Mitford, Jessica (1917-1996), was a British-born American journalist and author who wrote investigative books on American society and politics. She also wrote about her eccentric, aristocratic British family.
During the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Mitford met her first husband, Esmond Romilly. After their marriage in 1937, they returned briefly to England to live, then immigrated to the United States in 1939. After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Romilly joined the Canadian Air Force. He died in action in 1941. Jessica remained in the United States. In 1943, she married Robert E. Treuhaft, an American labor lawyer. She became a U.S. citizen in 1944 and lived in Oakland, California, from 1947 until her death. She and her husband joined the American Communist Party, though many Americans at that time feared Communism, and the party operated largely underground.
During the 1950’s, Mitford began writing for American magazines, including Life, Esquire, and The Nation. She wrote a series of books that were critical commentaries on American society and politics. In The American Way of Death (1963), she described what she saw as the lack of ethics in the American funeral business. The Trial of Dr. Spock (1969) describes the 1968 trial of Benjamin Spock, an American doctor charged with conspiring to counsel young men to avoid serving in the Vietnam War (1957-1975).
Mitford’s other books include Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business (1973); A Fine Old Conflict (1977), on her experiences in the American Communist Party, from which she had resigned in 1958; Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979), a collection of essays on journalism; and The American Way of Birth (1992), examining obstetric practices in the United States.
Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford was born in Batsford, Gloucestershire, England. She was one of six daughters of Baron Redesdale, a British diplomat and nobleman. She was educated at home. One of her sisters was the novelist Nancy Mitford. Jessica wrote about her unconventional childhood in her autobiography, Daughters and Rebels (1960).
