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Clara Barton Deals with Sexism in the Work Place

Posted in Clara Barton, Clara Barton, MEDICINE, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, The American Civil War, tagged Clara Barton, preCivil War, sexism in the workplace, U.S. Patent Office, When People Were Things on August 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Clara Barton, ca. 1850

After a decade of teaching in Massachusetts, Clara Barton moved to New York for a year to study at the Clinton Liberal Institute. In 1851, she took a teaching job in Hightstown, New Jersey, at Cedarville School, where her pay was $2 per student for each eleven-week session. New Jersey offered no public education.

Clara began campaigning for public education in New Jersey. She successfully lobbied the Trenton officials and obtained a building and the funds to run a public school in Bordentown as a pilot project. In one year, the program proved to be such a success that local leaders looked to hiring a principal. Instead of hiring Clara, though, they appointed a man who had came from another place.

Clara Barton’s public school in Bordentown, New Jersey.

In 1854, Clara resigned. She became so distressed at having been passed over for the principalship that she became very ill and was unable to speak or to work. Finally, Clara and another teacher left New Jersey and boarded a train to Washington to find work as governesses.

Clara networked. She met with her Massachusetts congressman, Alexander De Witt, who was also a distant cousin. De Witt then introduced her to Charles Mason, the Commissioner of Patents. Mason wanted to hire Clara to go to Iowa to be the governess to his daughter. But De Witt saw enormous potential in Clara and urged Mason to hire Clara to work in the Patent office as a recording clerk. She was hired. Clara then became one of the first women to work for the federal government.

The U.S. Patent Office

Clara’s job at the Patent Office meant copying volumes of technical legal text with pen and ink. She had beautiful penmanship and a strong work ethic so she was up to the task. As if this work was not tedious enough, she had to contend with some male colleagues who resented what they perceived as her intrusion into their masculine domain. As she walked to and from her desk, they would spit tobacco juice at her and her skirts, make lewd remarks, and puffed cigar smoke in her face. Nevertheless, Clara soldiered on.

Examiners working at the Patent Office.

Despite her fortitude, these men succeeded in forcing her from the workplace. She was reassigned to work from her boardinghouse room, by candlelight, at lesser pay. In 1857, President Buchanan was inaugurated and she lost her clerkship, but, for a time, she had made the same yearly salary as the men.

She returned to Massachusetts for three years. But she was not done with Washington, D.C.

This is a repost.

Clara Barton is featured in my book, When People Were Things: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Click here to purchase.

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The American Civil War: Soldiers Without Barracks

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, The American Civil War, PEOPLE, tagged fort sumter, President Abraham Lincoln, rhode island regiment, The American Civil War, When People Were Things on August 10, 2026| Leave a Comment »

Readers: I will be blogging about people who appear in my upcoming book, When People Were Things, but include here different stories than are in the book.

Attack against Fort Sumter, 1861, Currier & Ives

On April 12, 1861, the South Carolina militia fired from shore on the Union garrison of Fort Sumter in the Charleston Harbor. The Battle of Fort Sumter were the first shots fired that sparked the Civil War. Days later, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 militia men into national service for 90 days to put down the Southern insurrection.

The Northern response among the free states was wildly enthusiastic. War fever took hold. Whereas Lincoln has asked the Indiana governor for 6 regiments, the governor offered 12. At the onset of the war, Washingtonians bit their nails, so nakedly exposed to danger, as neighbor Virginia (to the west) joined the Confederacy and Marylanders (to the north and east) in Baltimore viciously attacked Union troops on their way to defend the federal capital.

The influx of the militia corps took the U.S. War Department by surprise. The new Union soldiers needed food, uniforms, mattresses, blankets, stove, cooking utensils, weapons, tents, knapsacks, overcoats, hammocks, bags, and cots on a massive scale.(1) For starters, where were the soldiers flooding into Washington, D.C. to camp? Massachusetts militia men, the first to arrive, found quarters in the Capitol, where the top of the unfinished wooden dome had been left off for ventilation The men of the First Rhode Island Regiment found quarters inside the U.S. Patent Office, spreading their bunks beside the “cabinets of curiosities.” (2)

The Rhode Islanders sleep alongside models submitted with patent applications, causing much damage, and tremendous broken glass.

(1) Leech, Margaret. Reveille in Washington, 86.

(2) Ibid, 83.

This is a repost.

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Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979, Part One

Posted in Anthony Armstrong-Jones, British Royal Family/Nobles, Margaret Thatcher, PEOPLE, Prince Charles of Wales and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Margaret, Queen Elizabeth II, ROYALTY/NOBILITY, tagged Anne Tennant, Covent Garden, Governor Jerry Brown, lady in waiting, Margaret Thatcher, President Jimmy Carter, Princess Margaret, Princess Margaret in America, Queen Elizabeth II, Rhodesian independence, the British Royal Family, The crown netflix, The Royal Ballet on July 30, 2026| 7 Comments »

Princess Margaret, 1980

Hopes ran high for Princess Margaret of Great Britain‘s October 1979 fundraising tour in America. The cause was the London‘s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, a centerpiece of world opera and ballet. By 1979, backstage conditions at the 120-year-old building had become “rather grotty” said the Princess’ 30-year-old nephew, Prince Charles, and terribly cramped. Money was needed to construct an extension to contain rehearsal studios for both the Royal Opera chorus and the Royal Ballet dancers, modern dressing rooms, and improved wardrobe maintenance and storage areas. In her role as President of the Royal Ballet, Margaret was tapped to harness her star power among American “art cats” to rustle up another £4,000 to add to the £12,000 already raised by the Royal Opera House Development Appeal in the previous four years. In response, the American Friends of Covent Garden had sold advance tickets for one formal dinner at each of five stops in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Cleveland where Princess Margaret would be the guest of honor. The film, “Prince Charles Backstage at Covent Garden,” would be shown to highlight the downtrodden state of affairs at the Opera House.

Princess Margaret is to be in the Venetian Room at the Fairmont [Hotel] on Monday, October 22 for a dinner dance. $500 tickets. For tickets, write Mrs. Gordon Getty [Ann]. (1)

Princess Margaret speaks to David Wall of the Royal Ballet, 1978

As Princess Margaret (1926-2002) was not traveling as a representative of her government, the trip was semi-private and somewhat relaxed. There would be both times of pleasure and of duty. Margaret would attend the Lyric Opera of Chicago where Leontyne Price and Luciano Pavarotti would perform. In Houston, she would visit the NASA space center, have a luncheon with former First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, and witness open heart surgery at St. Luke’s Hospital. In Los Angeles, she would unveil a plaque at a new Rolls Royce Facility. She would travel outside Cleveland to a horse farm. Social doyennes jockeyed for the opportunity to throw the Princess a cocktail party, dinner, or luncheon. She would mingle with Hollywood stars. The charity, Les Dames de Champagne, in Los Angeles scored a coup when the Princess’ social secretary squeezed their charity event into Margaret’s busy schedule:

On the evening of Saturday, October 20, Les Dames will play hostesses to H.R.H. Princess Margaret who’ll attend their reception upstairs at Bullocks Wilshire Los Angeles and promenade her royal presence past some interesting “international tasting tables”…It had originally been scheduled for Sunday, October 21 but when Les Dames founder Wanda Henderson read about the Princess’ visit to L.A., she got on the phone to the British consul general’s office and the wheels began to spin…[H]alf of the money raised will go to the Princess’ cause. (2)

Yet not everyone in America was as excited about Her Royal Highness’s impending visit. One reader of the L.A. Times wrote to the paper’s editor:

I resent Princess Margaret invading our country to beg money for refurbishing and expanding…[the] Royal Opera House….Princess Margaret inherited a fortune in jewels from her grandmother, the late Queen Mary. I wonder why she and her sister, Queen Elizabeth, don’t sell some of their jewels to restore some of their famous landmarks. (3)

American gossip columnists got a lot of mileage covering Princess Margaret’s love life:

Reader: I have been fascinated with that romance between Princess Margaret and her young boyfriend Roddy Llewellyn. Is that still going on?”(M.A., Greenwood, Louisiana.)

Columnist: I wouldn’t call it a romance. The royalty grapevine insists that Roddy is amusing and keeps the Princess diverted. They still are companionable and had been vacationing at a secluded villa on Spain’s Costa del Sol. (4)

Yet American gossip columnists enjoyed trashing Margaret in print, gleefully reporting the breakdown of her unhappy marriage with her former husband, the internationally-acclaimed photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon) and their bitter July 1978 divorce.

At left, Tony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon) watches as his fiancee at the time, Princess Margaret, takes a photograph at the Badminton Horse Trials. ca. 1960

Gossip columnists were keen to report Margaret’s fashion sense in their articles, often inserting subtly-catty remarks.

On a gray day, she wore…white platform sandals that showed the heel reinforcements in her hose….Before she plunged in to shake hands with everyone there, she extracted a cigarette holder and a cigarette case from her white ostrich-patterned bag. The Princess is adept at clenching the cigarette holder between her teeth as she lights up…. (5)

Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, The Countess of Snowdon, the maverick in Britain’s royal family, will be back in L.A. Wednesday evening….[S]he is petite and inclined to plumpness….[with] startling blue eyes and a lovely British complexion. (6)

The timing of Margaret’s October arrival in America should have been favorable to her fund drive. The Royal Ballet that had just wound up its exceedingly successful North American summer tour on August 5 in Mexico City. For six days in late July, the company had performed in the Los Angeles Shrine Auditorium, their repertoire including the ever-popular Shakespeare tragedy, “Romeo & Juliet.” The premiere had been at 8:30 p.m. on July 24, 1979. L.A. Times gossip columnist Jody Jacobs reviewed the premiere two days later with this headline: “Warm Hello for Royal Ballet.”

English dancer Marguerite Porter became Senior Principal Ballerina at The Royal Ballet in 1978.

Jody Jacobs was not kidding about warmth! This was the first big event in which President Carter‘s strict temperature controls had been put in effect. Temperatures had soared into the 80s that day in L.A. with hazy sunshine predominating. The air conditioning thermostat in the Shrine had been set at the federally-mandatory 78 degrees. The Shrine, which had been “magically staged as an English Maytime tent,” became, in that summery, smoggy heat, a “giant communal steam bath.” The ballet fans were packed into their seats, wearing their best clothes, sweating profusely, mopping brows, dabbing at armpits. Middle-aged women suffered menopausal hot flashes and fanned themselves with the evening’s program. Nevertheless, aside from a few good-natured grumbles, the soggy but devoted ballet patrons and the dancers, in the spirit of the English, remembered to

Keep Calm and Carry On

Ironically, an article on menopausal health appeared in the L.A. Times alongside Jacobs’ review, with the headline,

Estrogen Useful

Later that week, Governor Jerry Brown of California would fill out the necessary paperwork to challenge President Carter in the 1980 Democratic primary. (President Carter would keep the Democratic nomination but he would not go on to win a second term.)

On August 21, 1979, just seven weeks before she disembarked for America, Princess Margaret celebrated her 49th birthday with her children, David, 17, and Sarah, 15, at Balmoral Castle, the Scottish holiday home of the British royal family. Margaret’s sister, Queen Elizabeth II, was there, as was her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh. In her role as head of the British Commonwealth, the Queen had just returned from tense negotiations in Lusaka, Zambia, to discuss the Rhodesian conflict, where there was tremendous anti-British feeling.

Queen Elizabeth II on a state visit to Botswana, summer 1979. See Prince Philip on our left and Prince Andrew on our right. SERGE LEMOINEGETTY IMAGES

Guerrilla forces were operating out of bases in Zambia and the Queen had put herself at great risk. The Queen arrived two days ahead of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of England. As was her custom, the Queen hosted a banquet and reception for all forty-two African leaders. Behind the scenes, she held private talks, bringing down the temperature so significantly in the negotiations that Thatcher called for a constitutional convention in London in September to pave the way for Rhodesian independence.

In a little over a month, Princess Margaret and six others would hop on a British Airways Concorde jet and fly from London to the U.S. to begin her fundraising swing through the States. The Princess’ lady-in-waiting, Lady Annabel Whitehead, had been steadily packing the Princess’ jewels, purses, shoes, and outfits in the 27 trunks that she would need for such a variety of appearances. Everything was falling in place and the Princess was looking forward to some good press.

Roddy Llewellyn and Princess Margaret not long after they met in 1973. Picture: SuppliedSource: News Corp Australia

Margaret had significant image problems at home. A recent poll had put her dead-last in royal family popularity, even below her niece, Princess Anne. The public disapproved of her romance with Roddy Llewellyn, an aspiring pop singer and gardener seventeen years her junior, who, just a month before Margaret turned 49, in July, had had his drivers’ license revoked for 18 months. The previous February, he had been arrested for drunk driving after he crashed his Ford van into an unmarked police car in Kensington High Street, London. Roddy had sped away and the police had given chase. Roddy’s car had skidded to a halt when it ran into a cement median in Highbridge. Roddy was fined a measly £12.25 but not being able to drive was proving to be hard on his gardening business as he needed it to haul soil, pots, and plants to landscaping sites. For months, Roddy’s drink-driving incident had been splashed across newspapers internationally. Even worse, the passenger in Roddy’s car that fateful night was a married woman whose husband later filed for divorce naming Roddy as his wife’s seducer.

Also that same July, Lord Snowdon (“Tony”) and his new wife, Lucy Lindsay Hogg, gave birth to a baby girl, garnering sweet headlines. Even worse, the baby would be christened just days before Margaret was landing in America. There would be photographs of Tony, Lucy, and the baby, Lady Frances at the ceremony, where Tony and Margaret’s daughter, Lady Sarah Armstrong, was to be named as the baby’s godmother.

lord-snowdon-former-husband-of-princess-margaret-leaves-news-photo-1574273653 shortly after dec 1978 wedding

Lord Snowdon and his second wife Lucy Lindsay Hogg shown shortly after their December 1978 marriage. She is expecting a baby.

Then, in November, when Margaret had left America, Tony would arrive in America on a book tour.

Both Margaret and Tony craved constant attention and competed for center stage. Now Tony-Cheating Tony-was getting nothing but glowing press.

A London writer was calling for Margaret’s exile to America where, the writer said, the people had the bad taste needed to appreciate her.

Princess Margaret needed to get out of England. She needed an image makeover. Photos of her relaxing at her private home on the island of Mustique in the Caribbean were making their way into the tabloids.

Princess Margaret, center. Colin Tennant in white hat, to the left. Anne Tennant, short blond hair, to the right. Roddy Llewellyn stands behind Anne. On the island of Mustique where the Princess had a home, the land of which was a gift from the Tennants.

As President of the Royal Ballet, Margaret would be mingling with the rich and well-connected Americans; their cachet would build up her profile. Perhaps association with cultured ballet and opera folk could erase some of the damage done to her reputation by those photos that had appeared in The Daily Mail the previous fall. She had been at the Glen, the Scottish home of Anne and Colin Tennant, at a private costume party with Bianca Jagger and Roddy. Wearing a slinky black dress and blonde wig, she had channeled American sex goddess Mae West, crooning seductively, “Come Up and See Me Some Time.” Anne, the hostess at the Glen, was one of the Princess’ ladies-in-waiting. She snapped some pictures of the fun time. Unfortunately, Anne’s oldest son, Charlie, had a serious heroin addiction and wanted money to buy drugs. He found the photos that his mother had tucked away in her drawer and stole them. Through an intermediary, they were sold to the press.

Margaret longed to return to America, and, in particular, to Hollywood (“Tinsel Town”) where she was popular and the movie star men were so good-looking. Writer Gore Vidal, a lifelong close ally of the Princess, said of her love for Hollywood,

Like many British royals, she was fascinated by the place.

Read the next installment: Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979, Part Two: Lord Louis Mountbatten

Readers: For more on this blog about Princess Margaret, click here.

Readers: “The Queen Mother and the Rogue Kiss” tells of the 1977 visit by President Jimmy Carter to meet the Queen and family.

Readers: For more on the British Royal Family, click here. This is a repost.

Sources:

San Francisco Examiner, October 4, 1979
Jody Jacobs’ column, L.A. Times, Sept. 21, 1979
Virginia Cohen, Santa Monica. LA Times, Letters to the Editor, September 22, 1979
Robin Adams Sloan’s column, The Indianapolis News, September 14, 1979
L. A. Times, October 22, 1979, “Party Notes,” IV, page 6
L.A. Times, Oct. 16, 1979

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The Madness of Mary Todd Lincoln

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Mental Institutions, tagged Abraham Lincoln, biographies of first ladies, biographies of political wives, biographies of women, committed, Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos, insane asylums, Mary Lincoln, mental illness, Robert Lincoln on April 8, 2026| 12 Comments »

Regarding some of my recent posts on insane asylums (see sidebar, “Categories: The Insane Asylum”), my neighbor and friend, Karen O’Quin, wrote:

I really liked your blog – thanks for sending!! I see a theme there. My experience with Austin State Hospital is that when I first started working at Travis State School in 1967, they only had men there – they called them “boys”. Some had been there for years as they had been admitted to ASH long before because they were a little “weird” and then became too institutionalized to be let out. They did not have IQs consistent with mental retardation. Some were later placed in group homes. I don’t know if you’ve read Mary, Mrs. A Lincoln, but it is her account of being committed to a lunatic asylum by her son, Robert. Someone very recently found letters she had written to her attorneys from the asylum. I think they were going to be a book, too.

Mary Lincoln (1818-1882)

When I was young, I remember my mother talking about Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln, and her inappropriate and extravagant spending sprees during the depth of the Civil War. Above all I remember Mom mentioning that Mary had a collection of about 300 pairs of gloves. Thinking about it now, it reminds me of Imelda Marcos, wife of the president of the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos, and her closet rack of 2700 pairs of shoes.

Mary Todd and Abraham Lincoln came together as husband and wife from two very different worlds. Mary was pampered and rich; Abraham was tested and wise. Both were prone to depression but it was Mary, with her fragile mind, perhaps schizophrenic or bipolar, who finally cratered under the constant barrage of grief and loss that became her sad lot in life. Three of her sons died while her husband was president during a bloody and acrimonious civil war. The hate mail sent to her husband was unbelievable. Then her beloved Abraham, her anchor, was assassinated. It was more than Mary could bear. She descended into madness.

She began to wander hotel corridors in her nightgown, was certain someone was trying to poison her, complained that an Indian spirit was removing wires from her eyes, and continued her frantic spending, purchasing yard after yard of elegant drapery when she had no windows in which to hang it. (PBS American Experience: “The Time of the Lincolns”)

The doctors treated her with laudanum which gave her hallucinations, eye spasms, and headaches. She began to behave bizarrely, creating a public scandal. Her only surviving son Robert, a practicing attorney, arranged an insanity trial and had her committed to the asylum Bellevue Place just outside Chicago. Although Mary was only hospitalized for three months, she never forgave Robert for the humiliation and deprivation.

A recently published book, The Madness of Mary Lincoln by Jason Emerson, awarded “Book of the Year” by the Illinois State Historical Society in 2007, examines Mary’s mental illness. The book is based on a rare find – a trunk of letters found in the attic of Robert Lincoln’s lawyer. They contain the lost letters written by Mary during her stay in the asylum. The book sheds light on the ongoing mystery of Mary’s mental illness, its nature, roots, and progression, and suggests that Abraham Lincoln had some understanding of it and provided stability.

This is a reblog.

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When FDR Met Churchill

Posted in PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, tagged churchill idiosyncracies, churchill visits fdr, franklin delano roosevelt, pearl harbor, White House, Winston Churchill, World War II on April 6, 2026| 3 Comments »

On the morning of Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service leveled a surprise military attack upon the United States against the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, on Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii. Over the next seven hours, the Japanese attacked the U.S.-held Philippines, Guam, and Wake Island as well as on Pacific holdings of the British Empire—Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong. The next day, the U.S. and Great Britain declared war on Japan. This was America’s formal entry into WWII. Great Britain had declared war on Nazi Germany in May 1940 and had, over the interim 19 months called “the Blitz,” resisted Hitler’s attempts to unrelentingly force Britain into capitulation to Nazi control by massively bombing English cities.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had awaited this day. However, he was worried—albeit only briefly—that American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would focus on defeating only the Japanese, but, then, just days after their joint declaration of war on the Eastern Front, on December 11, 1941, Hitler declared war on America and America “returned the favor,” joining the Allied Powers. Churchill and Roosevelt were now in the same boat in the war against the Axis Powers. At last, there was hope that Britain could be saved from German invasion and rule. Western Europe had already fallen.

The next month, on December 13, 1941, Churchill, Lord Beaverbrook, and American envoy to England, Averell Harriman, and a host of over fifty other men ranging from valets to Britain’s topmost military officials set out for Washington, D.C., aboard the new battleship, the Duke of York, at great risk and under strictest secrecy, to meet with Roosevelt and coordinate war strategy. Roosevelt (FDR) worried about the risk and tried to dissuade Churchill to cancel the trip. Crossing the North Atlantic Ocean in mid-winter was rough. The 45,000-ton battleship battled gale force winds. The crossing was dangerous for another reason, too. Those waters were heavily-patrolled by lethal Nazi U-boats. Had the Duke of York been sunk, it would have decapitated the British government. Nevertheless, Churchill pressed on, undeterred.

The historic meeting was known as the Arcadia Conference. Churchill, Roosevelt, and representatives from 24 other countries decided how to project a unified front to defeat the Axis Powers:

Although he and FDR and been speaking over the telephone since 1939, this would be Churchill’s first wartime visit to D.C. and his second visit with the President. He and many others in his entourage would stay at the White House, guests of both Franklin, 59, and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Churchill’s doctor, Sir Charles Wilson, also sailing to America, marveled at the change in Churchill, age 67, at this decisive turn of events. Wilson wrote:

“He is a different man since America came into the war. The Winston I knew in London frightened me….I could see that he was carrying the weight of the world, and wondered how long he could go on like that and what could be done about it. And now—in a night, it seems, a younger man has taken his place.”

With America as its ally, England would be safe.

That first night at the White House, Churchill’s valet butler Frank Sawyers, present at all hours and charged with running two daily baths for the prime minister, started the nighttime bath for Mr. Churchill. The water temperature had to be precisely at 98 degrees and the bathtub filled to two-thirds. As was his custom, while soaking in his bath, Churchill kept working, his agile mind overflowing with words that had to be recorded. He dictated to his traveling stenographer, Patrick Kinna. Done with his bath, Churchill then emerged from the water, and was wrapped in a big towel by Sawyers. Patrick Kinna recalled to Sir Martin Gilbert:

“[Churchill] walked into his adjoining bedroom, followed by me, notebook in hand” and he “continued to dictate while pacing up and down the enormous room.”

Eventually the towel fell to the ground.

Inspector Thompson was also in the bedroom at this time. He was the prime minister’s detective. He was scouting various points of dangers, checking for assassins, when someone knocked at the door. At Churchill’s direction, Thompson answered, and found President Roosevelt outside in his wheelchair, alone in the hall. Thompson opened the door wide and saw odd expression come over the president’s face as he looked into the room behind the detective.

“I turned,” Thompson wrote. “Winston Churchill was stark naked, a drink in one hand, a cigar in the other.”

FDR prepared to wheel himself out.

“Come on in, Franklin,” Churchill said. “We’re quite alone.”

FDR gave an “odd shrug,” then wheeled himself in.

“You see, Mr. President,” Churchill said, “I have nothing to hide.”

Church slung a towel over his shoulder and for the next hour talked with FDR while walking around the room “in a state of nature,” sipping his drink and now and then refilling the president’s glass.

Sources:

Larson, Erik. The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz (2020).

Singer, Barry. Churchill Style: The Art of Being Winston Churchill (2012)

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Nellie Bly and Rosemary Kennedy – Part 6

Posted in Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., Kennedys, the, Mental Institutions, Nellie Bly, Rosemary Kennedy, tagged biographies of sick women, biographies of women, biographies of women journalists, Joseph P. Kennedy, Kennedy family photos, Kennedys, mental illness, Nellie Bly, Rosemary Kennedy has a lobotomy on March 24, 2026| 28 Comments »

Nellie Bly (1864-1922)

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.

Rosemary Kennedy (back) (1918-2005), with sister Jean and brother Robert

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.

To read more on the Kennedys on this site, scroll down the right sidebar to “Categories – People – Kennedys.”

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Book Clubs and History Teachers: New Study Guide published for When People Were Things

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Harriet Beecher Stowe, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, The Abolition of Slavery Movement, The American Civil War, tagged Abraham Lincoln, American slavery, black history, Emancipation Proclamation, Harriet Beecher Stowe, social activism, Uncle Tom's Cabin, When People Were Things: Study Guide on November 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Available at your online booksellers, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers served by Ingram Distributors, booksellers receiving deep discounts. Or place an order at your local bookstore.

A separate Study Guide is also available.

This study guide provides intelligent discussion questions for book clubs, history instruction, or private study

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The American Civil War Era: Harriet Lane and the Lace Bertha

Posted in ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, FASHION, & DESIGN, Harriet Lane, PEOPLE, the Bertha, tagged first ladies, first lady fashion, Harriet Lane, President James Buchanan, the Bertha neckline, the Civil War on March 5, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Harriet Lane, the single (orphaned) niece of bachelor President James Buchanan, served as the “first lady of the land” during his presidency (1857-1861). She was an accomplished hostess and a fashion trendsetter. This marble portrait, by William Henry Rinehart, highlights Lane’s bare shoulders above a deeply plunging neckline, a style she made fashionable when she altered her inauguration ball gown by lowering it two full inches. She added a strip of lace at the neckline, which is called a “Bertha,” which became a fast fad.

Harriet Lane (1830- 1903) in an 1860 photograph. She did not wear much jewelry or ruffles but was fond of floral headdresses and low necklines, that revealed her shoulders and toned arms.

Readers: I will be blogging about people from the American Civil War Era as I have written a new nonfiction history about those times, When People Were Things, to be published in late spring. Watch this space.

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The American Civil War: General McClellan and the Quaker Gun

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Allan Pinkerton, General George McClellan, PEOPLE, The American Civil War on February 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Readers: I will be blogging about people who appear in my upcoming book, When People Were Things, but include here different stories than are in the book.

The American Civil War (1861-1865)

Following the Union defeat at Manassas (1st Bull Run), Virginia, in July 1861 to the Southern Confederate forces, President Abraham Lincoln understood that the disorder of the newly-formed troops had contributed to the debacle. Lincoln wanted the Union army to be “constantly drilled, disciplined, and instructed.”(1) He sent a telegram to George McClellan, 34,—a West Point graduate, a distinguished veteran of the Mexican-American War, and fresh from having defeated a guerilla band in West Virginia, the only Union victory to date— to come at once to Washington City and take charge of the Army of the Potomac. As he traveled by special train to the capital, enthusiastic crowds heralded his passage along the way. The capture of Washington by rebel forces seemed imminent. Northern delusions of an easy victory vanished.

Major. Genl. George B. McClellan Lithograph, Currier & Ives, 1862.

Within days of McClellan’s arrival, Washington achieved a “more martial look.” (2) McClellan had managed to instill more confidence in the demoralized troops who had retreated in disarray from Bull Run. The soldiers adored “Little Mac.” Drunken soldiers no longer loitered in bars and streets. McClellan wrote to his wife,

I find myself in a new and strange position here: President, cabinet, Gen. Scott, and all deferring to me….I seem to have become the power of the land. I almost think that were I to win some small success now, I could become Dictator…. (3)

Major General George McClellan and his Wife, Ellen Mary Marcy (Nelly), ca. 1860-65.

McClellan disagreed with General Winfield Scott who wanted to attack the enemy in different theaters of war. McClellan believed that he could put an end to the war by concentrated overwhelming forces on Virginia. Summer gave way to fall. Indeed, McClellan had turned the recruits into soldiers and created a powerful army.

In the early months of the war, women worked as laundresses and cooks while the volunteer soldiers drilled and constructed the Defenses of Washington. TITLE: “Washington, District of Columbia. Tent life of the 31st Penn. Inf. (later, 82d Penn. Inf.) at Queen’s farm, vicinity of Fort Bunker Hill.” Library of Congress

While McClellan conducted magnificent reviews in the capital of more than fifty thousand troops marching in straight and orderly columns, and boasted great military plans, he did not seem willing to lead his army anywhere. He was weighed down by fear while the Confederates were bolstered by optimism from their Manassas victory. Congress and Washingtonians grew restless with McClellan’s delay in avenging Bull Run.

This sketch shows a panoramic view of the Grand Review of the Union Army. The illustration appeared in the 7 December 1861 issue of Harper’s Weekly, which claimed that the artist sketched the review while perched on the roof of a barn.

Accustomed to success and thus fearful of failure, McClellan did not want to move; his constant complaint was that he did not have enough troops. Allan Pinkerton, his secret operative, fed his insecurity. Pinkerton provided “Little Mac” with the faulty intelligence that the enemy had at least 150,000 men within striking distance of the capital. McClellan said he would not move until he had 270,000 men of his own. In truth, in October 1861, McClellan had 120,000 men while rebels in and near Manassas had only 45,000. (4) In September, when Confederate pickets withdrew from their position a few miles southwest of Washington on Munson’s Hill, Federal troops discovered that the great cannon they had believed was trained on the capital was nothing but a giant log shaped and painted to resemble a cannon. This “Quaker gun” embarrassed McClellan. Calls for his dismissal intensified.

Confederate “Quaker Guns,” Manassas, Va., 1862

(1) Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals, 373.

(2) Ibid, 378.

(3) Ward, Geoffrey. The Civil War, An Illustrated History, p. 75

(4) MacPherson, James. Battle Cry of Freedom, 360-361.

Readers: Please check this space for when my new book, When People Were Things, is available. Please read it.

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The American Civil War: Julia Ward Howe and the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, Julia Ward Howe, Julia Ward Howe, LITERATURE, EDUCATION, & REFORM, MUSIC & DANCE, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, Samuel Gridley Howe, tagged Abraham Lincoln, Dorothea Dix, Julia Ward Howe, Samuel Gridley Howe, the Battle Hymn of the Republic, the Civil War on February 23, 2025| 4 Comments »

Readers: Although Julia Ward Howe is not mentioned in my soon-to-be-published history, When People Were Things, her husband is. Although Julia’s Civil War activism is not included in the book, I want to give you a snippet view here.

Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910)

Portrait of Julia Ward Howe, by John Elliott, ca. 1925. National Portrait Gallery/Wikimedia Commons

In 1843, red-haired New York heiress Julia Ward married Dr. Samuel Gridley Howe who had founded the Perkins School for the Blind. She was 24; he was 42. Julia gave birth to their first child while they honeymooned in Europe. She called her husband, “Chev.” They had six children and lived in Boston and Rhode Island. Theirs was not a happy union. Chev disapproved of Julia’s writing and did all he could to thwart it. In 1853, she published her first volume of poetry, Passion-Flowers, anonymously and without her husband’s knowledge. She continued to publish works that often critiqued women’s roles in marriages and society and caused controversy. Her husband was troubled by her writing as it often contained pointed references to her unhappy and stultifying marriage. He did not approve of women having a career outside the home.

In November 1861, the first year of Abraham Lincoln’s presidency and while the Civil War was raging, Julia and Chev traveled to Washington and met Abraham Lincoln, who, Julia wrote, “was laboring…under a terrible pressure of doubt and anxiety.” Dr. Howe was on the board of the U.S. Sanitary Commission that supported wounded and sick soldiers; during his stay, he would meet with the USSC founder Dorothea Dix. The Howes lodged at Willard’s Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C., during the Civil War Years, Library of Congress

From their room, Julia saw a billboard advertisement for “an agency for embalming and forwarding the bodies of those who had fallen in the fight or who had perished by fever.” This image stayed with her.

On a visit to the huge military camps stationed in the national capital, she heard soldiers singing the song, “John Brown’ Body,” originally about a Scotsman but had taken on new meaning in reference to the insurrectionist at Harper’s Ferry. New verses were often being added:

Old John Brown’s body is a-mouldering in the dust,
Old John Brown’s rifle is red with blood-spots turned to rust,
Old John Brown’s pike has made its last, unflinching thrust,
His soul is marching on!

A friend urged Julia to write “some good words for that stirring tune.” That evening, she tried, but the words did not come to her. The next morning at the graying first light, she woke up in her bed at Willard’s and the words of the poem began to flow. She jumped up, grabbed paper and an old stump of a pencil, and scrawled down the words without even looking down at the paper, then fell back to sleep. This is how “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was born, which she sold to the Atlantic Monthly for $4 in February. Her version links the Union cause to God’s vengeance at the Day of Judgment.

Here are some verses from the first published version:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,
They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:
His day is marching on.

(Chorus)
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

Before long, the song caught on and became the favorite of the Union troops and its unofficial wartime anthem. Julia Ward Howe became somewhat of a celebrity and became a suffragist.

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The American Civil War: Lincoln Scouts a Battlefield

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, MEDICINE, PEOPLE, The American Civil War on February 17, 2025| 3 Comments »

Readers: For a time, I will be blogging about people who appear in my soon-to-be-published nonfiction history, When People Were Things: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Today, General McClellan, Abraham Lincoln, and two of Lincoln’s cabinet secretaries are featured. I promise not to include book spoilers.

Lincoln told a colleague, “I wish McClellan would go at the enemy with something – I don’t care what. General McClellan is a pleasant and scholarly gentleman. He is an admirable engineer, but he seems to have a special talent for a stationary engine.”

It is spring 1862, the second year of the American Civil War. Although General George McClellan, leader of the Union Army of the Potomac, had finally moved his troops out of his Washington, D.C., camp, he had stalled out on the Virginia Peninsula. Procrastination was his custom and he had endless excuses to offer for his delay tactics. He heaped blame on President Abraham Lincoln for not supplying him with enough troops as McClellan falsely believed he was outnumbered by the rebels. Lincoln was frustrated with McClellan’s chronic inaction, as McClellan delayed moving his troops toward the Confederate capital of Richmond and attacking and bringing the war to a swift end.

At left, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sits with President Abraham Lincoln (Library of Congress)

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton suggested that President Lincoln take a trip to the Virginia Peninsula, to Fort Monroe, to prod General McClellan to act. On the evening of May 5, 1862, Lincoln, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, and Stanton, accompanied by General Egbert Viele, boarded the new Treasury Department cutter, the Miami, and began the twenty-seven-hour journey, sailing down the Potomac, and into the Chesapeake Bay.

The next day, the bay water was so choppy that the noontime meal was fatally disrupted. Lincoln was too miserable to eat, did not stay at the table, and stretched himself out elsewhere. The others in the party tried to enjoy the meal elaborately planned by the host, Chase, and served by his butler, but Chase wrote his daughter, Nettie:

“[T]he plates slipped this way and that, the glasses tumbled over and rolled about, and the whole table seemed as topsy-turvy as if some spiritualist were operating upon it.”

They reached Fort Monroe at about nine o’clock that night. Stanton sent a telegram to McClellan who was only a few miles away and suggested he join them for a conference. McClellan declined. Stanton was not a military man; he like Lincoln, was a lawyer. McClellan had no respect for either of them. McClellan regularly disregarded them.

Lincoln quickly turned his attention to another matter of concern.

Union forces at Fort Monroe occupied the Northern shore of Hampton Roads, a body of water that serves as a wide channel which connects the Chesapeake Bay to three rivers. On the Southern shore, Confederates still held Norfolk and the Navy Yard. The powerful ironclad nine-gun Merrimac (renamed by the Confederates, the Virginia) was docked at the Navy Yard.

CSS Virginia (the Union Merrimac or Merrimack) was the first ironclad warship constructed by the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War. It was built from the remains of the former steam frigate the USS Merrimack.

Back in March 1862, in a span of five hours, this former Union ship had sunk, captured, and incapacitated five Union vessels in what was known as the Battle of Hampton Roads or the Battle between the ironclads, the Monitor and the Merrimac(k).

March 1862. The Battle of Hampton Roads: Print shows a battle scene between the ironclads Monitor and Merrimac just offshore, also shows a Union ship sinking and rescue boats being put to sea from shore, as well as a Union artillery bunker, Union soldiers and officers, and some rescued sailors. The 3-hour battle between the two ironclads was indecisive. (Library of Congress)

Lincoln feared that the Merrimac would one day sail up the Potomac and attack Washington, the capital of the Union. Lincoln and his advisors pored over maps of the area. The men could not understand why McClellan had not ordered an attack on Norfolk and captured it. Norfolk was wide open. Confederates had left both the city and the Navy Yard vulnerable. Lincoln and his mini-war cabinet planned an assault on that key port to be made by General Wool’s forces.

Although this map shows a lot of info, you can pick out Fort Monroe, Washington, D.C., the Potomac River, Richmond, and Norfolk, Va. The Confederate and Union capitals were only about 100 miles apart.

On the afternoon of May 7, at Lincoln’s suggestion, several Union warships began the shelling of the rebel guns at Sewell’s Point near Norfolk. Upon learning that the rebels were abandoning Norfolk, Lincoln decided to plan its capture.

Lincoln, Chase, and Stanton surveyed the shoreline seeking a good place for the troops to land. Lincoln went ashore in a rowboat, walked around on enemy soil under a full moon, putting himself in danger of being fired upon, and then returned to the Miami. Chase was antsy for an immediate attack. He was worried that McClellan might show up and delay it!

When the convoys landed on the sandy beach the next night (at the landing Chase and Wool had selected), they found that the rebels had evacuated the city and scuttled the Merrimac. The city authorities formally surrendered the city to the Union forces and Wool appointed Viele as the city’s military governor.

In a letter to his daughter, Chase praised the President for the capture of the strategic port city and the vanquishing of the Merrimac. The egoistic McClellan, however, wrote falsely to his wife, “Norfolk is in our possession, the result of my movements.”

Readers: Later this spring my new book, WHEN PEOPLE WERE THINGS: HARRIET BEECHER STOWE, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, AND THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION, will be published. Please read it.

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Mary Todd Lincoln: She Who Must Be Obeyed

Posted in Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, ART, PHOTOGRAPHY, FASHION, & DESIGN, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, tagged Abraham Lincoln, American Civil War, American history, biographies of first ladies, biographies of political wives, biographies of women, history, Julia Taft Bayne, Mary Todd Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln's bonnets, Mrs. Horatio Taft, news, the Civil War on May 14, 2024| 6 Comments »

Mary Todd Lincoln, ca. 1861

When Mary and Abraham Lincoln moved into the White House in 1861, Mary was 42 years old, a time when women her age dressed in somber grays, dull browns, and boring blues. But not Mary Todd Lincoln. For her, expensive clothes were a mark of importance, of breeding. She proceeded to dress like a peacock, draping herself in bold blues, crimson, yellow, and royal purple, attracting a lot of unwanted attention and sparking criticism from the Washington social elite. Brought up among the overdressed ladies of Kentucky, her gowns and bonnets were ornamented with flowers, lace, dots, and bows sewn on yards of velvet, taffeta, and silk at a time of war when soldiers were going without blankets. Mary took her fashion cues from Eugenie, Empress of France, whose parties and clothes appeared in line drawings and detailed descriptions in one of Mary’s favorite magazines, Godey’s Lady’s Book. She was admonished for wearing low-necked dresses that revealed her “milking apparatus,” said one critic, and for the “flower beds which she carries on top of her head,” said another. A petite woman, the bell-shaped dresses overwhelmed her; hoops made her look shorter and squat.

Buoyed by a grandiose sense of self-importance coupled with her new position as the president’s wife, Mary demanded what she wanted. She expected everyone to do her bidding. She was surprised when clothing merchants sent her bills. The line between purchase and donation was fuzzy. Mary looked for donors to buy her gowns and hats, rewarding them with political favors. When she blew her four-year budget for White House renovations in under a year, she contrived several plots to secretly defray her debt. In one instance, she persuaded the White House gardener to sell manure from the stables at ten cents a wagonload. It raised more stink than cash. Her spending eventually came to light and became a national scandal. Lincoln was mortified and had to deal with it, all the while referring to it benignly as his beloved Mary’s silly “flub-a-dub.”

Willian's of Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington's best known milliner at the time, made Mary Todd Lincoln's bonnets. Unfortunately, he also made bonnets for Mrs. Horatio Taft.

Now, back to what we were saying about Mary and her clothing:

It was an April evening in 1861. The Marine Band was playing a concert on the White House lawn. Mary and President Lincoln had invited many guests, among them Mary Cook Taft, wife of Horatio Taft, an examiner at the U.S. Patent Office. Mary Taft was wearing a delicate straw bonnet lavishly trimmed with pretty purple ribbons embroidered with little black figures. The bonnet had long strings which tied beneath her chin in a bow. Mary Taft’s teenage daughter, Julia, accompanied her to the promenade grounds that day and vividly recalled their costumes:

“My mother, of course, wore the bonnet, together with a purple and white silk over a moderate crinoline, and lavender kid gloves. I was dressed in white Swiss, much beruffled, but without hoop skirt or crinoline, which was an abiding grievance with me. But my hat…was very gratifying and almost compensated for the lack of crinoline.”

Women’s Fashions 1860

Mary and Julia walked around mingling with the other guests while the band played on. The national anthem brought those in chairs to their feet, men doffing their hats, and all standing in patriotic attention. At the close of the concert, the Taft women walked over to the south front where the presidential party was sitting, to pay their respects. Mary Lincoln could not take her eyes off Mary Taft’s bonnet. Julia recalled what happened next:

Julia Taft, undated photo

“After a few words of greeting, [Mrs. Lincoln] took my mother aside and talked with her for a moment. While I could not hear their conversation, I knew someway that they were talking about my mother’s bonnet and I was a bit puzzled at the look of amazement on my mother’s face. I did not see why my mother should look so surprised at a passing compliment from Mrs. Lincoln.”

Mary Lincoln wanted the purple strings off Mary Taft’s bonnet and asked for them. Mary Taft was angry—she loved her bonnet with its pretty purple ribbon— but what could she do? Mary Taft’s husband was a government appointee. Mrs. Lincoln could get him fired and then how would they pay for Julia’s private Washington school? So, begrudgingly, Mrs. Taft agreed to give up her ribbons to “Madam President” as Mary Lincoln requested to be called by the White House staff.

The Washington milliner Willian sent for Mary Taft’s bonnet, removing the purple ribbons for Mary Lincoln, and sending back Mary Taft’s bonnet with new lavender ribbon. Not long after this incident, Julia, who was often in the White House as a babysitter for her little brothers, Bud and Holly, the inseparable playmates of Tad and Willie Lincoln, caught sight of Mary Lincoln wearing a purple dress and a bonnet trimmed with her mother’s purple ribbons.

Mary Lincoln is shown with two of her four sons. Willie is to our left and Tad is to our right. Tad’s name is Thomas. He was so wiggly that he was nicknamed Tadpole. One of the Lincoln’s sons, Eddie, died when they had lived in Springfield. The eldest Lincoln boy, Robert, was studying at Harvard in 1860, the year this photo was taken.

Source: Bayne, Julia Taft. Tad Lincoln’s Father. Boston, Little, Brown, and Co., 1931.

Readers: For more on Mary Lincoln, click here.

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Robert Kennedy Goes After the Mafia

Posted in Bobby Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Frank Sinatra, Jackie Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Pat and Peter Lawford, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, tagged history, JFK, John F. Kennedy, mafia, politics, robert kennedy on May 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

Robert Francis Kennedy (1925-1968)

After winning the 1960 presidential election, John F. Kennedy appointed his younger brother, Robert, as U.S. attorney general. “Bobby” was just thirty-five, and, although a graduate of Virginia Law School, had little legal experience. Although the appointment was a bold act of nepotism, it aroused little controversy, and only one senator voted against confirmation. JFK was so confident in this decision, that he joked at the annual Alfalfa Club Dinner, the night after the inauguration:

I just wanted to give [Bobby] some legal experience before he practices.

John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy arrive at an inaugural ball, January 20, 1961

Bobby Kennedy was not an unknown in Washington politics. He had made a name for himself in 1957-1959 while serving as chief counsel to the U.S. Senate’s Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management, familiarly known as the “Senate Rackets Committee.” His brother, John, then a Massachusetts senator, sat on that committee. Bobby’s intelligence convinced him that Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa had worked with the Mafia, extorted money from employers, and raided pension funds. During the hearings, both Kennedy men squared off with Hoffa and his mobster connections. In 1860, Bobby Kennedy published The Enemy Within, exposing the corruption within the Teamsters.

Robert F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy during the Senate hearings circa May 1957. Photograph by Howard Jones for Look Magazine in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.

Although RFK’s tenure in the Kennedy administration would be associated with civil rights gains—the month prior to the 1860 presidential election, Bobby had negotiated to secure the release of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from an Atlanta jail—he was most identified with his relentless crusade against organized crime. Among his many achievements in this dangerous arena, he worked to secure the Federal Wire act, which specifically targeted the use of telephone, Internet, cable tv, and fiber optic communications with the aim to disrupt the Mafia’s gambling operations. Convictions against organized crime figures rose by 800 percent during his term. Kennedy worked to shift FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s focus away from communism to organized crime.

Frank Sinatra

Singer and film star Frank Sinatra (1915-1998) grew up poor and lower class in Hoboken, New Jersey. Once he made it big in showbiz (thanks to help from his Mafia cronies), he obsessed about fitting in with the upper class. He wormed his way into politics, using his Hollywood star power to campaign and fundraise for Democratic heavyweights such as Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. In attaching himself to men of honor, Sinatra hoped to achieve the respectability he craved.

Sinatra had cultivated a relationship with President Kennedy through movie star Peter Lawford, who was married to the president’s sister, Pat.

Host Frank Sinatra (L) wears an eyepatch, laughing with actor Peter Lawford and his wife Patricia Kennedy (1924 – 2006) during a surprise 21st birthday party held for actor Natalie Wood at Romanoff’s, Hollywood, California, July 20, 1959. (Photo by Murray Garrett/Getty Images)

In March 1962, President Kennedy was scheduled to fly to Southern California. Peter Lawford asked Sinatra to be the president’s host at his Palm Springs estate. Sinatra was thrilled. He went straight to work. At his own expense, Sinatra installed a helicopter pad, cottages for the Secret Service, and even a flagpole for the presidential flag.

But the president’s brother Bobby Kennedy wasn’t having it. When he heard about his brother Jack’s proposed stay at Sinatra’s, he went ballistic. Bobby was making the “most single-minded attack on organized crime in American history” and could not abide Jack associating with someone with mob connections. Peter Lawford was chosen to tell Sinatra that the president would not be staying with him.

Sinatra did not take the news well. He had a notoriously explosive temper:

“Sinatra vented his spleen by destroying the concrete landing pad with a sledgehammer. He applied a different kind of sledgehammer to his friendship with Peter and Pat [Lawford], banning them from his company….Jack ended up staying at the home of Bing Crosby. Marilyn Monroe flew down to be with the president, spending the night in his bedroom….”

Peter Lawford, Frank Sinatra, and Marilyn Monroe ca. 1961-62

Bedell Smith, Sally. Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House. New York: Random House, 2004.

Leamer, Laurence. The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family. New York: Fawcett Books, 1994.

Readers: For more on Frank Sinatra on this blog, click here.

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Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979: Part Four: Irish Stew

Posted in British Royal Family/Nobles, Governor Jerry Brown, LInda Ronstadt, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, Princess Margaret, ROYALTY/NOBILITY, Sue Mengers, tagged Governor Jerry Brown, IRA assassination plot and Princess Margaret, LInda Ronstadt, Princess Margaret, princess margaret U.S. 1979 tour, Royal Opera House fundraising, Sue Mengers on July 20, 2020| 4 Comments »

Readers, be sure to read my preceding posts on Princess Margaret’s October 1979 trip to America. Part One. Part Two. Part Three.

Princess Margaret Is greeted by Lady (Bubbles) Rothermere at The Evening News British Film Awards In London. The Princess was the guest of honor and presented “The Major Award For The Year’s Best Film” which went To “Star Wars.” November 1978. Photo by Evening News/Shutterstock (895422a)

Princess Margaret was in America.

On Monday, Oct. 15, 1979, Princess Margaret (1926-2001) departed Chicago and arrived in Houston, the second stop on her 1979 U.S. tour. She was in America to raise £4,000 in funds for the renovation of London’s Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. As far as she could tell, things were going swimmingly.

But then, that Tuesday, just five days into her 16-day tour, the Chicago Sun-Times printed an article by gossip columnist, Irv Kupcinet, in which he accused the Princess of saying “The Irish; they’re pigs,” at a Chicago dinner party the previous Saturday. The Princess had been seated at a table with Mayor Jane Byrne of Chicago. According to the journalist,

Mayor Byrne, of Irish descent, “was very incensed…and left the party as soon as possible.”

The Princess was having lunch with her social secretary, Lord Nigel Napier, in Houston, when they learned of the article in the Chicago newspaper. They were aghast. Princess Margaret was scheduled to appear in public that very day and tour the space center, NASA. Lord Napier issued a statement to the press:

“There is no truth in the allegations whatsoever. I was not sitting at the same table with the Princess but she said she did not make that remark. The mayor said ‘goodbye’ to the princess in the nicest possible way. There were no ill feelings at all. We say again there is no truth to the allegations.”

Famed heart surgeon, Dr. Denton Cooley, right, explains the preparation of a patient for surgery to Princess Margaret. The Princess is touring the Cardiovascular Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, Houston. The patient is in the surgical suite one floor below. Fort Worth Star Telegram, Oct. 18, 1979. AP photo.

The next day, Princess Margaret toured the renowned Cardiovascular Center at St. Luke’s Hospital, Houston, in which she viewed an open heart surgery. By then, a spokesperson for Mayor Byrne had released a statement that the Princess was referring to the Irish Republican Army terrorists who killed Lord Mountbatten as “pigs.” The Mayor did say that she felt the word, “pigs,” was an unfortunate choice made by the Princess. Strangely, the Mayor speculated further that guests at the weekend party may have misinterpreted a conversation in which she and the Princess talked about dancing and “Irish jigs.”

The journalist Irv Kupcinet was livid to learn of this disingenuous explanation by the Mayor.

“I got my information from a good source right on the scene. Why the hell would they be talking about Irish jigs when they were talking about Lord Mountbatten’s assassination?”

Neither Mayor Byrne’s nor Lord Napier’s repeated statements to the press could stop the wildfire from spreading. Was Mayor Byrne truly being gracious in her many explanations or was she, in her own political way, fanning the flames while seeming to appear gracious? After all, she was Irish. Certainly Irv Kupcinet was complicit in keeping the controversy alive and painting a target on Margaret’s royal back. And Margaret was no help. She never backed down. Self-effacing was not one of her qualities. She continued to deny that she had ever used the words, “The Irish, they’re pigs.”

The issue would not die down. A certain segment of the Irish American community became infuriated. As the controversy grew, and the newspaper articles spread from sea to shining sea, the threat to the Princess’ safety escalated dramatically. Just 27 hours before the Princess landed in Los Angeles—her next stop following Houston— on Thursday, October 18, the Los Angeles Police Department uncovered a plot by a “high-ranking member of the IRA” to assassinate the Princess at the Friday, Oct. 19 dedication of a new Rolls Royce facility in Beverly Hills.

Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Edser was Princess Margaret’s bodyguard at all times. He was armed with a standard Smith and Wesson .45 revolver and had undergone extensive firearm training.

The intelligence had come from Scotland Yard through the U.S. State Department which was quickly relayed to the LAPD. The LAPD had a photo of the suspect which they did not release but there was talk that he went by the name, “The Jackal” and was suspected in the murder of Lord Louis Mountbatten. The hit man had hired a film crew as a cover. He was pretending to be making a documentary on the Princess and wanted photos of her at the caviar and champagne event at the Rolls Royce building. The LAPD conducted a search of a West Los Angeles motel where the suspect had hidden out for two weeks in advance of the Princess’ visit but the room was empty. The security to protect the Princess was heightened. On October 24, 1979, when the Princess was on her way out of the country to the island of Mustique, the Los Angeles Times broke the story in full detail. The article, that ran for several pages, began on Page One, with these headlines:

ASSASSIN SCARE IN L.A.

Protecting the Princess

Report of IRA Death Plot Triggers Massive Security

The Provisional Wing of the IRA responded to the rumor that they were planning to carry out a hit on Princess Margaret, stating coolly that while the Princess was a “legitimate target” for an assassination attempt, such an operation would not be carried out on American soil.

Despite the danger, the Princess went ahead that Friday with the Rolls Royce dedication ceremony, although the police advised her to avoid any of her characteristic side trips on the way, to which she agreed. Linda Gray, famous for portraying the alcoholic “Sue Ellen Ewing” character on the popular Friday night soap opera, “Dallas,” was to join Princess Margaret at the presentation of a plaque. Because there was no bulletproof Rolls Royce limousine in existence, the Princess arrived at the service center in a bulletproof Cadillac limousine, with presidential style security. Along the route to the location, her security detail included an armed motorcycle escort, plain-clothes State Dept. agents, and a helicopter fitted out as air ambulance. Marksmen were situated along the motorcade’s route, according to Capt. Larry Kramer, Chief of LAPD Metropolitan Squad.

For her Los Angeles October 1979 stay, Princess Margaret enjoyed presidential style security, including a motorcade escort of 13 motorcycle police. The Los Angeles Times, Oct. 24, 1979.

Disappointing the assembled crowd at the Rolls Royce plant, Princess Margaret did not linger. She neither chit chatted with the crew nor partook of the tony refreshments. She left after thirty minutes.

Her schedule in Los Angeles was tight. There was a private dinner that same evening, a charity event the next day in the afternoon (Saturday), and, at 8:30 that evening, an intimate dinner party at the Bel Air home of Sue Mengers, the super agent to the A List Hollywood stars.

Hollywood celebrity super agent, Sue Mengers, is shown here with one of her clients, Jack Nicholson. Sue Mengers was besotted with the British royal family. She longed for an invitation to Buckingham Palace.

American celebrity super agent, Sue Mengers, referred to her stars as “My Twinkles.” Shown at center, Sue is joined by actress Faye Dunaway and film producer Robert Evans.

As usual, Margaret had seen Sue’s guest list in advance and had made several changes. She requested that the singer Barry Manilow be invited. Margaret was more at home with show biz types—singers and actors—than with politicians like Mayor Jane Byrne. Plus, she liked men much better than she liked women. She wanted to talk to men, not to women. She was sure that Sue would seat her next to two gorgeous men, whom she could charm. Lord Drogheda (pronounced Droy-da), head of the Royal Opera fundraising committee, who was traveling with her U.S. entourage, thought Princess Margaret was charming. At least he had said just such a thing at the beginning of the tour and to a reporter, no less. His quote had appeared in the newspaper. Speaking of the Princess and her fundraising tour before it was launched, he was quoted as saying that

“I think it’s rather splendid. She [Princess Margaret] has never done anything like this before in her life. But I think you’ll find that when she goes to these different receptions,the trouble she takes to shake hands with people, and to make an effort with people, is quite remarkable. She is very bright, very perceptive, and has enormous personal charm.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Oct. 17, 1979)

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Readers: For more on Princess Margaret on this blog, click here.

Readers: For more on the British Royal Family on this blog, click here.

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Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979, Part Three: The Jig is Up

Posted in British Royal Family/Nobles, John F. Kennedy, Kennedys, the, Mayor Jane Byrne, PEOPLE, POLITICS & GOV'T, Princess Margaret, ROYALTY/NOBILITY, tagged Abra Prentice Anderson, Abra Prentice Wilkin, Chicago, IRA, Irish Catholics in America, irish pigs remark, irish slur, JFK, Mayor Jane Byrne, Princess Margaret, Royal Opera House fundraising, U.S. Tour 1979 on July 16, 2020| 4 Comments »

READERS: Before reading this post, please read Parts One and Two of Princess Margaret’s Trip to America, 1979.

This family portrait of Princess Margaret and her children, Lady Sarah Armstrong-Jones, 15, and David Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley, 17, was released to the press just as the Princess embarked upon her fundraising trip to America to raise money for the renovations to the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. The Princess was President of the Royal Ballet. October 1979. Photo by Norman Parkinson.

On October 11, 1979, Princess Margaret (1926-2001) and her entourage landed in Chicago to begin her tour of America to raise funds for the renovation of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, London. As President of the Royal Ballet, she would appear in five cities over a course of sixteen days. She would start off with a stay of five days in Chicago’s Drake Hotel. Upon her arrival, she met with a group of journalists and made her first faux pas. She asked Chicago Sun-Times columnist, Irv Kupcinet, who wrote a syndicated column, “Kup’s Corner” a foolish question.

“Is Richard Daley still mayor of Chicago?”

Kupcinet was aghast. Not only had Daley been dead for three years, two other mayors had been elected since then. Jane Byrne was mayor now. She was the first woman to be elected mayor of a major city in the United States. Byrne was educated (bachelors’ degrees in both biology and chemistry), savvy, and powerful, having begun her political career in the Democratic Party as a volunteer in the 1960 U.S. presidential campaign of John F. Kennedy.

John F. Kennedy was the 35th president of the United States — the youngest ever elected….But perhaps what most set him apart when he was elected was that he was Irish. And even more unthinkable: he was Catholic. His family was built on its faith. His campaign for president was almost crushed by it.

Jane Byrne, too, was Irish and Catholic. All Chicago mayors since 1933 were Irish. Jane, 46, had just returned from a trip to Ireland. She went there after her September 5, 1979, appearance in London at the funeral of Lord Louis Mountbatten, assassinated August 27 by Irish radicals of the Provisional Wing of the Irish Republican Army. Mayor Byrne was part of a ten-member U.S. delegation headed by former New York Governor W. Harriman traveling to England at the request of President Carter. While she was there, Byrne met in Ireland with the Irish Prime Minister Jack Lynch to discuss the current political situation in Ireland and the United Kingdom. She went on to County Mayo to research her family’s Irish roots.

Mayor Jane Byrne of Chicago strums an Irish harp in a Dublin pub. She stopped over in Ireland after representing the U.S. at the September 1979 funeral of “the fallen warrior,” Lord Louis Mountbatten, assassinated by IRA terrorists the previous month. Byrne is in Ireland to research her family genealogy. Chicago Tribune, Sept. 8, 1979.

Sir Nicholas Henderson, newly-appointed as the British ambassador to America by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of England, was traveling with the Princess’ party. He was puzzled as to why Chicago was one of the stops. He wrote in his diary that it was

…not to my mind, an altogether straightforward piece of fund-raising, given that we are in the heart of the Middle West.

Henderson should have been briefed. True, Chicago was in the American Midwest, but the Chicago of 1979 was no longer the cow and pig town of the early Twentieth Century of which, in 1914, American Poet Carl Sandburg immortalized in his poem, “Chicago”:

Chicago

Hog Butcher for the World,

   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,

   Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;

   Stormy, husky, brawling,

   City of the Big Shoulders

An even more disparaging portrayal appeared in print in 1952 in the book, Chicago: The Second City, written by A.J. Liebling, “a disgruntled and displaced New Yorker whose few months’ sojourn in Chicago provided him enough ammunition for a malicious attack on the City of Big Shoulders.”

For the cosmopolitan Mr. Liebling, Chicago consisted of an “exiguous skyscraper core and the vast, anonymous pulp of the city, plopped down by the lakeside like a piece of waterlogged fruit.” Liebling saw no cultural life in Chicago to speak of, no worthwhile theatre, no decent dining spots or nightclubs. To Liebling, the city was a conglomeration of dullards and conventioneers whose idea of a night on the town was a meal of “pig’s ribs” followed by a trip to the nearest strip joint. (1)

In 1954, with the building of its Lyric Opera House, Chicago hoped to distance itself from its former déclassé image as The Hog Butcher of the World where haute cuisine was considered a meal of pig’s ribs. The Lyric Opera House of Chicago is North America’s second-largest opera auditorium, after the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. On Sunday, October 14, Princess Margaret would attend a matinee performance of the Lyric Opera of Chicago where Leontyne Price and Luciano Pavarotti would perform. The night before she would attend a private dinner at the private home of millionaire Abra Prentice Anderson.

Chicago was cosmopolitan now, with a vibrant social life with lots of rich, well-coiffed women raising money for good causes. Rockefeller heiress and Chicago’s No. 1 debutante in 1961, Abra Prentice Anderson (b. 1944), was one of these social tigresses, a philanthropic treasure, who lent her energy to supporting the Lincoln Zoo, Prentice Women’s Hospital, and Ethel Walker’s Boarding School.

Actress Barbara Rush and journalist Abra Prentice Anderson appear at a 1969 Prentice Women’s Hospital Board tea. The hospital is named for Abra’s parents, the Rockefeller Prentices.

Abra, tall at 5’10, with thick, dark hair, began her career in journalism in 1966 as a fledgling reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times, purportedly being one of the first to cover the story of the murder of eight Chicago nurses by Richard Speck. From 1969-1972, she and her husband the impossibly-handsome Jon Anderson had a gossip column of their own in the Chicago Daily News called “Jon & Abra.” At the time, the Andersons were Chicago’s No. 1 “young couple about town.” In 1972, Abra came into her fortune of $35 million and, with Jon, launched the short-lived monthly magazine, The Chicagoan. The two divorced in 1976. Abra was still employed by the Sun-Times. In a 1979 Tribune “Lifestyle” article, Abra was listed as one of Chicago’s ten most eligible women. She wasn’t in a hurry to remarry, she said in the interview for the piece:

“Basically, I’m financially independent, I’ve had my children, so there’s no reason for me to get married again unless I meet someone I can’t live without….I’m a better person than I was before I got married the first time. I’m more secure, I’m willing to take more risks, and I don’t have zits anymore.”

When Abra’s daughter, Ashley Prentice Norton, was eight or nine years old, ca. 1978-79, Abra sent out a Christmas card with a photograph of her and her three children posing stark naked. Ashley was mercilessly teased at school and Abra was raked over the coals in the Chicago gossip columns. Abra did not regret sending out the controversial snap, saying that the nudity was tastefully done. (2)

Saturday, October 13, Princess Margaret was the guest of honor at Abra’s Drake Tower penthouse with its posh address on North Lake Shore Drive, then called “the richest block in Chicago.” Abra and her little children lived on the 29th and 30th floors in the Drake Tower penthouse. Ashley Prentice Norton, in her novel, The Chocolate Money, described the penthouse:

I venture into the living room….[I]t’s the best room in the aparthouse…[I]t is two stories high and takes up one whole half of the aparthouse. Standing in it is like being in a Lucite box that’s suspended in the sky. Instead of a solid wall, there is a huge pane of glass that goes floor to ceiling and allows for an amazing view of Lake Michigan. Besides being really big, it has cool things, like the spiral staircase that winds up to her [Abra’s] bedroom. The steps are big chunks of creamy veined marble, and the railing is a long silver tube that curves like a Krazy Straw. Straight silver bars connect the railing to the steps….

What Abra Anderson really liked to do was throw a party. Everyone wanted an invitation. As was the custom, Abra’s fifty dinner guests arrived ahead of Margaret, allowing her to make her royal entrance. She was usually late, sometimes hours, but that was to be expected. Princess Margaret was seated at the table with Mayor Jane Byrne (1933-2014) who had arrived on the arm of her husband, former reporter, Jay McMullen, also a colorful Chicago fixture. He was known for his bawdy tales of sexual conquest and weird ties made of yarn. McMullen had appointed himself the mayor’s “tough guy,” protecting her against the press and anyone else he deemed harmful to his new bride.

Mayor Byrne remarked to Princess Margaret that she had just returned from England where she had attended the funeral of the Princess’ second cousin, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Out of Margaret’s loose mouth rolled these words,

“The Irish; they’re pigs.”

Too late, she realized her mistake. Turning to the Mayor, she gasped.

“Uh-oh. You’re Irish.”

Irv Kupcinet, known as “Kup,” who was the first journalist to report the story in his Tuesday, October 16, 1979, column says that the Mayor was outraged and left the dinner as soon as possible. It was not revealed for three weeks who had leaked the story. Later it was determined that it was Jay McMullen, the Mayor’s husband. This revelation ran in the Chicago Sun-Times at the end of the month, now outraging the hostess, Abra Anderson, who resigned her “Click” column at the Sun-Times.

Word of Margaret’s remarks traveled fast. Newspapers hounded her social secretary, Lord Napier. He denied that Margaret had used derogatory words. At first, Mayor Byrne denied Margaret had said those words. Then her press office said that the Mayor and Princess Margaret had discussed Irish jigs. This comment was so ridiculous that a Guardian journalist in London pondered sarcastically whether or not Princess Margaret does not eat Irish figs.

Later, Mayor Byrne confirmed that Margaret had made the remark but that she was referring to Irish terrorists as pigs, not the Irish people. Then Abra Anderson confirmed that Mayor Byrne had told her of the conversation. The proverbial poopoo hit the fan. Newspapers from New Zealand to Scotland to Tyler, Texas carried the story.

On the 1980 Census, forty million Americans would declare Irish ancestry. Many people in America and globally considered Margaret’s words to be an Irish slur. They became infuriated. They planned anti-British protests at each of the next of Margaret’s planned tour events. In Irish pubs across America, patrons passed tin cups at “Irish brunches” to gather dollars for NORAID, the IRA’s money source. NORAID claimed the money was used to support widows and orphans. Prime Minister John Lynch of Ireland called that “hogwash.” The money is used to create widows and orphans. Nevertheless, Margaret had given their cause of kicking the British out of Northern Ireland through guerrilla warfare a rallying cry.

Headlines excoriated the Princess:

‘Irish are Pigs’ causes work stoppage

Meg in Irish Stew

Margaret in hot water over ‘Irish pigs’ remark

Irish ‘pig’ puts her majesty in a poke

In England, however, where the British people and the Royal Family were still in shock and mourning for Lord Louis Mountbatten, feeling ran in a different direction. From the Newcastle Journal, October 23, 1979, a letter was published from a reader to the Editor:

Had no one a kind word for Princess Margaret? She’s not on the list of my next dinner party, but if she were, I would expect her to choose a rather stronger epithet than ‘pigs’ for the terrorists who assassinated her favourite uncle.

Then there was the British writer, Auberon Waugh, writing in his Private Eye diary from England, that “all over the country people are raising their glasses to toast the Bonnie princess.” This annoyed him, writing that for Princess Margaret’s entire life,

“this woman has been flouncing around embarrassing everybody with her rudeness, self-importance, and general air of peevish boredom. Now it looks as if everything will be forgiven for the sake of one bon mot.”

Then there were the pig lovers.

Margaret had traveled to America with 27 trunks full of jewels and designer clothing, the American ambassador, a lady-in-waiting, a social secretary, a Scotland Yard bodyguard, and three others but neglected what she needed most: a press secretary to quell the furor that erupted into a major international incident of dangerous proportion. Why had Buckingham Palace and the Foreign Office given Margaret’s trip the green light when anti-British feeling was at such fever pitch? Flames kept being fanned as more and more papers picked up the story and comments continued, both in favor of and against the Princess.

Readers: For more on Princess Margaret on this blog, click here.

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