Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - JFK Special 1. | The Irish Woman Who Built The Dynasty

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

This November marks 60 years since President John F Kennedy was assassinated. His name is associated with history defining events, but it’s also connected with a dynasty, known for their celebrity and notoriously for being ‘cursed.’The Kennedy family, thought of as American royals by many, have a fascinating and tragic history - especially the women in JFK’s life and family line.Today we’re going right back to the start, to a farm in Ireland to meet JFK’s great-grandma, Bridget, who overcame tragedy and poverty to forge the foundation of a dynasty.This is the first instalment in a mini-series, The Kennedy Women, which will look into the lives of Bridget, Jackie, Rosemary and the so-called family curse.The senior producer was Charlotte Long. The producer was Stuart Beckwith.Archive courtesy of NBC.You can read more about Neal Thompson’s work here.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BETWIXTTHESHEETS1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. It's November 1963 and we are in Washington, D.C. The leaves have nearly fallen from the trees on a crisp, bright day and there are hundreds of thousands of people silently lining the streets to watch a funeral procession. The casket is draped with the American flag and behind the coffin there is a man leading a riderless horse. To symbolise that the commander has. fallen. This is one of the most watched events in television history. It's the final journey of

the 35th President of the United States, President John F. Kennedy, who was shot in Dallas just days earlier. His wife, Jackie, holding her young children's hands, has maintained a stoic composure in front of the crowds and the countless cameras. Earlier in the cathedral, she became invisibly emotional as Ave Maria played out. It was the same song that played during their marriage ceremony. JFK's final resting place will be at Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac River in a 20 by 30 foot paved plot surrounded by magnolia trees. At the head of the grave, a five foot circular granite stone will be installed with a singular eternal flame burning in the centre. This flame, lit by Mrs. Kennedy on the day of the funeral, still burns to this very day. JFK is one of the most famous men in history, a name recognised across the world.

His middle name was actually Fitzgerald, that's what the F stands for. A name associated with history-defining events like the Vietnam War, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War. But also a name tied to a dynasty, known for their glamour, charisma and celebrity. and notoriously for being cursed. That's what they said, the Kennedy curse. There was a series of premature deaths, accidents, assassinations, affairs, and multiple other tragedies that happened in their family line. Tragedy has haunted the Kennedy clan for generations.

The Kennedy dynasty, thought of by many as being the American royal family, have a fascinating and tragic history with many famous members, JFK being one of the most well-known. And he often eclipses the other members of that family. But there were some truly fascinating people there. In particular, the women of the Kennedy family, not to mention the women that JFK got himself involved with. From a great grandmother with humble Irish roots

and a quiet determination who dragged the family out of poverty and set the foundations of a dynasty. So she was just like, boom, boom, boom, one thing after another. An entrepreneur at a time when that just wasn't a thing. for widowed Irish maids. To the world famous scandalous affairs. I can now retire from politics after having had a happy birthday sung to me. To a shy sister who was left without the ability to walk or talk after a disastrous lobotomy,

ordered by her father. They'd only been doing the procedure for a couple of years. Rosemary was probably their 70th or 80th patient. 60 years on from JFK's death, we are looking at some of the women, attached to the Kennedy family. They were fabulous and they were flawed, you know, and some of them just doomed. This is the Kennedy Women, Episode 1, Bridgett, humble Irish roots of an American dynasty. The latest ordeal for a family that has endured so many of them over the years.

Mrs. Kennedy comes forward with Caroline in a tableau that calls for no words. Its poignancy calls only for tears. I know it's such a lot. long and often hopeless fight. They hope it will accomplish something. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal in society. With me, Kate Lister.

This November, it is 60 years since President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. And to mark the anniversary, I'm going to be looking into the women in his life and family line. Today, I'm speaking to Neil Thompson all about JFK's paternal great-grandmother, Bridget Kennedy, who is often over. But is the reason that we now know all about the Kennedy family.

Later on in the series, we'll be finding out about his wife Jackie, his sister Rosemary, and the other women in his life, as well as taking a look at the so-called Kennedy Curse. So look out for those episodes in the coming weeks. But today we are going right back to the start to a farm in a small town in Ireland. To meet Bridget, a Catholic who was born in a single room house, her life journey will see her face tragic. tragedy, poverty and drama, but ultimately she will overcome it and set the Kennedy family up for success almost single-handedly. Here's Neil to tell us how she did it. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. Is only Neil Thompson, how are you doing?

Kate, I'm great. Nice to see you. Nice to be here. It's so nice to have you here because you are here to speak a bit about and give the history of someone I had never heard of until I knew that I was going to talk. to you. Bridgett Kennedy, this is the great-grandmother of JFK. It sounds so obvious. Of course, there's a family tree and you could probably go way, way, way back. But I don't think anybody's done that before. What brought you to Bridget? Yeah, you know, so my interest in the Kennedys, I came at it from a couple of different angles. And I, too, hadn't heard of Bridget until I started digging deeper into the family history. So going back to the origins of my interest, I was a journalist at the Baltimore Sun newspaper back in 1999 when JFK Jr. died.

You know, his plane went down off of Martha's Vineyard on Cape Cod, which coincidentally is where I am right now, as we're speaking, just happened to be out on the cave. But he died and I covered the story for my newspaper. I was part of this frenzy of reporters up at the Kennedy compound, which is just right down the street from where I am now. And I started wondering after filing my last story and driving back toward home, like, where did this all story? start. Where did this crazy frenzy for the Kennedy family begin? And then I went a level deeper and wondered, so who was first? Who came here? And my background is Irish. I have Irish immigrant grandparents on my side. And I thought, let me dig into the Kennedy history and find out where they began. And maybe I learned a little bit about my own history as well. And it was Ireland, wasn't it?

Bridgett is an Irish lassie. Yeah, yeah. One of the most common names in Ireland at that time, Bridget and Patrick, who became her husband, which made my research a little bit complicated, trying to figure out the different Bridgetts and Patrick's that were everywhere. Oh, no. What was her maiden name? Murphy. Bridget Murphy. Brilliant. Well, that will have cleared things up then, definitely. Yeah, right.

Okay, so tell me a bit about her background and what have you uncovered. And how on earth did you manage to work out that this is the Bridget Murphy that I need and not all of the other Bridgett Murphy? Yeah, for the most part, I had her backstory nailed down. There were a couple moments where I had to wonder, hmm, is this my Bridget or is this a different Bridget? But mostly I nailed it down. Like you said, Kate, like it hasn't really been done before. Nobody went deep into her story. And we can get to the reasons for that in a little bit. But I think she's been like sorely overlooked in the history of the Kennedys. I think her backstory is amazing and she's an incredible woman. And I think in my view,

the matriarch of that family, truly, because she kept the family going during these tough times. But yeah, she's been largely forgotten over the years. So she came from born and raised in County Wexford, just a little village on a small farm that her parents ran. She had a few brothers and sisters. But my story in the book, in the First Kennedys, and her story as it relates to coming to America, begins with the great potato famine of the mid-1840s, right? So potato famine hits Ireland. A lot of people starve. A lot of people leave. What I found interesting about Bridget and women like her is that women left Ireland at that time and for decades later in larger numbers than the men. Really? I didn't know that.

Very different from other countries who immigrated to America. I think part of it in my view, and this is backed up by some of my researches, you know, life was pretty crappy for them in Ireland. The prospect for her, maybe if she was lucky, find a farmer who owned a little bit of land and become a farmer's wife and start popping out kids. You know, she like a lot... It's not great, is it? No, the future wasn't rosy at that time, even without the potato famine, which made things worse. You know, she was under the thumb of this sort of patriarchal society. There was the church that, you know, she was beholden to extreme poverty everywhere.

And I think when the potato famine hit, she might have viewed it as her chance to get out. Like, see ya, I'm gone. Just bugger this. Yeah, screw this. I should probably say that no shade whatsoever. to anyone that wants to marry a farmer and grow potatoes. Absolutely. Right, right.

Love farmers. We love farmers on this show. But it's quite a limited aspirational. They're limited for Bridget, aren't they, as they are for all women at this point. So you think that she was just one of many women that just went, well, sod this? Yeah, absolutely. And she was the first in her family to leave Ireland. She went alone, probably for the most part.

There were some other cousins who were coming to America around that same time. time, but she was the first in her immediate family to leave her country and headed toward America where people didn't want her there either, as it turns out. So I think her story of making this big decision to leave home by herself with little money and go to a new country. And the crossing to America at that time was no QE2. There was no easy crossing at that time. It was dangerous and deadly and people died along the way. Ships burned, ships crashed. And so it was a huge. huge risk that she took. And I think that says a lot about her character. It really was, wasn't it? It's kind of difficult for us to really understand what was at stake here. Like,

going to America today is quite a long journey. But you have to imagine that back in the 1840s, especially if she didn't know anyone else over there, she may as well have been going to the moon. She's no idea what's there waiting for us. She has no real idea of what she's going to do when she gets there. She's got no connections there. She literally just went, sod this. I'm off. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Isn't it? Isn't it?

Yeah. And again, I think it says a lot about her. She had what I think is this grit and independent streak and this adventurous streak and was willing to take on this big challenge of getting across a giant ocean at a time when that just didn't happen. Passenger travel wasn't a thing back then. How long would that have taken to go from Ireland to New York? I presume that that's where she was named.

She ended up in Boston. A lot of Irish immigrants went to either Boston or Ellis Island, and she chose Boston. You know, at best, it would take four weeks of a crossing at worst. It could take at least twice as long, depending on the weather and the conditions. Jesus. Seems that the ship she was on took little more than four weeks. She left in late 1847 and arrived in Boston in early 1848. But again, she got to America and realized that this was no picnic either. There were plenty of people there who didn't want Irish people, look down on women, look down on Catholics. and best that she could hope for was getting the lowest of level jobs, which is working as a maid, and that's what she did.

Why didn't people like the Irish? The obvious explanation for that is nobody liked anyone back then. They just seemed to just everyone hated everyone. But I have seen those old photographs of signs that say, work, Irish need not apply, or words to that effect. They seem to have been particularly singled out and stigmatized. What on earth was that? Why were the Irish so targeted in America?

There were a handful of reasons for that, and the hatred went deep, I learned, way deeper than I expected. Yeah. It's a proper hatred, and I think it's a reflection of the sort of anti-immigrant attitudes you see in the States to this day, really. It was always part of my country's history, unfortunately. And back then, you would hear people using the same words that they've used in recent years, like send them back, build a wall, literally, build a wall and keep them out. All those kind of attitudes are really strong. They were aimed at the Irish at that time, partly because the Irish were the first large immigrant group to come at one time. There were trickles of immigration, you know, going way back, obviously.

But with the potato famine hitting and many, many thousands, tens of thousands, and ultimately, you know, more than a million Irish coming to America in a relatively narrow span of time, it freaked people out. They're like, whoa, we wanted to be nice to you when you were starving. We were willing to send some funds to help you out, but we didn't expect you to be our neighbors. Like, it freaked America out. And then the other reason was religion. Very anti-Catholic at the time. America was a very Protestant country. And you had these religious and political and civic and business leaders who were all very much old-school,

Brahmin and patriarchal and Protestant leaders. And they were worried that the Irish were coming to, like, take over their country, that it was some conspiracy. And so there was a lot of fear. a lot of misunderstanding and honestly, just a lot of hate and distrust. I mean, to the point that there was a political party that was created, the no-nothing party, to keep Irish out, to keep them down. If they got here to prevent them from voting,

they tried to suspend certain voting rights. It was pretty aggressive. It was nasty. So that was the world that Bridget entered when she came to America, not welcome with open arms by any means. That must have been a rather rude awakening, because I imagine she would have gone there thinking that this is the land of hope and opportunity and this is this is going to be my savior and this is going to be amazing and then all of a sudden

it's like yeah but not for you not for you. Yeah, not for you Irish or Catholic and definitely not for women. Definitely a rude awakening. But again, back to her character, I think it says a lot that she stuck it out and then her trajectory from that point forward, it was not an easy life her first decades in America, but she not only survived, but in time. thrived despite experiencing extreme hardship and loss across her life. So where did she go? Because I think I would have just cried. That would have been my plan.

What if Bridget do? That would have been my first year. That would have been my first year. Start with that. Yeah. He's American. What does she do? So she went to work at first.

Like a lot of women did coming to America. And again, Maid was really the only job that was available to her. So she worked as a maid in my book. I spent a lot of time exploring sort of the attitude of the Irish maids at that time. And I love the description of some of them that I came across in newspapers from that period, 1850s, where they were sassy and they were bold. And they didn't take. That sounds about right.

They didn't take shit from anybody, from their boss, from the lady of the house. They did their own thing. And I think that's kind of remarkable that they were, they needed the job and they probably worked hard, but they were not subservient to anyone. And I think that's very much what Bridget was like. She, I'm sure, worked hard. She worked in different positions during her first couple of years, but didn't let the nasty bosses keep her down. She got married in 1849.

Patrick Kennedy was his name. He also came from County Wexford. They ended up living in this little community on the island of East Boston, which is across from downtown Boston, started raising their family there. They had initially three daughters and one son, but back to the hardships that Bridget faced, she lost her first son named John F. Kennedy. was his name. He died of, it was called cholera and phantom, an intestinal disorder for children at that time. He was less than two years old.

So hardship hit that family right off the bat. Did, didn't it? If her husband, Mr. Kennedy, came from the same place she did, did they ever meet each other when they were back in Ireland? You know, other writers have speculated that it was likely. I could never find proof that they met. It's possible.

Yeah, God, that wouldn't have been written out, would it now? Unfortunately, no, yeah. I mean, you know, maybe they cross paths. there's evidence that in their deep backgrounds, there was some family connection, so they could have met at some point. You know, but other writers, I have just made shit up and said like, oh, yeah, they knew each other. They made out before they got on the boat together and they came to America. They escaped together. So I couldn't find any evidence that they were.

That's a nice story, though. It's a more romantic story than mine, but maybe not the truth. And what was he doing? What was his line of work? He was a barrel maker. He also grew up on a small farm, which is still owned by descendants of the, the Kennedys today outside this town of New Ross in County Wexford. But Patrick, because he had this small skill making barrels, which he learned in Ireland, it gave him a bit of a leg up when he ended up

in Boston because that was a skill that was much needed at that time. So instead of being a ditch digger like most of the other guys coming from Ireland who knew nothing except farming, Patrick had a little bit of something to get and hold down a job and make some decent money and keep the family going while Bridget was working as a maid and then occasionally having children. But then more hardship strikes. And soon after Bridget had her second son and fifth child, a little boy named PJ, Patrick Joseph, her husband, Patrick, gets sick and dies. And... Oh, Patrick. I know. God damn it. And the date of his death is November 22nd, 1858, which is the same date that his great grandson, JFK, will...

die many, many decades later. Wow. Kind of spooky. That's kind of spooky. Right, right. He just got sick, did he? And he just, just one of the many things that you could get sick from. Many.

I mean, at that time, where they lived, it was basically Irish slums of Boston. And there was just every known disease in the air was a terrible place. I described some of that in the book about children under the age of sick, just dying by the hundreds every year of different diseases. And in Patrick's case, he could. contracted consumption, which was tuberculosis at the time they called it consumption, fought it for about a year, and then his body gave out. So this leaves Bridget with four kids, including an infant son, all alone in the slums of East Boston.

Was she working the whole time? That surprised me when you said that, that she stayed working as a maid. Because I thought the deal was, if you get married, then you're a woman, now you're at home having babies. You don't keep your job. Yeah, no, I think she worked a lot. And evidence of that is that one of her nieces, came over, also named Bridget, who lived with the family and took care of the kids for a while. So I think there were times when, you know, she was at home having her children.

And then as soon as she was able, she went back to work and someone else watched her kids. A family member watched the kids. My God. This woman is a machine, isn't she? But then again, what else were you going to do? You just fight on. And, you know, that's what she did. I suppose you have to.

Oh. You know, here's where I found Bridget's story to get even more interesting is, you know, after Patrick is dead in our Her husband's dead. Her first son is dead. She's poor. She's got these kids. She's working as a maid. Like the bottom of the bottom of the barrel.

She fights and claws her way up and out of that muck. And within a few years, she's working as a hairdresser in downtown Boston at a fancy department store called Jordan Marsh. Oh, now, there's a career shift. Right. And I don't know how she found that job. There's evidence that women, you know, would cut each other's hair back in Ireland and in the Irish slums. So she probably did that on the side. for some extra money and then turned it into a vocation and worked at this pretty upscale department

store in downtown Boston. So she's a widow, but she's learning how to commute across to the big city, learning to hold down a job, and she's learning customer service and retail and finance and all these sort of skills and basically getting a glimpse into the middle class of Boston and what they want and what they're like and what life is like in that world that's so many levels above her. And from that, she takes another leap forward and decides to open her own little grocery store in East Boston. She is moving all over the places, are Bridget. And Kate, it's just unheard of that a woman would do this at that time, you know, especially a widowed immigrant woman.

She was a dynamos. With four kids. With four kids, right. And I think part of the reason was certain family members were starting to come to East Boston, sort of clustering around her. She became the hub around which her extended family kind of gathered. So nieces came in time two of her sisters came to town, nephews came, cousins came. So she did have some help with child care as a result of that. And that allowed her.

And she wanted to stop working in downtown Boston and just stay in East Boston near her kids, near her home. So she found this small little space for a grocery store, borrowed some money and opened this place and, you know, had some fits and starts. But in time she was able to move to a larger building, then she was able to buy the building. in which her grocery store existed. Go Bridget. And then she became a landlady, renting out apartments above the shop to incoming Irish immigrants,

including some family members. So she was just like, boom, boom, boom, one thing after another, an entrepreneur at a time when that just wasn't a thing for widowed Irish maids. I had no idea that women could even be hairdressers and barbers in the mid-19th century. I don't know why I've never really given that much thought before,

but that surprises me that that was a job that was open to her. Yeah, well, and then the business side of things, too, was remarkable. As I learned along the way, if Patrick had survived, she would have had to get this special license, like woman doing business as such and such, and she would have needed her husband's approval to get a business license. She couldn't get it on her own.

Look at that. Right. I know. Right. So it's always been that way. But because Patrick was dead, she was able to do it on her own. My God. And what kind of stuff is she selling in her shop? Like a grocer shop? Is this food and kind of like everyday essentials? What kind of stuff she sells? Yeah, a mix of things, you know, coffee, tea, vegetables, household goods. But what I found interesting is that because it was a very Irish community, she also most likely there's not 100% evidence, but it seems like she sold liquor. She sold beer and bottles of booze because that's what the Irish community wanted at that time. And that's what a lot of small grocery stores did. There was a requirement that you got a license from the city to.

sell liquor, but a lot of these small shops decided screw that. I'm just going to do it in the back room, keep it quiet, and just sell to my neighbors. And it seems that's what Bridget did to make a little extra cash. This is the original turn in your side hustle into your living, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. Right. Is she still in the relatively poor areas of Boston when she's in her shop? She is, but that area slowly, because more and more Irish are coming there and like her, a few of them slowly moving into sort of next level up jobs. Like the men started out as just ditch diggers, building the railroad, digging tunnels, digging canals. In time, some of them start moving into police jobs and firefighter jobs, making a little bit more money.

And the women are starting to move into, you know, teaching jobs. I think the women really led the way more than the men. I found some great stories about some of these women, not just becoming teachers, but becoming sort of union leaders and Ravel Rousers and... Go on. Yeah, I mean, the Irish women were bad ass. And I think... Still are. Yep. No question.

And I should say, I know this because I come from badass Irish women, including my mother and my grandmother. And they were always part of the inspiration for this. Because I saw the grit and strength of the women who I was raised by. And I see that in Bridget and the women who were around her at that time as well. Bridget has done incredible things. I'm in awe of this woman already, that she's just literally arrived on the boat with nothing. And then she eventually manages to become a landlady and she's accumulated wealth. But I'm still not seeing the link between how she got there. I mean, brilliant job, Bridget. You've done amazing. But how the hell did she get there? And then on to

being the great grandmother of the president of the United States. Was she interested in politics? I don't know. But the link to the next generation is interesting to me because, so she had three daughters and one son. One of the daughters helped her with the grocery store and became very successful and relatively wealthy in her own right. I think that's the daughter who helped Bridget raise funds to buy the building and then helped her manage it. I found her daughter, Joanna's name on a mortgage document from back in the 1860s. But her son PJ, the youngest, is a fascinating character, too. He was raised by this strong woman and three older sisters and a bunch of aunts. So deeply influenced by the women in his life. Troublemaker as a kid, you know, this fatherless kid who just didn't want

to stay in school. He wanted to be out on the railroad tracks or down at the docks where his dad once worked. So I think he was a handful for Bridget. In fact, he spent some time at a juvenile detention center on this place called Deer Island, probably for truancy. A lot of these kids, if they weren't messing around. They were not messing around. They were jail for Trinian. For truancy. Oh, and this was a terrible place, too. It was so badly run. They had different buildings for like the bad criminals are over here and the truants

are over here. And in time, they all just got mixed together. And it was just one big shit show. But I think that experience toughened PJ up. In time, he starts working at the docks as a longshoreman, you know, just a grunt, taking shit on and off these buildings. But then he rises just like his mother did, probably because of the lessons learned from his mother, rises up a level to become a stevedore, which is,

like the guy oversees the longshoremen, and then he starts hanging out with some of the local politicians. And this is where I think Bridget had to have been a conduit there and introduced him to this life because in time, he gets to know some of these local politicians, all Irish and Democrats at that time, even though the city was mainly run by Republican Protestants. And in time, PJ decides to leave his job as Estevedore and open a saloon. Very Irish thing to do. but because his mother was in the business of a grocery store and sold liquor, it's likely that she helped him start his first saloon. I can say that.

And in time, that career for PJ takes off. He's got connections at the docks. He's got connections through his saloon. In time, he opens another saloon. Then he develops more connections to the politics of East Boston and the politicians of that area. Then he opens another little saloon right next to the Democratic headquarters for the ward in which he lives. And it becomes like the clubhouse for all these politicians. So jumping ahead just a little bit, PJ, after serving as like a foot soldier for the ward of East Boston,

ended up running for office for sort of leaping ahead of their lower level things and runs to become a state representative for the state of Massachusetts in 1885, this would be, and wins. Wow. And serves for years in a row, starts making more money. So I think that success that you see and the start of PJ in politics is tied directly to Bridget and her success as a businesswoman and sort of community leader in that area of, you know, Irish immigrant part of East Boston. She must have been a proud mama, right? Like her boy is not quite, is it a senator? No, a representative. State representative.

And then later he did become a state senator. Wow. As well. Yeah. She had to have been proud. I mean, and I think it was all because of her that he was able to achieve these things. Right? Yes.

It had to be. It had to be, right? So where does JFK come from? Is he PJ's grandson? Yep, yep, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

So PJ gets married. A woman who he met in the village of East Boston, her name's Mary Augusta Hickey. They get married. Excellent name. Hickey, right? Good for this show. So Mary Hickey and PJ Kennedy get married. And they have two daughters and a son.

The firstborn son is Joe. Joseph Kennedy, who becomes JFK's father. And toward the end of my book, I spend a little bit of time exploring sort of this transition. So you've got Bridget, strong woman, good person, PJ, good politician, cared about his community, helped neighbors out. I found the collected papers of PJ Kennedy at the JFK Library in Boston. And I found all these letters of him writing to other people trying to get help for incoming Irish immigrants.

So-and-so needs a job, or they need to get into a school, or they need to get into a school, or they need a place to live. He was just always looking out for others who struggled like his mother once did and trying to help him get a start in America in this country that still didn't want them. So PJ's a good guy. And then you get to Joe Kennedy and he's born a rich kid because PJ was so successful by the time he was born. Never works. It doesn't.

So things start to tilt in a different direction when you get to Joe Kennedy and his family in the early 1900s. Oh, no. Go on. What's he up to? What kind of daddy was he? Am I allowed to use any of the words on this show? You can use as many words as you like. You know, Joe was a powerful guy and gets a lot of credit for raising this influential and amazing family, but he was a dick.

He was unfaithful to his wife. We know many times he started to make money early on, partly because he was able to take over a bank that his father started. So PJ... I mean, that helps, doesn't it? It does when Daddy gives you a bank. Yeah. So Daddy gives him a bank, and he part of lays that into even more money. And then in the 1920s, he's got a few kids by this point.

JFK is born in 1917. And then Joe goes to Hollywood to start film business and making movies and start sleeping around out there, leaving his wife, Rose Kennedy, at home to raise, you know, all of these kids who were born from the late 19th teens into the 1920s. So it's sort of unfortunate that you've got these two strong people, Bridget, her son PJ, and this early legacy of the Kennedys, and then you get to Joe. And yes, he's powerful and successful and wealthy, but the good qualities that Bridget had passed on sort of skipped over Joe. And I do think they sort of pick up again with some of Joe's kids. Like you do see some of JFK's families, his siblings, doing great things with their life, some of which we don't often hear about,

especially as it relates to the women. But, you know, I think, again, Joe Kennedy gets all this credit for being the patriarch of that family when really the credit should go to his grandmother, Bridget. I'll be back to talk more about Bridget after this short break. Meet her grandson or her great-grandson. How did things work out for Bridget?

So she's a landlady. Her kid is a senator. Well done, Bridget. But how do things end for her? She dies relatively. relatively young. She was 67. Oh. I know. But, you know, at the same time, probably lived longer than some at that time did.

True. You know, her husband dies at 35. A lot of people died from different diseases in that area. So she lived an okay life, but not a long, necessarily a long life. She died in 1888. What I love about the obituaries that I came across, A, just the fact that she had an obituary written about her in the Boston Globe newspaper. Oh, my goodness. But they praised her, you know, just a few paragraphs, but still praised her as this woman who was a community leader and whose loss will be deeply felt in the community. I mean, I think it says a lot that she had such a deep impact on the people around her that she earned a few paragraphs of newsprint at the time of her death.

Definitely. If she died in 1880s, have you ever seen a photograph of her? No. Very sadly, no. you know, when I embarked on this project, we spoke earlier about, I started this in 1999 or the early idea back then. And I was convinced I'm going to find, you know, diaries and photographs. And I traveled to Ireland a couple of times and met with extended family members and went to the place where she lived. No known photographs of her survive, nor of her husband Patrick. But I liked, I think,

you know, if you think about the Kennedys that came later, pretty good looking family across the board. So I think she had to be... They are. I think she was probably a good-looking woman. A Bonnie Irish lassie, I think that she probably was. And they do have a reputation, don't they, as being a good-looking bunch to Kennedy. They do, yep, yep. And I think they got it off from her.

I'm not going to argue with her. I think so, too. But that means that she would never have met her grandson or her... Definitely not a great-grandson. No, unfortunately not. So she would have met and held Joe Kennedy, her grandson, briefly, because he was born a year before she passed. So at least she got to see the beginnings of that next generation, right?

But none of her great-grandchildren. Fortunately, PJ, her son, did live long enough to meet nearly all of his grandchildren. So he was a fun but stern kind of grandfather to the Kennedy kids. JFK later commented on him, PJ being, you know, kind of strict about certain things and would tease the kids or not even tease them, scold them for doing like dumb shit. He was kind of proper, I think, in his way, but doted on these kids, brought them toys to their house and came to vacation with them when they started vacationing out on Cape Cod. I think they adored PJ and he adored them. And I think he influenced them in some ways too because they knew he was a successful politician and businessman. Did JFK acknowledge his Irish heritage? Was it still

an issue in the 60s to be Irish in America? Or was it something that he was quite happy and proud of? Yeah. Great question because it is something I think. he struggled with as a person and a politician. I think the message from his father was, we're Americans now. Don't look back. Let's not talk about where we came from. And truly, he didn't give a shit about where he came from. And I think didn't give a shit about his heritage and his roots or his ancestors. JFK, I think, did. And he visited Ireland a number of times before his political career started. He visited the homestead, as it was known, where his father came from. His mother's homestead had been left to fall apart by that time, but JFK did care,

and he read a lot about Irish history. And then later, when he's running for president, there was this question of how much should he embrace who he is as an Irish Catholic, and in particular, the Catholic question was a challenge for him. And he decided to sort of play off that. I am a man of the people. I know what it's like to come from an immigrant background and to have worked hard, in my extended family backstory. And he did visit Ireland as president of the United States in 1963 and went to that same homestead and met with some extended family members. But what always sort of pissed me off about reading about his interest in Irish history

and his interest in his ancestry and his visit back to Ireland is that he would give credit to his great-grandfather. In fact, he gave this famous speech on the peers and, New Ross, where the boats that took his family away, had left from and talked about his great-grandfather, the barrel maker, Patrick, working at this, you know, brewery right down the street here. And if not for him, I would not have made it to America. But he doesn't get any credit to Bridget. No shout-outs for Bridget. Wow. Did he ever mention her in anything that you found that she was just not brought into this at all? Never heard him say a word about

Bridget, sadly. Oh, JFK, that's disappointing. I know. Maybe not entirely. surprising, given his reputation with women over the years, but just disappointing. Like, you know, I think he had plenty of flaws, but I think of him as a good human being for the most part and cared about his family, both his children and his ancestors. And, you know, maybe privately he acknowledged Bridget, but publicly I never came across anything where he gave her the proper shout out that she deserved. What do you think America's obsession with the Kennedy's is? Because I suppose I did his someone once say that they're the closest America's got to a royal family. I'm not sure how true that is. I think it's very true. I mean,

I think, you know, they've been referred to as America's royal family over the years and that idea of Camelot that came around after JFK was killed. I think, you know, there are a couple things, both the wealth and the power and the beautiful, you know, family traits and then the dark side and the curse and the tragedies that followed that family. I think those two things go hand in hand, you know, they were fabulous and they were flawed, you know, and some of them just doomed. You know, they're just very Shakespearean history of that family in America. And I think the story of the Kennedys fascinates us to this day. I mean, you know, my book came out just a couple of years ago. There was just, there's always a new Kennedy book popping up and people still aren't tired of reading or

hearing about them because they meant so much to us, I think politically, culturally. And we revered them, as you said, as our royal family. Talking about the Kennedy curse, because you sort of forget, it wasn't just JFK that came to a sticky end here. It does seem to keep happening with this family. So many over the years. You know, my book only goes up until sort of the 1920s,

soon after JFK is born, and then PJ's son dies in 1929. But, you know, even across those early years that I write about, you've got Bridget's son dying, her husband dies, Her daughters lost, I think, 10 children between them. Oh, my goodness. Just death after death after death. And then you get to JFK's generation.

His brother Joe dies in World War II. His sister, Catherine, dies soon after. And it's just one after the other. Wasn't a sister lobotomized as well? And then, right, yeah, Rosemary, who was tragically lobotomized. I forget what year that was. There's a great book about that called Rosemary. Horrible things happening over the day.

decades. And in recent years, you've heard more overdoses and drownings and... My God, I didn't realize of that. Wow. Yeah. Oh, it's a shame that Bridget couldn't have lived for much longer because I think she would have kicked their asses. I think she would have, yeah. They'd your shit together, Kennedys. She wouldn't have put up with this going off and cheating on your wife nonsense that was going on, would she?

Not a chance. No, she would have slapped some sense into that Joe Kennedy. I'm so glad that you are bringing light to this woman. She needs her own film, doesn't she? Really, Bridget Kennedy? That's my hope. I think she could easily sustain a film. She's fabulous. She's amazing.

Go on, who would you be your pick? Because obviously, you're going to be the historical consultant. You're not. Then that's outrageous. But who would you pick to play Bridget Kennedy? You know, I thought about this at times. For some reason, the actress I keep coming back to, I think her name Sarah Green, she was in Bad Sisters.

Yes, okay. I do. I think she was the youngest sister, dark hair, green eyes. That's always how I pictured Bridget because of the family traits. I like her as playing Bridget in the series. TV series, I think that would be a good one. And my final question is completely random, but I've always wondered this. Is the reason for the Boston accent?

Is that because of the large Irish immigration? Because America doesn't have as many accents as we have in the UK, but the Boston one is a big one. It's so specific. Yeah, I think it's a mix of things. In fact, I live in Seattle most of the time. I spent the summer in Boston. So I was surrounded by that accent all summer long. And in some places, it's so thick.

I think it's a combination of things, sort of the old school sort of proper Brahmin accent that was the original accent of Boston. And then you get the Irish brogue coming in in large numbers, and they sort of mush together and create this very specific accent that you hear in JFK and RFK and their siblings. I like it. It's kind of musical to me.

Yes, I like it's so distinct as well. I wonder what Bridget would have sounded like. I know. Neil, you have been incredible to talk to it. I'm so glad that you have researched this woman. But if people want to know more about you and your research, where can they find you? My website is neilthompson.com, N-E-A-L, T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N, L. Lots of information there about the book.

You can find out where to buy it. I have a fun newsletter that people can subscribe to on Substack called Blood and Whiskey, book reviews and cocktails. Oh, I love it. Thank you so much for talking to me today. You've been an absolute treat. Kate, really enjoyed it. Great to see you and spend time with you.

Cheers. Thank you so much for listening to the first installment in this mini series on the Kennedy Women. We will have episodes on Jackie, JFK's sister Rosemary, and of course, his affairs. But if you like what you heard, please don't forget to drop us a review. We really do read them all. The senior producer on this podcast is Charlotte Long. The producer is Stuart Beckwith. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sounds.