The Honourable Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford, known to friends and family as Decca (September 11, 1917–July 22, 1996), self-described muckraker and political radical, was the "red sheep" of the noted Mitford sisters, daughters of David Bertram Ogilvy Freeman-Mitford, the 2nd Baron Redesdale.

Childhood and adolescence

Jessica and her siblings grew up in an aristocratic country house set-up not unusual for its time, with a tradition of noblesse oblige, emotionally distant parents, a large household with many servants, and a disregard for formal education. Girls were expected to marry young and well. Though her sisters Unity and Diana were well-known British supporters of Hitler and her father was described as being "one of nature's fascists," Jessica renounced her privileged background at an early age and became an adherent of communism. Evelyn Waugh, a long-time friend of her sister Nancy, is believed to have based some of the details and atmosphere of his best-selling novel Brideshead Revisited on the household in which Jessica Mitford grew up.

At age 19, Mitford met someone she had long known and admired from afar: her second cousin Esmond Romilly, the "red nephew" of Winston Churchill, who was recuperating from dysentery caught during a stint with the International Brigades defending Madrid during the Spanish Civil War. They immediately fell in love and decided to elope to Spain, where he picked up work as a reporter for the News Chronicle covering the conflict. After some legal difficulties caused by their relatives' opposition, they married. They moved to London and lived in the East End, then mostly an industrial slum area. She gave birth to a daughter, Julia, on 20 December 1937, in a home birth attended by doctor and nurse. (Her American births were in hospital and less pleasant.) All went well until the baby died in a measles epidemic the following May. Mitford rarely spoke of Julia in later life.

Life in America and Motherhood

In 1939, Romilly and Mitford emigrated to the United States of America. They travelled around, working odd jobs, perpetually short of cash. At the outset of World War II, Romilly enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force; Mitford was living in Washington D.C. and considered joining him once he was posted to England. After miscarriages, she gave birth to another daughter, Constancia ("Donk") Romilly on 9 February 1941. Her husband went missing in action on 30 November 1941, on his way back from a successful bombing raid over Nazi Germany. She took months to accept that he was dead.