He is considered among the first and most prolific authors to write 'police memoirs' or detective stories[1][2] (some published under the pseudonym 'Waters' or 'Thomas Waters').
[3] Russell is thought to have been born in Southampton in 1806,[4] and in the late 1840s started contributing an irregular series of stories to Chambers's Edinburgh Journal between 1849 and 1852.
[3] Ten of Russell's Chambers detective stories were subsequently published in unauthorised editions in New York in 1852 and 1853, entitled The Recollections of a Policeman.
The same ten, plus two additional stories, were then collated into a volume entitled Recollections of a Detective Police-Officer, published in London in 1856[4] (also reprinted with slightly different titles).
[4] A collection of his sea stories appeared in Tales of the Coast Guard (also 1856),[3] and Leaves from the Diary of a Law Clerk was published in 1857.