Jackie Kennedy
In 1966, multimillionaire Robert David Lion Gardiner invited Jackie Kennedy to visit him on to his private islet, Gardiners Island, off the coast of Long Island. Gardiners Island had been in Gardiner’s family for four centuries and was one of the largest privately-owned islands in the world.
Eunice Bailey Oakes Gardiner and Robert David Lion Gardiner
Gardiner arranged a dinner party for Jackie which was attended by both Gardiner and wife, the former British model Eunice Bailey Oakes, and several others.
After dinner, the guests retired to the lavish wood-paneled den, where coffee and cognac were served. According to Gardiner, he watched as Jackie took out a cigarette and looked around for a light. A gold cigarette lighter belonging to Eunice lay on a nearby table. Jackie picked it up and used it to light her cigarette. Then, inexplicably, she slipped the lighter into her evening bag.
Gardiner was aghast. Jackie Kennedy had deliberately stolen his wife’s lighter.
Gardiner didn’t know what to do. Several uncomfortable minutes later, he went over to his humidor and took out a cigar. Turning to the roomful of guests, he asked:
Have any of you seen my wife’s gold cigarette lighter?”
Getting no response, he addressed his most distinguished guest:
Did you, Mrs. Kennedy? I believe you were the last one to use it.”
Jackie shrugged, replying in her little girl voice:
I have no idea where it went. ”
The lighter was never returned to its owner. Gardiner was furious and retaliated by spreading stories accusing Jackie of kleptomania.
Jackie Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis, June 5, 1969, at Kennedy Airport, New York. The couple had been married less than a year.
The gossip reached the Greek ears of Aristotle Onassis, Jackie’s husband from 1968-75, who sent Gardiner a check for $5,000, along with a note threatening legal action for slander. Jackie had admitted to Ari that she had accidentally placed the lighter in her purse that evening at Gardiner’s but had, since then, simply lost track of it.
At some point, though, the missing lighter “resurfaced.” After Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis’s death in 1994, the lighter was auctioned off at Sotheby’s in New York as part of her multi-million-dollar estate.
Source: Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story. New York: Atria, 2009.
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Lisa's History Room 
Oh my goodness. About once a year or so, we’ll have a shoplifting incident on our exchange program, and we always have people asking us why our exchange students would steal something when losing their scholarship is such a huge risk, and the stolen items are usually worth less than $25. My boss has always maintained that being an exchange student has nothing to do with it, because 1 out of 4 American teenagers shoplifts. Now, when she says that, I am going to say, “1 out of 4 teenagers, and probably 1 out of 4 first ladies as well.”
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Heather, I haven’t yet blogged on it, but Jackie Kennedy, when she was Jackie Onassis, used to buy expensive clothes then return them to the stores for cash. She was very into money.
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Christina BOUGHT Jackie off after the death of her father. Jackie and the kennedy clan wanted to fight to have Ari’s will overturned. Ari had left it all to HIS daughter Christina~
Christina who, rather than deal with Jackie and her corrupt former in-laws, bought her off, for around 20 million.
Jackie, the Kennedys~~ money grubbing social climbers~ All.
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Zoe, I see you have strong feelings on the matter. I agree with you that Jackie was mercenary, to such a degree that I would say it was her chief trait. But the rest of the Kennedys? They had different gods. I think the Kennedy clan wanted power and respect more than money. Jack Kennedy’s father was willing to part with huge sums of money to keep Jackie by Jack’s side and ensure his son’s political presence on the international stage.
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LIsa: I agree heartily with your last statement. As an aside the Madison Avenue consignment shop Encore used to have a plethora of great things. After Mrs. Kennedy’s(as we always call her) death, not so much. A real falling off. She bought in huge quantity, all colorways of an item if she liked/needed it and was happy to get money from encore if they sold for her. Not hard to understand if one reviews her history from childhood on. Poor thing. Compare her presidential couture to evening things afterward. Read Christopher Hitchens’s well-known quote on how she created the more refined side of JFK’s image with her dress, style, scholarship and determination. No angel but more or less right-thinking as to her/his best interests. ABBB
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Is it worth mentioning that the match between Queen Mary and Georges V was originally intended to be between her and Edward, Duke of Clarence. While he has been sometimes interpreted, likely wrongly, as the true “Jack the Ripper,” he was no catch and would have been, also likely, a disaster on the throne. Queen Victoria(her mother’s first cousin, once removed, as grand-daughters of George III) , it has been written, perceived her as a steadying influence –also one of the few appropriate princesses with less than stellar options in part as a child of a morganatic marriage. Miraculously, Eddie “caught” pneumonia over the Xmas holidays of 1894(?) at Sandringham and died within a short time. She would have been, and had little else to provide for her, a lamb to the slaughter. Affections quickly switched to Prince George, no great brain himself but probably not dangerous with a knife although neither, it has been said, a stranger to prostitutes, like many a sailor. I am so impressed with your scholarship and nack for putting the best nub of the story out so as to be easily comprehended as well as academically correct.
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Thanks for telling this story. Do you mean, “no stranger to prostitutes”?
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Actually, I liked it the way I said it! But I’m always open to suggestion. As my former husband is a Hemingway cousin and a retired photo-journalist on various NYC area papers, although a very gentle critic, I’m used to it. Did you know Mrs. Kennedy’s aunt married — and is buried with him — a Morristown NJ aristo, soi-dîtes? Brooke Astor lived in these parts, associated with the original owners of my later-boarding school, when she was married at 16 to an older and difficult man. Where was her mother’s mind? I’ve heard her described by a true Russian aristo as “the last great courtesan.” I feel bad for her son.
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Hello there! Do you use Twitter? I’d like
to follow you if that would be ok. I’m absolutely enjoying your blog and look forward
to new posts.
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No, I don’t follow Twitter.
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