Author Jessica Mitford Dies; Funeral Homes, U.S. Prisons

Author Jessica Mitford Dies; Funeral Homes, U.S. Prisons detailed price lists. But Miss Mitford, Women's Detention Center as part of an avid reader of undertaker maga- her research. zines, told the Chronicle that morti- "I've always gotten into these sub- Ikfitford, 78, the muckraking cians continued to encourage elabo- jects by chance," Miss Mitford told - who skewered the fimeral in- rate funerals, even after cremations. The Washington Post in 1973. She be- Ausitry* in her 1963 expose, "The She maintained that the FTC, under came interested in prisons after the 1...Arnerksii Way of Death,* and indicted pressure from the industry, no longer American Civil Liberties Union asked '*elkinerican prison system 10 years was enforcing its directives. her to write a pamphlet on prisoner later_ in 'Kind and Unusual Punish- The most important change since rights. She took on the funeral indus- dixl of cancer July 23 at her 1963, she said, was the emergence of try after her husband, a Labor lawyer lirisite*Oakland, Calif. funeral home monopolies, a subject who wanted to help families of union -,Ker_Investigation into the basilic:* ss she intended to address in a revision of •members, founded a collective organi- *.cifikiiith was a selection of the Book of her book that was underway. zation, the Bay Area Funeral Society. :tfteTtfoith Club, stayed on the best- Miss hfitford was the child of an Miss Mitford's articles, published by peller lists for a year and led to a CBS aristocratic British family whose ec- such magazines as Life, Esquire and docuthentary and an investigation by centricities were widely chronicled by the Nation, targeted Bennett Cerf and &federal Trade Controissicai Time herself and others. She wrote six other members of the Famous Writers batigaine dubbed her the "Queen of books, including two autobiogra- School, television executives, a spa ca- Abe kihickrakers." She was denounced phies—"Daughters and Rebels" and tering to overweight wealthy women, - funeral industry, which helped "A Fine Old Conflict"—and several and overpriced restaurants. - bite* sales of her book, she said later. collections of articles, including `Poi- Described by a British writer last `Miss Krtford set the country talking son Penmanship: The Gentle Art of year as someone who easily could play charge that morticians were Muckraking" in 1979. an elderly lady detective in some long- lierpentating a "huge, macabre and ex- In 1992, she took on the medical es- running television serial, Miss Mitford Jegive.practical joke on the American tablishment, writing in 'The American retained the mannerisms and accent of puhlic° by exploiting grief. She said un- a well-bred Englishwoman. While in- Way of Birth" about inequities, techno- *takers routinely gouged money terviewing her subjects, her seeming frOUI families of modest means for un- logical obsessions and unnecessary ex- naivete would encourage people to say peceseary services such as ernhAming penses in obstetrics. Her interest in things they'd later regret. mid :caskets that were hermetically the subject began with a California "You may not be able to change the seithiL To facilitate her research, she midwife who was being investigated world," she was fond of stating, "but at .'haeLpalied as a bereaved widow. for practicing medicine without a li- least you can embarrass the guilty." Ifisa Mitford actively promoted cense. Miss Mitford, known as "Decca," IoakOst' 'cremations and cooperative Miss Mitford became a fierce advo- was born in Batsford, Gloucestershire; societies. She said she was cate of midwife-assisted births, con- England, the next to youngest of six iiatid that the gross income of one cluding that challenges to the profes- daughters of David, the second baron _:Major :Casket manuactirer fell by 10 sion of midwifery were an example of of Redesdale, and Sydney Bowles Mit- 7,40cent ,the year after her book was doctors' desires to keep control of a lu- ford. The children were schooled at ittMligned. In an interview last month crative business. home. Their father had Fascist lean- with the,San Francisco Chronicle, she 'Kind and Unusual Punishment." de- ings, and two of of the sisters became 'said; that cremations had risen from scribed the American prison system as supporters of Hitler. As a young wom- as'iticent of American deaths in concentration camps for poor, young, an, Jessica declared herself a commu- 1963 tO 21 percent. mostly minority offenders. Prisons nist. The Mitfords were profiled in a In the wake of her revelations, the spent $6 billion a year on buildings number of books,' including four that :YTS issued rules governing the fuller- alone while failing to protect society, came about the same time in the : 41 industry, among them a directive deter, crime or rehabilitate offenders, 1970s. Miss Mitford rejected the life that **narks must give consumers she said. She spent a night in the D,C. of the English nobility at an early age, when she began her own "running away fund." She wrote that, as a young girl sharing a room with her Fascist- adoring sister Unity, she used a dia- mond ring to scratch hammers and sickles on the windows of the family mansion. At 19, after a Season as a London debutante, she eloped with her second cousin Esmond Romilly, Winston Churchill's 18-par-old nephew. Rom- illy also believed that communism was the road to utopia, and they embarked on a journey- to join the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Lord Redesdale sent a British de- stroyer after the cousins, but they jumped ship in France, fled to Barcelo- na and were married in 1937. Shortly after, they came to the United States, where she sold English tweeds at the New York World's Fair while he wrote advertising copy and tended bar in Greenwich Village. They tried selling silk stockings door to door in Washington; moved briefly-to Mi- FLEPHOTO ami, where they worked in a bar in JESSICA MITFORD Biscayne Bay, and then returned to Washington: Romilly joined the Royal from a job in the classified acfrerlisihg Canadian Air Force in 1940, and Miss department of the San Francisco Mitford worked in a clothing store. Chronicle for being a subversive. She Their daughter, Constancia, named said that writing appeared to be the for the daughter of a Spanish grandee only job- available at the time that who cast her lot with the Republican didn't require skills or ability. Among army during the Spanish Civil War, the interests that had dogged her was born in February 1941. Eleven since childhood was music. She said months later, .Rornilly died when he she had always dreamed of being a was shot down by the Germans over torch singer. Last year, encouraged by the North Sea. her friend the poet. Maya Angelou, she His widow scratched out a living in formed a rock band,' Decca and the wartime Washington. She met lawyer Dectones, and cut a rap-style CD on Robert E. Treuhaft while they were the Don't Quit Your Day Job label. both working in the Office of Price Ad- In addition to her husband, of Oak- ministration. ' land, Miss Mitford is survived by a They moved to Oakland, where they were dedicated members of the daughter from her first marriage, Con- stancia 'Dinky" Romilly, a nurse who Communist Party for 15 years. Regu- larly called before the House Un- lives in New York, and a son from her American Activities Committee; she second marriage, Benjamin Treuhaft, called her Marxist training '`a kind of a Berkeley piano 'tuner who heads a adult Project Head Start" that enabled group that sends pianos to Cuba and her to function in the outside world. has been in the news lately; two sis- They quit the party in 1958 bit re• ters, Diana Mosley of Paris and Debo- mated active in lleral causes. rah Devonshire of Chatsford, England; Miss Nfitford didn't begin writing and three grandchildren. until she was. 38, after she was fired A daughter from her first marriage died in infancy, and a son from her second marriage, Nicholas Trenhaft, was killed in an accident in 1955. Miss lvfitfOrd met with the owner of a cut-rate cremation society in San Francisco last month and arranged for her own, $475 cremation. She speci- fied that there would be no embalming and no frills. .

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