Jenny Longuet (Born: Marx) ( 1844 – 1883)

Jenny Marx was born on May 1, 1844 in Paris. Her parents, Karl and Jenny Marx had been exiled from their native Germany due to Karl Marx’s revolutionary activities. Young Jenny’s health was problematic from her birth throughout her lifetime. At one point in her infancy the poet, Heinrich Heine, (also in exile) saved her life during a seizure. During her childhood the family moved to London where Jenny attended South Hampstead College.

Jenny admired her father greatly and assisted him in his work as a young woman. She committed herself early on to the cause of social and political justice. She was distressed at the treatment of the Irish by the British and in 1870 wrote a series of 8 angry letters, using the pseudonym, J. Williams protesting the treatment of Irish prisoners. The letters were printed in the French paper, Marseillaise. The opposition press in England took up the “J. Williams” letters and brought pressure on the Brisish prime minister Gladstone. The pressure was sufficient that Gladstone was forced to release a number of Irish prisoners.

Large numbers of French leftists were seeing refuge in England at that time in history. Jenny fell in love with one of them, Charles Longuet, an admirer of her father. The couple married in 1872. Jenny would give birth to 5 sons, Charles, Jean, Harry, Edgar and Marcel. Her youngest child and only daughter was given the name Jenny after her mother and grandmother. The mother’s lifelong ill health took the upper hand on January 11, 1883. She died of heart failure. Her husband did not remarry and became active in the French workers’ movement until his death in 1903.