Kind and Usual Punishment by Jessica Mitford

Mitford asked, 'While they were at it, why did not the commissioners take the further steep of proposing repeal of the laws against such victimless crimes as homosexuality, prostitution, adultery, gambling, narcotics, and a host of other forms of behavior now legally proscribed thanks to the baleful influence of latter-day Puritans?' In answer, she quotes Pater Barton Hutt, consultant to the commission, who wrote, 'It is likely that almost every member of the commission consumes alcohol.

Edward Kennedy in DC about drug experiments taking place on California prisoners (“Cheaper than Chimpanzees” was her headline).Īs well as exposing the funeral industry in her famous book The American Way of Death, she wrote an exposé of the US prison system ( Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business (1973), in which she reported on the 1967 President's Crime Commission that abolished public drunkenness as a crime and deemed alcoholism a disease. She also testified at a hearing in front of Sen. She was good friends with Tokin' Woman Maya Angelou, and helped her husband Bob defend “Negroes” falsely accused of murder and rape, explaining to her mother (“Muv' = Lady Redesdale) in a letter what a “frame up” was and how it was applied to Negroes especially. Ronald Reagan got reports on her, and later when Mitford donated eyeglasses to a museum she joked about not putting them near Reagan’s for fear of explosion. The couple was eavesdropped on by the same FBI agents who later targeted Mario Savio and student activists in Berkeley. Romilly died in WWII while flying for the Royal Canadian Air Force, and Jessica married labor lawyer Robert Truehaft and lived in Oakland, CA until her death in 1996. Two of her sisters became Nazi sympathizers Jessica ran off at the age of 19 with her second cousin Esmond Romilly, whom she married and joined chronicling the Spanish Civil War. Mitford was one of five well-known daughters born to Lord and Lady Redesdale in Oxfordshire, England who took wildly different paths. Sussman, I've gained even more respect for her. Picking up Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford (Knopf, 2006), a 744-page collection of Mitford's letters edited by former SF Chronicle staffer Peter Y. I've long called Jessica Mitford, the muckraking journalist and activist, my heroine for her quote, 'Objective? I always have an objective.'*

Kind and Usual Punishment by Jessica Mitford