Jessie Jordan

Jessie Jordan (23 December 1887 – 1954) was a Scottish hairdresser who was found guilty of spying for the German Abwehr (military intelligence) on the eve of World War II. She had married again after her German husband died fighting for Germany, before she became a spy in Scotland. She was imprisoned and deported to Germany after the war ended.

Early life

Jordan was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1887, the daughter of Elizabeth Wallace, an unmarried domestic servant. Later in her life, Jordan claimed that her father, a William Ferguson, had abandoned her mother to go to Canada, but there is no name on her birth certificate. Her mother married widower John Haddow, with whom she had five more children. For a time, Jordan lived with her mother and stepfather in Lanark and later at 23 Friar Street in Craigie, Perth, Scotland.

Jordan had two children: a son, Werner Tillkes; and a daughter, Marga. and as her legal counsel would later claim during her trial, "the name of Jordan had in Germany a Jewish significance." but she also claimed later that she had been ordered to spy for Germany, and that she "had no passion for any country". Other motivations, including money and blackmail, have also been raised as possibilities. Although MI5 were already surveilling Jordan, they were unaware of the Dundee shop. As a result of Curran's report, the address of the salon on Kinloch Street was added to an ongoing mail watch, after which point incriminating post from the United States was discovered.

Arrest and imprisonment

On 2 March 1938, Jordan was arrested. She was found guilty of espionage and sentenced to four years imprisonment in March 1939. She was initially sent to Saughton Prison, during which time she became unwell and underwent an invasive operation that included a sub-total hysterectomy. When World War II started, Jordan was transferred to Aberdeen Prison. Her incarceration had a serious impact on her daughter's life as well; despite a second marriage to Glaswegian Tom Reid, Marga struggled financially and died in January 1939 as a result of what her husband called an "illegal operation".

During her time in prison, Jordan was described by her Dundee solicitor J. R. Bond as "a model prisoner, who showed off her needlework and exhibited no interest in an appeal". Bond further noted that "she is not in the least depressed". As a result of this good behaviour, Jordan was granted early release in 1941, but was immediately arrested and interned as an enemy alien. She remained in this internment throughout the war, and after the war ended she was deported to Germany. Jordan died in Hamburg in 1954, aged 66 or 67.

Strategic impact on World War Two Jordan's detection led to the exposure of a German spy in the USA codenamed 'Agent Crown'. MI5 passed information about him to the US authorities and they in turn unearthed a spy network in the USA consisting of eighteen agents and dozens of accomplices. Due to mistakes of FBI criminal investigator Leon G. Turrou most of the ring managed to flee, but the 1938 trial of the rest still turned the American public significantly against Nazi Germany. It is postulated that American anti-Nazi feeling fed into the Japanese decision to bomb Pearl Harbor and for Germany to swiftly enter the war as Japan's ally.