Born: 11 September 1917, United Kingdom
Died: 23 July 1996
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Decca, Jessica Treuhaft, Jessica Freeman-Mitford, Jessica Romilly
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40.
Jessica Mitford was born in 1917, one of the six renowned Mitford sisters from an aristocratic English family. But although her background was worlds apart from Tarbell’s, Mitford would go on to become the “queen of the muckrakers.” Seemingly never suited to the life of a baron’s daughter, she fled first to the Spanish Civil War, then to the United States, where she published her memoir Hons and Rebels in 1960, followed by The American Way of Death in 1963. Exposing the unethical practices of the American funeral industry, it became a best-seller and prompted greater advocacy around the ethics in the industry and an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission.
In 1969, she published The Trial of Dr. Spock, about the famed pediatrician’s conspiracy trial for anti-war activities during the Vietnam War. “I never seem to have tackled anything of absolutely prime importance, like nuclear or poverty programs or anything like that. But I write about the sort of things like funerals or [a sham school promoting] famous writers. Which is not really world-shaking, but they are things that victimize people in odd little ways. I think that’s really what I like doing,” she later opined.
In addition to her work published in magazines and newspapers, Mitford applied her caustic wit to the state of the country’s maternity care in 1992’s The American Way of Birth, the prison system in 1973’s Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business and her experiences as a member of the Communist Party in the 1940s and ‘50s in 1977’s A Fine Old Conflict. As one fan observed, “She loved a good fight, and once said of her writing that if she couldn’t change the world she could at least embarrass the guilty.” Her editor, Robert Gottlieb, described her as “ruthless—savage even—when she was on the warpath, but she never stopped laughing.” Mitford also published a guide for aspiring journalists, Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (1979). In addition to guidance on topics like research and choosing subjects, the book’s advice includes:
Ranking questions from “kind to cruel”
Sorting witnesses into friendly and unfriendly
How to avoid getting sued
With her signature combination of pithy, withering humor, and in-depth investigative reporting, writer John Mortimer noted that “Jessica Mitford believed in social justice, love, the absurdities of power and the vital importance of jokes.”