Pamela Mitford
Pamela Mitford | |
|---|---|
Jackson in 1933 | |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Pamela Freeman-Mitford 25 November 1907 |
| Died | 12 April 1994 (aged 86) London, England |
| Spouse | |
| Parent(s) | David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale Sydney Bowles |
| Relatives | Mitford family |
Pamela Freeman-Mitford (25 November 1907 – 12 April 1994) was a British socialite and one of the Mitford sisters.
Early life and suitors
Pamela Freeman-Mitford was born on 25 November 1907, the second of six daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney Bowles (1880–1963): Nancy (born 1904), Pamela herself (1907), Diana (1910), Unity (1914), Jessica (1917) and Deborah (1920). The Mitford sisters had one brother, Tom (born 1909), who was killed in action in 1945.
In 1928 Mitford became engaged to Oliver Watney, of the Watney's brewery family, whom she had known as a neighbour since childhood; but in May 1929 the Daily Mirror reported that the wedding had been postponed indefinitely due to Watney's pleurisy.[1]
Between 1930 and 1934 Mitford lived in a cottage on the estate at Biddesden in Wiltshire, home of her sister Diana and her husband Bryan Guinness, and managed the dairy farm on their behalf.[2][3]
She had no shortage of suitors. John Betjeman, who proposed to her twice,[3] referred to her in his unpublished poem, "The Mitford Girls", as the "most rural of them all".[4] She was fond of motoring, and drove her open-topped car on several trips to the continent.[3]
Marriage
In 1936, Mitford married the millionaire physicist Derek Jackson, whose first marriage had recently ended in divorce. Jackson was bisexual[5][6] and ultimately married six times. On the couple's honeymoon in Vienna they received news that Jackson's identical twin had been killed in a sleigh-riding accident. Mitford and Jackson settled initially at Rignell House near Swinbrook, Oxfordshire, the home of Mitford's family.[3]
They later lived at Tullamaine Castle in Fethard, County Tipperary, with Jackson's bisexuality and womanizing raising suspicions that the marriage was one of convenience.[7] After her divorce in 1951, Mitford spent much of the next twenty years as the companion of Giuditta Tommasi (died 1993), an Italian horsewoman. Her sister Jessica described her as having become a "you-know-what-bian", although Diana was less certain.[8] They parted in 1972 when Mitford returned to the Cotswolds to live at Caudle Green.[9]
She died on 12 April 1994, in London.[4]
References
- ^ Staveley-Wadham, Rose (19 July 2023). "Unravelling the remarkable stories of the Mitford sisters". The British Newspaper Archive Blog. Retrieved 10 September 2025.
- ^ Mosley, Charlotte (2007). The Mitfords : Letters between Six Sisters. London: Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-84115-790-0.
- ^ a b c d Mosley, Charlotte (2007). The Mitfords : Letters between Six Sisters. London: Fourth Estate, an imprint of HarperCollins. pp. 34–35. ISBN 978-1-84115-790-0.
- ^ a b Tennant, Emma (1994). "Obituary: Pamela Jackson". The Independent. Archived from the original on 24 May 2022. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
- ^ Simon Courtauld (2007). As I Was Going to St Ives: A Life of Derek Jackson. Norwich [U.K.]: Michael Russell. ISBN 978-0-85955-311-7.
- ^ ‘Derek, please, not so fast’, Ferdinand Mount, London Review of Books, 7 February 2008
- ^ "Pamela's Irish Castle by Stephen Kennedy". The Mitford Society. Retrieved 26 January 2018.
- ^ Diana Alexander, The Other Mitford: Pamela's Story.
- ^ Alexander, Diana (2012). The other Mitford: Pamela's story. Stroud: History Press. p. 127. ISBN 9780752471211.