DUNDEEHAIRDRESSER, WIDOW .. AND NAZI SPY
WAR widow Jessie Jordan worked as a hairdresser to support her family before remarrying and trying to make it as a singer and actress.
But she became infamous for a performance of a different kind.
Jessie, along with Tory toff Archibald Ramsay, was part of a ring of Nazi spies and agitators who worked to undermine the Allies before and during World War II.
While official Government histories have always denied the existence of the so-called fifth column, a raft of declassified papers have shed light on the subject.
Now, award-winning author Tim Tate has uncovered a never-told-before story of wartime Britain in his new book Hitler’s British Traitors.
Tate said: “It has been a secret history. A couple of years ago, I saw a smallish news story about some files that had been released and that led me to ever more threads of this story.
“Every time I got another file, it led me to another and I had scores of MI5 and Government files which had been declassified.
“Each one had several hundred documents. They were chaotically disorganised, largely unindexed and misfiled so it took more than a year of cross-referencing and examining many thousands of documents to come up with the information in the book. It changed and grew over the year when I was working in the files.
“Initially, it looked like five or six disparate cases, which don’t add up to a whole picture.
“But the more I looked and the deeper I went, it became clear it was a pretty solid picture of a genuine fifth column.
“It has been denounced as a myth in official histories, but linked and overlapping groups of traitors actively wanted and sought to bring about a German victory in World War II.”
The most incredible story in the book is of Jessie, one of the least likely espionage agents at the centre of a spy network.
When Tate uncovered the spy ring story earlier this decade, her story jumped off the page.
Jessie was born in Glasgow in 1887, abandoned by her unwed housemaid mother and was subjected to an abusive childhood.
In 1907, she
I only did it to oblige friends in Germany and because I felt it would afford some excitement JESSIE JORDAN ON WHY SHE SPIED FOR THE NAZIS