
During World War II he became a leading expert on shell shock and neurasthenia and during his career contributed several papers to medical journals
He clashed with psychiatrists over his belief that patients suffering from psychosis should receive effective treatment at home rather than be committed to asylums. Not all his opinions were so modern. He disapproved of the freedoms enjoyed by young women that made them ‘unfit for motherhood and the duties and responsibilities of married life’.
Find out more on the guided walk, ‘A Meander around Marylebone’