Burgess was born at 7 Lyndhurst Place, Rotherham, to Alfred Burgess, a blacksmith from Youlgreave, Derbyshire, and Camilla Anna Peat, a cook from Harthill, South Yorkshire. He had a younger sister, Winifred Edith Burgess, who was born in Rotherham on 11 May 1875. Their father worked for the Earl of Shrewsbury and accepted the Earl's offer to run a branch of the business in London. The family moved to Westminster, London, around 1882. During this time, Burgess joined a swimming club and swam to Battersea along the Thames. Around 1889 the Earl offered him the opportunity to set up a French branch of the motor tyre business in Paris. Burgess accepted and moved to France, where he spent the rest of his life. On 8 August 1893 Burgess married Anne Rosalie Mioux, a French woman, in Neuilly-Sur-Seine in Paris, and lived with her, running a motor business in Levallois-Perret. They had two children, a son born in 1896 and a daughter born in Paris in 1907. It is believed that the son fought for the British in World War I with the York and Lancaster Regiment. Burgess' maternal uncle was a head teacher at a school in Swinton, South Yorkshire. Burgess' sister married in London and had one daughter, Phyllis Camilla Ruegg, in 1898. Burgess' niece, Phyllis Camilla Ruegg, grew up to be the head of an Educational college in London and died at the age of 98 in Camden 1996. Burgess competed in swimming and water polo at the 1900 Olympics held in Paris and won a bronze medal playing for the French team despite his British nationality, which was allowed by the rules at that time. In swimming, he finished fourth in the 4000m freestyle and fifth in the 200m backstroke events. On 6 September 1911, on his 16th attempt, Burgess became the second person to swim across the English Channel, and the first one to use goggles. His motorcycle goggles leaked water, but they protected his eyes from water splashes during his breaststroke-only swim. In the 1920s Burgess was hired by the Olympian gold medalist and world record holder Gertrude Ederle, who in 1926 became the first woman to cross the English Channel. Around the same time Burgess bought a summer home at Cap Gris Nez near Calais, as a summer base to train channel swimmers from 1922 to 1934, while his main residence was at Clichy, Paris. In 1941 Burgess was taken prisoner by the Nazis and held in a prison campFrontstalag 142 in Besançon, France. He was released later the same year.
