Jessie Jordan: A Rejected Scot who Spied for Germany and Hastened America's Flight from Neutrality

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Notes

1. In the notes that follow, TNA indicates the UK National Archives, Kew Gardens, London. All the TNA files cited are from the deposited records of MI‐5. SNA denotes the Scottish National Archives in General Register House, Edinburgh. SSC refers to records of the Scottish Supreme Court, viewable at the (old) Parliament Building, Edinburgh. VNST indicates the Papers of Robert Vansittart, Churchill College, Cambridge. The author would like to thank Dr. Roderick Bailey for his advice and help in accessing the MI‐5 files.

2. “Mrs Jordan the Platinum Blonde Spy,” People's Journal, 21 May 1938, reproduced in Alyth Voice, June 2005, 4. According to the Daily Express (3 March 1938), Jordan was “tall, blonde, middle aged.” Clipping in KV 2/3532, TNA.

3. Ibid.

4. Extract of entry in register of births, Edinburgh, 1 December 1937, KV 2/193, TNA; statement of Sergeant Sutherland of Glasgow Police Alien Registration Department concerning Jordan's visit to the department on 1 July 1937, 11 March 1938, KV 2/3534, TNA; Jordan “My Amazing Life” serialized memoir [henceforth “Jordan memoir”], Sunday Mail, 12 June 1938, in KV2/193 TNA. For the construction of Jessie Jordan's family tree, thanks are due to Ross Nisbet, a great grandson of Lizzie Wallace (later Haddow), and to Pat Storey, who very kindly put at the author's disposal her genealogical skills using Family Search, U.K. censuses, births, deaths, and marriages registers, and Old Parochial Registers.

5. Ross Nisbet email to author, 10 October 2012. According to Nisbet, Lizzie Wallace/Haddow returned to Scotland on just one occasion, in 1941, when she would have been 72 years old. The records do not sustain Jessie Jordan's contention that her mother had sixteen children before emigrating to Canada, see Jordan memoir, Sunday Mail, 22 May 1938.

6. Jordan memoir, Sunday Mail, 29 May 1938.

7. Jordan memoir, Sunday Mail, 5 June 1938.

8. Scotsman, 17 May 1938, clipping in HH16/212, file 1571/1, SNA.

9. Daily Express, 17 May 1938, clipping in KV 2/3532, TNA.

10. Jordan memoir, Sunday Mail, 5 June 1938.

11. Sergeant Sutherland's statement, 11 March 1938, KV 2/3534. TNA.

12. It is now a fine hotel favored by patrons of the Hay Book Festival.

13. Pat Storey's research indicated that, in 1911, Mary Wallace was working as a qualified sick nurse in the home of a widow in Bath; she is in the telephone directories with Felin Newydd as her address from 1926 to 1956. Huw Evans‐Bevan, the current manager of Felin Newydd, says that his great‐grandfather owned the house in the 1940s and that records confirm that Mary Jean Mackay Wallace was the owner in 1930 (email from Evans‐Bevan to author, 23 February 2013).

14. Letter, postmarked Brecon, purporting to be from Mary Wallace to her niece Jessie Jordan in Perth and offering money, 12 September 1937; undated report by MI‐5 handwriting analyst, concluding that the foregoing letter was written in the same hand as another letter written by Jessie Jordan, making the Mary Wallace epistle a forgery (both in KV 2/3534, TNA).

15. Dundee Courier, 4 March 1938, 9.

16. Typed transcript of letter, Jessie Jordan to prison authorities asking permission to write her memoir for a newspaper, 19 March 1938, showing low literacy, HH16/212, file 1597/1, SNA.

17. J. Mayo, governor of Perth Prison, to deputy secretary of state J. Fulton, 22 March 1938, HH16/212, file 1597/1, SNA. In her memoir, Jordan said “I hold no patriotic passion for any country. Nationality, as such, means nothing to me,” Jordan memoir, Sunday Mail, 22 May 1938. Scotland raised its school leaving age to 15 in 1901, but this was too late to benefit Jessie Jordan.

18. Manuscript letter, Jordan to the prison authorities in Aberdeen alleging discrimination against women prisoners, 23 December 1939, written in correct and eloquent English, HH16/212, file 4139/3, SNA.

19. A.P. Duffes, K.C., quoted in the Scotsman, 17 May 1938.

20. Production of evidence file, 17, referring to a £5 note mailed from Germany to Jordan 28 December 1937, and translation from Dutch of a cover note for five single pound notes, 28 February 1938, both in KV 2/3534, TNA.

21. According to the Daily Express, 17 May 1938, a Gestapo agent named Ostjes recruited Jordan.

22. Hugh Wilford, America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabists and the Shaping of the Modern Middle East, New York: Taylor & Francis, 2013, 4, 52; Len Scott, “Human Intelligence,” in Robert Dover et al., eds, Routledge Companion to Intelligence Studies, London: Taylor & Francis, 2014, 96–104: 98–9.

23. Rudyard Kipling, Kim, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1901.

24. Daily Express, 17 May 1938; E. Phillips oppenheim, The Evil Shepherd, London: Taylor & Francis, 1922, 11, 21, 28–9.

25. Sunday Mail, 12 June 1938, in KV 2/193, TNA. Just before her arrest, Jordan borrowed Contraband, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1923, by the xenophobic American thriller writer Clarence B. Kelland, featuring the headstrong heroine Carmel Lee.

26. According to Raymond J. Batvinis, MI‐5 also used the term “live letter box,” while US counterintelligence personnel preferred to say “mail drop”; see Batvinis, The Origins of FBI Counterintelligence, Lawrence, KS: Taylor & Francis, 2007, 8.

27. David Kahn, Hitler's Spies, London: Taylor & Francis, 1978, 327–328.

28. Indictment against Jessie Jordan or Wallace Con. Official Secrets Act, 1911 and 1920, Sec. 1 (1), Edinburgh, High Court, May 1938, in JC 26/1938/46, SSC. The indictment cited here and in further notes is the original text that predated alterations following legal manoeuvres.

29. Report by Lieut.‐Col. Cooke on Jordan's espionage activities, 29 March 1938, 2, KV 2/3534, TNA, Jordan memoir, Sunday Mail, 12 June 1938.

30. Sir John Lavery's painting of ‘The American Battle Squadron in the Firth of Forth, 1918: “New York” [flagship], “Texas,” “Florida,” “Wyoming,” “Delaware”, Imperial War Museum, London: Art.IWM ART 1250.

31. Indictment against Jessie Jordan,1, JC26/1938/46, SSC.

32. Daily Express, 22 June 1938, clipping in KV 2/193, TNA.

33. Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI‐5, London: Taylor & Francis, 2009, 209.

34. Crown to anonymous Abwehr controller, 17 January 1938, KV 2/3421, TNA.

35. Ibid.

36. Guy Liddell (of MI‐5), “Liaison with the United States Intelligence organizations arising from the German Espionage Case” (March–April 1938), of which copies are held in the MI‐5 files and the Vansittart Papers: KV 2/3533, TNA and VNST II 2/21. Indicating who was the main US investigator, the word “Turrou” is pencilled at the top of the TNA copy. Details on this “Crown,” G.G.M. Rumrich, can be found in the richly researched Batvinis, Origins FBI Counterintelligence, Chapter 1, available at: http://fbistudies.com/books/origins‐of‐fbi‐ci/chapter‐one/, accessed 24 July 2014.

37. See Batvinis, Origins FBI Counterintelligence.

38. Ibid.

39. “List of Witnesses,” Indictment against Jessie Jordan, 7–8, JC26/1938/46, SSC.

40. MI‐6 would have wanted to suppress information about its activities in Hamburg, but the Empire News hinted at them on 22 May 1938, and see Sean Murphy, Letting the Side Down: British Traitors of the Second World War, Stroud: Taylor & Francis, 2003, 14.

41. The Daily Express, 22 June 1938, calculated that MI‐5 delayed the arrest of Jessie Jordan from 20 November 1937 to 2 March 1938.

42. Andrew, Defence of the Realm, 56, 78, 143. “Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire” (OBE) is an honor established in 1917 by the British monarch, and conferred for distinguished public service in war or peace.

43. Report by Lieut.‐Col. Cooke on Jordan's espionage activities, 29 March 1938, 63.

44. Dundee Courier, 4 March 1938, 9.

45. Dundee Courier, 11 March 1938, 5.

46. Note of Objections to Relevancy of Indictment in H.M. Advocate v. Mrs Jessie Wallace or Jordan, stamped 10 May 1938, and undated note indicating defence counsel's acceptance of “relevancy” objection, accused's intention now to plea guilty, and agreement over procedure whereby there would be a speech in mitigation followed by sentencing, both in JC26/1938/46, SSC.

47. Handwritten deletions, Indictment against Jessie Jordan, 1, JC26/1938/46, SSC.

48. Duffes's plea in mitigation reported in Leonard O. Mosley, “How Jessie Jordan Was Shadowed from the Very Start,” Empire News, 22 May 1938, clipping in KV 2/193, TNA.

49. Daily Express, 22 June 1938, clipping in KV 2/193, TNA.

50. Daily Express, 26 July 1938, clipping in HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

51. P.J. Rose (assistant secretary of state, Scottish Office) to Vernon Kell (head of MI‐5), 26 July 1938, HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

52. Daily Mail, 1 August 1938, clipping in HH16/212, file 4139/1, SNA.

53. Prison invigilator's notes on conversation between Jessie Jordan and her daughter Marga, 25 October 1938, HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

54. Photograph of four‐year‐old Jessie peeping from behind a cabin door on the S.S. Gothland, Glasgow Bulletin, 14 November 1938, clipping in HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

55. Cooke to Col. Leith‐Ross of the Prisons Department for Scotland, 26 August 1938, HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

56. John Sturrock (Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh) to Mr Sloan, 23 September 1938, HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

57. Handwritten note from governor of Edinburgh Prison (Saughton) to the secretary of state, 22 October 1938, HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

58. Cooke (on behalf of Sir Vernon Kell) to J. Fulton, deputy secretary, Scottish prisons department, 24 October 1938, HH16/212, file 4139, SNA.

59. Transcript of conversation between Tom Reid and Jessie Jordan signed by the governor, Edinburgh Prison (Saughton), 30 January 1939, and sent to the Secretary of State, Scottish Office, London, HH16/212, file 4139/2, SNA.

60. Prison warden's transcript of conversation between Jessie Jordan and Tom Reid (who had just returned from a futile visit to Germany aimed at bringing the child Jessie to Scotland), 7 March 1939, HH16/212, file 4139/2, SNA.

61. Report on Jordan by governor of Aberdeen Prison, 23 December 1939 HH16/212, file 4139/2, SNA.

62. Crown (Rumrich) to anonymous Abwehr controller, 17 January 1938, KV 2/3421, TNA.

63. Report to the secretary of state, governor of Aberdeen Prison, 23 December 1939, and Rose letter to the governor, 9 January 1940, both in HH16/212, file 4139/3, SNA.

64. Particulars of Convict recommended for Licence, Jessie Wallace or Jordan, 30 November 1940, HH16/212, file 4139/4, SNA.

65. Jordan memoir, Sunday Express, 19 June 1938.

66. The quotation attributed to Lincoln is thought provoking, but probably apocryphal. See Daniel R. Vollaro, “Lincoln, Stowe, and the ‘Little Woman/Great War’ Story: The Making, and Breaking, of a Great American Anecdote,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 30, 2009, available at: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.2629860.0030.104, accessed 29 October 2013.

67. Liddell, “Liaison with United States Intelligence organizations.”

68. Douglas M. Charles, J. Edgar Hoover and the Anti‐interventionists: FBI Political Surveillance and the Rise of the Domestic Security State, 1939–1945, Columbus, OH: Taylor & Francis, 2007, 3, 30–31; Batvinis, Origins FBI Counterintelligence, 24–25, 53–4.

69. Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–1946, Princeton: Taylor & Francis, 1951, 774; Michael Leigh, Mobilizing Consent: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, 1937–1947, Westport, CO: Taylor & Francis, 1976, 42.

70. For hints on women's distrust of the intelligence services, Graeme Davies and Robert Johns, “Public Confidence in MI‐6: Implications for Pre‐Emption” (paper at biennial conference of Aberystwyth University's Centre for Intelligence and International Security Studies, Gregynog Hall, Powys, Wales, 2011, kindly emailed to author).

71. Rebecca West, The Meaning of Treason, New York: Taylor & Francis, 1947.

72. See also Douglas Macleod, Morningside Mata Haris: How MI6 Deceived Scotland's Great and Good, Edinburgh: Taylor & Francis, 2005.

73. See Margo Todd, The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland, New Haven, CT: Taylor & Francis, 2002, 127–182.

74. Kenneth G. Robertson, Public Secrets: A Study in the Development of Government Secrecy, London: Taylor & Francis, 1982, 58; David Vincent, The Culture of Secrecy: Britain, 1832–1998, Oxford: Taylor & Francis, 1998, 91; Alan Cochrane, “Traitors in a Class of their Own,” The Scotsman, 15 May 1997, 15.

75. Philby quoted in Len Scott, “Human Intelligence,” 98.

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Notes on contributors

Rhodri Jeffreys‐Jones

Rhodri Jeffreys‐Jones is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Edinburgh, and honorary president of the Scottish Association for the Study of America. His two latest books are In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) and The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society since 1900 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013).