I’ve been thinking about the very different lives of reporter Nellie Bly and Rosemary Kennedy. Although over fifty years separated these women, both found themselves at the age of 23 at the mercy of mental health “professionals.” Nellie Bly placed herself in a dangerous lunatic asylum as an investigative journalist because she was desperate to land a job in a world that didn’t welcome female professionals. How else was an uneducated woman to earn a living in 1887?
Bly was the thirteenth of her wealthy father’s fifteen children, her mother being her father’s second wife. When Bly was six, her father died, failing to make specific provisions for Nellie, her mother, and her two brothers. Like many other great women, Nellie Bly (like Annie Oakley) took it upon herself to find a way to take care of her family. She ran a boarding house with her mother and marveled that her uneducated brothers were able to find jobs as clerks and drummers yet, because she was an uneducated woman, she could only aspire to be a chambermaid or washer-woman. Thus it was Nellie’s poverty and the absence of a father that lead her to have herself committed, at the age of 23, to an insane asylum.
But the converse was true of Rosemary Kennedy. Rosemary landed in a mental institution because she was rich and had a father. She had the misfortune to be born “mildly mentally retarded, into a family dominated by her driven and ruthlessly ambitious father,” Joseph P. Kennedy. Rosemary had been living in a convent to keep her out of the public eye, but, as she developed as a young woman, she had begun sneaking out to see boys, and Kennedy was worried that she might damage his famous family’s reputation.
In an attempt to settle her down, her father, without telling his wife, used his money and powerful connections to arrange for his 23-year-old learning-disabled daughter Rosemary to undergo experimental brain surgery, one of the first prefrontal lobotomies ever performed. The operation took place in 1941, but, according to the historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, “something went terribly wrong.” Rosemary emerged from surgery not better, but far worse. She regressed to a state of helpless infancy and was confined to a mental asylum for the rest of her life until her death in 2005. Nellie Bly’s story, though, has a happy ending. She walked out of the asylum a free woman and an international celebrity.
previously read that rosemary was not at all retarded but had a long on-going affair with a married man which had begun while her father was ambassador to court of st. james. confronted by her father and mother she refused to stop seeing the married man and the result was the lobotomy. she had never before been reported to be retarded, and the ‘retardation’ was a ruse made up by the kennedy family to cover their inhumane attempt to silence her. guess it worked.
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Rosemary was developmentally slow. As she grew into a young woman, there were several behaviors that presented problems. She attracted boys and she was having violent episodes. Her father probably thought the lobotomy would “settle her down.” However, it robbed her of herself.
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her father Joseph P. Kennedy was a tyrant for subjecting his own daughter into an experimental brain surgery, point cleared. Nevertheless, doing it so behind his wife’s back. I hope he lived through the rest of his life untill his death with remorse and guilt.. knowing that he shouldn’t have taken Rosemay’s life and gamble it to satisfy his famous family’s reputation.
…hell..! An adulterer would had deserve more sympathy going behind their spouses back, than this tyrant.
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Mauro, I agree with you except for one thing: I think her father didn´t feel any remorse at all, but relieve, I only can think of him as a monster.
And to add insult to injury, his good reputation was preserved. What a shame!
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Mauro, Joseph P. Kennedy’s reputation was bad. His cozying up to the Nazi sympathizers in preWWII Britain as U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James forever stained his honor. When son JFK was president, his father was kept out of the limelight, his reputation was so bad.
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Rather if was mental illness or retardation before the lobotomy, I believe Rosemary did suffer. I believe Rosemary especially suffered after the lobotomy in Sept. 1941. She lost her independence, she was sent away to an institution far away from her family, and she was shunned by her family for three decades. I read Laurence Leamer’s book “Kennedy Women” and watched a History Channel special on the Kennedy’s, after Joe’s death in 1969 the family re-established their relationship with Rosemary. However, her name was not mentioned in any articles or books if she attended any of the weddings of the Kennedy children or grandchildren, funerals, and other public events. I saw the you.tube video of Rose’s funeral and Rosemary wasn’t there. I think the reason why she wasn’t in public because she probably had several health problems after the lobotomy. I read in Rose and Ted’s autobiographies, posts about Rosemary on the Special Olympics website, and newspaper articles through the google.com news archives that the Kennedy family did see Rosemary in her later years.
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Lovely Eunice Kennedy Shriver forged the new bonds with Rosemary.
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If you search on Wikipedia or google any recent documentation from medical professionals that viewed her records pre-lebotomy you will see that the “retardation” claim was a lie told by her father Joe. I have even seen excerpts from her pre-lobotomy diary/journal where she is talking about shopping, dancing, and socializing with friends and not in a mildly retarded manner. she sounds intelligent and full of life just like any other normal teenager. The doctors who discuss her IQ and other test results now say she was nowhere near retarded or handicapped pre-lobotomy. So Joe Kennedy lied for whatever reason and then ordered an experimental brain surgery on his daughter (hello people?! he was intelligent and educated enough to know better) in order to get her to stop doing something or to do what he said. shame on her father, and shame on the doctors for using a young woman full of life as a lab rat for their experimental surgery.
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Oh, and to add, it seemed if anything doctors have said her IQ might have been lower than the rest of the Kennedy’s who tend to have very high IQ’s so she was an embarrassment and disgrace in the eyes of her father. Even Bobby kennedy’s son spoke of this saying he felt he was rejected just like her for the same reasons. I also saw an article where she practiced her curtsy (sp?) for the Queen of England forever and then when her and her sister finally did it, Rosemary stumbled (can’t remember if she fell or not). But to me, that instance says a thousand words to what Rosemary would have meant to the Kennedy name. Pre-surgery she had been tucked away at some convent or something where of course as a young woman she kept escaping to live life. That is when her father ordered the surgery. The doctor told her he would have to shave rosemary’s head and she wouldn’t be able to attend social events for a long time. Joe Kennedy’s dream.
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It was as easy as 1,2,3 for a man to lock up a woman in an asylum back then, too.
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It is alarming that a father with so much power, and financial means could not have appointed a body guard-companion to watch Rosemary, rather than surgically disrupt her personality.
This father, Joe, spent time, energy, and money developing his son’s political lives. Did he not think for a moment that knifing through brain tissue would not be seen as a cruel, thoughtless and misogynist reaction to a girl that needed a different kind of devotion from her father?
Let this be a social lesson with a broad consequence to those that do not question their physicians without deep thought on the benefits and risks to the victim.
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Joseph P. Kennedy wanted his kids to win, win, win. Rosemary was slow. Joe Kennedy couldn’t bear it.
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I share your avidity for history & biography — i’m an astrologer. My mother was born the same day as Rosemary Kennedy 13 September 1918 —
my feeling is that, like her brothers, Rosemary had a strong libido and sometimes “wandered” …
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Joseph Kennedy was used to controlling his children and wife but Rosemary eluded that control.
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I had never heard about any of this until my husband and I began discussing the Kennedy children. I am sickened and shocked that things like this went on. Just another nail in the Kennedy coffin as far as I am concerned. May Joseph Kennedy burn in Hell, which I’m sure he already is.
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Joseph P. Kennedy looked after his own interests. that’s for sure.
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Not to condone Joeseph P. Kennedy’s actions, I think the physicians of the time should be held more accountable for the outcome of Rosemary’s pre-frontal lobotomy. It was very experimental at the time, and neurosurgeons would promote the procedure as a solution to mute various negatively perceived personality traits. Even after repeatedly disasterous results, many doctors continued to perform frontal lobotomies, with the false promise of profound results to families. I think Joseph P. Kennedy always wanted what was best for his family & children, but never really knew the true risk for Rosemary.
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He was definitely hasty to “fix” her. We’ll never really know how humane his thinking was. Thank you for the insightful comment.
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I can’t believe all the bigotry from the reply s above.
I think Joseph P. Kennedy always wanted what was best for his family & children, but never really knew the true risk for Rosemary.
Rosemary Kennedy died on January 7, 2005 at age 86. Eunice Shriver said in her eulogy that Rosemary had left a legacy that was long and deep. Along with inspiring Mrs. Shriver’s own work with Special Olympics, Rosemary had inspired her brother, President John F. Kennedy, to initiate sweeping legislation designed to improve the quality of life for Americans with disabilities. She had inspired her sister Jean Kennedy Smith to start Very Special Arts and her nephew, Anthony Shriver, to start Best Buddies. Hospitals, schools and other such facilities around the world have been named in honor of Rosemary Kennedy.
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Uh, personally, I would much prefer to have my brain left intact vs. leaving a legacy I had no choice in the making. One cannot act in the best interests of one’s own children if the ego is too great to be set aside. It’s pretty much common knowledge that Joe P. Kennedy’s ego was a driving force.
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Yes, Joe wanted the best for his family and woe to those, including family members, who didn’t live up to his expectations of what “best” meant.
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Can anyone say “Daddy was a control freak,” in his attempts to make up for the real and imagined slights of his early life? Think about poor Rose, chained to that by her children, her times and her faith. Read the “Founding Father” for some insight into the family syndrome of competative behavior, JPK inspired, which has left so many battered if not broken, bleeding, paralysed or dead even unto today. Wasn’t it Caroline Kenndy Schlossberg who years priorly was reputed to have cleared incriminating circumstances of a drug overdose surrounding the death of RFK’s son David at the Palm Beach hotel which has such a nice dining room? Speaking of Martha Moxley and the priviledges and protections of wealth and status, “birds of a feather flock together”[too]. ABBB
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This is so helpful because I am doing a project on Nellie Bly. Thanks for all the information!!
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Hanna, I’m glad to be of help.
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I think Joe Kennedy was trying his best for Rosemary, he wanted to cure her, so she could be like her brothers & sisters, I don’t think he intentionaly wanted to hurt her.
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Erm no he wasnt. He was trying to tame her, because she was beginning to rebel and Joe couldnt handle a family embarassment. She didnt need a “cure”, she just wasn’t an overachiever like her siblings and so in her father’s eyes she was a failure.
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Tame, yes; subjugate and –if necessary — destroy. Control freaks are everywhere but not every one of them can operate on a Kennedy level. What goes around, comes around. (Read of his last years, post-stroke, in a situation very much like what Rosemary had been condemned to, Do we some how create our own punishments, akin to where we may feel we have failed or sinned? Something to think on. abbb
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We will never know the whole story of the tragic Rosemary.
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