Draft:Jeanette ‘Jennie’ Jerome

Jeanette Jerome was born in 1854 as one of four daughters to Leonard Jerome and Clarissa Hall. The family was wealthy due to Leonard’s work, giving him the name of “King of Wall Street”. This wealth provided the ladies of the house with luxuries, and Jeanie and her two surviving sisters with a chance to travel.

In 1870, Clarissa took her daughters to Europe to enjoy any high class luxury it had to offer. In London, Jeanette met the Prince of Wales, and they got along very well. This first meeting began a “passionate” affair that is said to have lasted two years. They would continue to be close for the rest of their lives as she became one of his mistresses. It was through the Prince that she met her future husband, Lord Randolph Spencer-Churchill, in 1873. He was the son of a duke and within only three days of their introductions, the couple was engaged. His parents didn’t agree to the marriage until the amount of $250,000 was revealed as Jeanette’s dowry.

Jeanette would then have two sons with Lord Randolph, and after his death in 1895, she married again, this time to George Cornwallis-West. Before her second marriage, Jeanette started to edit a literary magazine and wrote several books and plays. Her famous phrases: “There is no such thing as a moral dress – it’s the people who are moral or immoral,” and “Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light”, got the attention of young women and gave her more popularity.

The rest of Jeanette’s life is rumored to be wilder than most. Some have said she got a tattoo of a snake wrapped around her wrist, although there are no pictures to prove it. Jeanette married again in 1918 to Montagu Porch, and stayed with him until her death. She is also rumored to have had many affairs on each of her three husbands. Once while her last husband was away on a trip, Jeanette broke her ankle after falling down some stairs. Gangrene set into her wounds, and her leg had to be removed. Her death in 1921 was caused by a hemorrhage in an artery in her thigh that was caused by her amputation. Jeanette’s life was full of excitement and scandal, the circumstances of her death are no different.