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Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20734, 18 February 1939, Page 16 (Supplement)

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Convicted Spy’s Daughter A Terrible Ordeal

Mrs Marga Reid, 23-year-old daughter of Mrs Jessie Jordan, convicted German spy, drove 50 miles tu Saughton Prison, Edinburgh, to spend a few minutes with her mother before sailing for Germany, reports the Glasgow correspondent of the Sunday Express. Mrs Reid sailed from Leith this afternoon for Hamburg with her four-year-old daughter, Jessie, in the steamer Gothland. Tt is a coincidence that the Gothand is the ship in which Mrs Jordan made most of her trips between Scotland and Germany while acting as a spy. It was these trips in the Gothland that first made the police suspicious of her movements. The interview between Mrs Reid and her mother yesterday was a special concession by the prison authorities. Mrs Reid spent fifteen minutes with her mother. A warder was present. They were then allowed five minutes alone to say good-bye tu each other. Left Jail Weeping Mrs Reid was weeping when she came out of the prison to join her husband and daughter, who had waited in a car outside the prison gates. "My mother gave me. the money for our passage to Hamburg—the only money she has left.” said Mrs Reid to me. “She was sorry to find that my health had been so badly affected by the ordeal since she was sent to prison. “But she was glad that I was going to Germany as she thought that the change would do me good. “My mother hopes that when she is released at the end of 1940 she

will make her home with us m Germany.” Mrs Jordan, who recently underwent an operation in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, has recovered. She is now out of the prison hospital and is doing j light work. “Terrible Ordeal” | The little girl did not want to j leave Glasgow, but after playing with ’ her toys in the cabin for a few minutes | she became more reconciled. ! “Jessie will c o to school in Ger- | many,” said Mrs Reid to me, in her ! cabin. “She will learn to speak Geri man. but I will always speak to her !in English so that she will be bi- ; lingual j “In a way I am sorry to leave | Scotland, but it was a terrible ordeal for me to he pointed out in the streets wherever I went as the daughter of | spy- * | "Little Jessie suffered too. -.Ghlld- • ren taunted her and would not play ; with her. If I return to Britain I intend settling down somewhere where I may be allowed to forget the past. “I may not return if I can find suitable work and be happy in Germany, but my husband and I will make plans later for our reunion.” Mrs Reid’s first marriage was to a German. It ended in divorce She was married to Mr Thomas Reid, of Glasgow, at Gretna on April 14, 1938. Her mother was arrested in‘ March. There was a slight legal difficulty about the marriage, and they were remarried in a Glasgow solicitor’s office on August 2. Mrs Jordan is serving four years’ imprisonment for breaches of the 1 Official Secrets Act.