As I idly scanned Dangerous Minds today (there’s a link on the right) I was halted by an item on Janie Jones. Most of you who remember her at all would do so because of the Clash song about her. Jones was a 1960s party girl who found herself railroaded on vice charges when authorities tried to make her a moral example and cast her as some kind of Swinging London Prostitution Queenpin. I never met the lady, although I think I may have walked into a couple of parties just after she had left. The real connection between us was the arch-conservative Judge King-Hamilton. King-Hamilton was a hanging judge who was wheeled out whenever such moral examples were to be made. King-Hamilton was the judge who gave Janie her vicious seven year bit in jail, and he was the judge when my partners and I went for trail on obscenity charges for publishing the comic book Nasty Tales. King-Hamilton would happily have sent me down for the max, but fortunately the jury disagreed and I walked out of the Old Bailey a free and vindicated man. It does prove, however, that pop-culture history is a very small world.
“She was mostly known for her uninhibited sexuality and ‘fuck you’ attitude toward the stodgy and hypocritical British establishment. She hung out with actors, politicians and rock stars, including Marc Bolan, Tom Jones and Dusty Springfield. But her biggest claim to fame was when she was arrested and imprisoned for running a prostitution ring. Her high rolling friends were shocked at what was considered a harsh sentence for something as benign as arranging “dates’ for some of London’s most famous hipsters. This was the sixties after all, the era of free love. It was as if she were being punished for the behavior of an entire generation. Janie’s bust made her an instant cause celebre and the fodder for countless tabloid headlines. When sentencing Janie Jones to seven years in prison in 1973 after she’d faced charges for vice and corruption, Judge King-Hamilton called her one of the most evil women he’d ever sentenced.” (Click here for more)
The secret word is Scapegoat
Click here for The Clash
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2 comments:
i`m in love with getting stoned woaah
Crickey, that must be the same Judge King Hamilton who had a UK TV series in the 80s where, if both parties were agreeable, small claims stature cases were settled by the now retired judge. The only case I remember was a chap - an American working in the UK - trying to get a refund on his membership from a dating service because the agency kept sending him ‘duds’. His claim was thrown out when it was revealed that he’d slept with two or the three dates he’d been set up with.
tf
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