The New Yorker who gave birth to Churchill
As the very first Dollar Princess, this Brooklynite both set the standard and broke the mold. Unlike nearly all those who followed, she engineered her match herself.
Born in Cobble Hill in 1854, Jeanette “Jennie” Jerome was the eldest daughter of financial speculator Leonard Jerome, the namesake of the Bronx’s Je- rome Avenue. Her mother, frustrated by dim social prospects in New York, took Jennie and her two sisters to Paris in 1867 for educational “finishing.” There, the teenager’s quick wit, dark good looks and lavish wardrobe set her apart. She met Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the Duke of Marlborough, who was also a politician, at an 1873 ball. Smitten, he proposed three days later.
His family opposed the match, but her dowry of 50,000 pounds (about $1.4 million today) smoothed the way. The impatient couple may have forced the issue: only seven months after their wedding, their first child, Winston Churchill — the future prime minister — was born.
In England, “the American woman is looked upon as a strange and abnormal creature,” Jennie wrote. “Anything of an outlandish nature might be expected of her.”
She played the stereotype to the hilt, acting as her husband’s unofficial campaign manager in his elections to the House of Commons, and embarking on a string of ill- concealed love affairs. She was “more panther than woman,” gossips said.
Her flirtatious friendship with the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, established her in London society. After Randolph died, possibly of syphilis, in 1895, she and the prince carried on a torrid affair. Their letters reveal a fondness for role-play — he would visit for what they called a “Japanese tea,” where she wore nothing but a loose kimono, which he called her “geisha dress.”
Jennie married twice more, both times to much younger men, and spent her later years as a vociferous supporter of her son Winston’s political career.