Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - JFK Special 2. | The Kennedy Sister They Tried To Hide

Episode Date: November 13, 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 exploring the story of JFK's sister Rosemary. Following a failed lobotomy which left her unable to walk or talk, she was hidden from public view for fear of jeopardising the pristine image of the family dynasty.This is the second instalment in a mini-series, The Kennedy Women, which started with their great-grandma Bridget, and will also cover Jackie, JFK's affairs, and the so-called Kennedy curse.The senior producer was Charlotte Long. The producer was Stuart Beckwith.Archive courtesy of NBC.You can read Kate Clifford Larson's book, Rosemary: The Hidden Kennedy Daughter, 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. The year is 1938 and Europe is on the brink of war. Following a troubling adolescence of behavioural issues and intellectual disabilities, a 20-year-old Rosemary Kennedy is at Buckingham Palace with her father, waiting to be presented as a debutante to King George the 6 and Queen Elizabeth. Her stern father, Jack Kennedy, Sr, is a US ambassador, ambassador to the UK and is concerned that her sometimes unpredictable behaviour could show up the family in such prestigious company.

At a crucial moment during a courtesy to the Royals, Rosemary stumbles. She's been practising this for hours in the build-up and she manages to correct herself with charm and grace and the event continues without a problem. However, once back in America, Rosemary's behaviour becomes more erratic and more dangerous to her. and to others. In what will be a pivotal moment in her life, her father, without his wife's knowledge, admits Rosemary to hospital for a lobotomy, a highly experimental and ethically repugnant treatment. He did this in the hope of rectifying her behavioural problems. The procedure, it's a disaster. The surgeon cuts too deep with his scalpel and they have to stop the operation suddenly when Rosemary becomes unresponsy.

Her life will never be the same again. 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, you know, 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 two, the sister they tried to hide. The latest ordeal for a festival. 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 cheese. I know it's such a long and often hopeless fight. We hope it will accomplish something. Hello, I've welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society with the Kate Lister. This November, it's 60 years since President John F. was assassinated and to mark the anniversary, I'm going to be looking into the women in his life and his family. Today I'm speaking to Kate Clifford Larson about the Kennedy sister who did not

fit with the family's ambitions, Rosemary, and all the ways they tried to change her to fit the Kennedy mould to disastrous effect. Later on in the series, we'll be looking at JFK's wife Jackie as well as the other women that he had on the side. We'll also be taking a look at the so-called Kennedy Curse. So look out for those episodes in coming weeks. But today we're going back to a time when the Kennedys, led by JFK's parents, Jack and Rose, were at the pinnacle of American High Society. When their dynasty was establishing itself on the international stage and nothing could get in the way of its assent to power, not least one of their own children. And welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Kate Clifford Larson. How are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you?

thrilled to be talking to you because this, am I thrilled? I feel bad now because this is ultimately a very sad story that we're going to talk about. But it's one I've been desperate to know more about for a very, very long time. Rosemary Kennedy. Yes.

She's somebody that I've heard the name. I know vaguely what happened to her. Very sad. But I so want to know more about her. And you are the person to talk to her about this. So what brought you to Rosemary Kennedy if you could just say a little bit about who she is. You know, I grew up in New England,

and of course the Kennedy family has always been big part of our lives, you know, here in New England. And so I've always been fascinated by their family story and read several of those, you know, family biographies over the years. But in 2005, I was working on another biography and Rosemary Kennedy died. And there was a beautiful obituary. in the Boston Globe, and I read it, and I thought, oh, you know, what an incredibly sad life and

story. And because I lived in Boston at the time, I thought, you know, maybe I'll just go to the Kennedy Library and see if there's something there, and I could write an article for the Boston Globe or the Boston Globe magazine. And two weeks later, my agent called and said, I have your next book project. And I said, Rosemary Kennedy. But I couldn't because I was working on another biography. And in 2008, that was done and I went to the Kennedy Library and I happened to go at a time when they were opening up in the collections, Rose Kennedy's Diaries and Journals. Wow. And then I knew that I could do a biography because there was, you know, there were stories

about Rosemary as a little child and a teenager and some of her own letters to her mother and father were in the collection. so I knew that I had a slice of her personality and the way the family looked at her and loved her and treated her so I knew that that was going to be the next work that I did. Wow. One of the most, well, it's not the most surprising thing, but it was surprising, I remember thinking, wow,

I always think of Rose Marie Kennedy as being part of that 1950, 60, 1940s, but she died in 2003. That to me feels so recent. It's very recent and she lived a very long life, but much of it was in institutions. You know, 60 some odd years, you know, she spent in institutions. That's the tragic part of it. But we can talk about that. You know, it wasn't all horrible.

It was a life that she lived and she flourished there. Was she the baby of the Kennedy's family? Was she the younger sister or the oldest? She was the third child. who became our president, and then her older brother, Joe, they were, you know, just older than her. And then there were, you know, the six other children that were born after that. She had a very difficult birth, didn't she? You can tell me if that's the start of Rosemary's health issues, but...

She did. Actually, she had a difficult birth, not because of her or her mother. It was a nurse that was called to the house to attend to Rose when she went into labor. And the protocol back in the 19 teens, and actually for several decades after that, it was standard for nurses and other medical professionals to wait till the doctor could arrive to deliver a baby. Okay. And so the nurse recognized that Rose was going to deliver little Rosemary very quickly, and the doctor hadn't arrived because he was delayed at a local hospital because of the Spanish flu that had been hitting the city that. fall of 1918. So she held the baby back in the birth canal for two hours waiting for the doctor to arrive. How does that work? Isn't that awful? So it is speculated that that deprived Rosemary of some oxygen or did some damage. It's not really clear. We don't know. Rose and Eunice, Kennedy Schreiber,

both believe that that affected Rosemary's capacities once she was born. I didn't even know that that was possible, like hold it in. That just sounds so bizarre. So I thought it was bizarre too until I did my research and I realized it happened more frequently than we realize. And over the past few years, I've given many talks in different venues, libraries, you know, concert halls, things like that. And several women, older women have approached me and said, that happened to me. That happened to my mother. And I'm like, wow, seriously. Yeah. She's just. hold it until the doctor arrived. I mean, I'm not a medical professional, but that sounds like that would have caused a lot of damage.

Yeah, I agree. But she was born and Rose and Joe were thrilled to have a little girl, and she was sweet, and she didn't fuss, and they just thought, you know, they had been blessed. She was born in, is it, 1918? So she has this difficult labor. I don't know if at the time they would have known that it was a difficult labor, but when does her family start to recognize that there are some developmental issues with Rosemary. When they had more children, so Kathleen or Kick came shortly thereafter and then Eunice,

and as those girls developed, they were walking and talking between one and two years old, but Rosemary struggled through those months from one year old to two years old, and she had difficulty learning how to master riding a little tricycle or steering a sled, on a snowy hillside, whereas the other children picked it up right away. And initially, Joe and Rose thought that, well, she's a girl, so maybe she's just going to develop slower than the two older brothers. But then when they had their girls right after that, and those girls were up and running and doing all sorts of things, they realized that something was different about Rosemary.

I'm going to assume that the Kennedys had the health resources around them and they have money to pay for health professionals and none of this was able to, I don't say help Rosemary, but, you know, address the issues that she was having early on. So while we have so many resources where we live today, financially they had the resources, but the educational and, you know, health resources were not available. Children who were born with any kind of disability, many of them were placed in institutions as babies or little toddlers. And in fact, Rose and Joe, heard from many friends and other people that they should institutionalize Rosemary when she was very, very small. And to their credit, they said no, that she would be better at home with them.

And they did hire tutors and they did things like that, but it wasn't enough. Although if they hadn't done that, I don't know what would have happened to Rosemary. But they did use their money in ways that they thought were helping her. What was the early diagnosis? What were the doctors saying in 1920s, 1930s, America? So they use these very terrible, old-fashioned words to describe people with intellectual disabilities. And they're just ugly and terrible. And so Joe and Rose didn't want to accept those diagnoses.

So they kept trying everything they could. And people would come up with all these different plans and ideas of what they could do to help Rosemary, including a doctor who, took over Rosemary's care when she was a young teenage girl going through puberty and he starts injecting her with hormones every week. I don't know what those hormones were. I could not discover what kind of hormones the medical field was using in the 1930s. But can you imagine a young, you know, girl going through puberty getting additional hormones added to her body that's already trying to cope with the flush of hormones.

And so he promised the Kennedys that she would be 100%, quote, 100% after a year of receiving these injections. But what happened to her is she became increasingly erratic and irrational and filled with rage and she would strike out at people and hit them and scream and yell. And Joe and Rose are like, what is going on? And I can only imagine those hormones were playing a role in that erratic behavior. It must have been, right? I mean, the last thing a teenager needs is more hormones.

So the poor thing, she's dealing with all of this. She does have what we would call developmental delay or learning difficulties. But she can write by the time she's a teenager because she's writing diaries, isn't she? She's keeping diary. She's writing letters to her siblings, her parents to other people. her letters, so when she's a teenager, it's like her writing is, she's in second grade. You know, the punctuation is all off. She capitalizes words randomly. The sentence structure is sometimes nonsensical. And she sometimes writes from the bottom of the page to the top rather than from

left to right or whatever. So she was delayed from like a, she was like a second grader in some ways. But she's growing into a woman and he's like an eight-year-old. It was a difficult time for the family to cope with and her parents to try to figure out how to help her. As someone that's read through her diaries and you can see that she's struggling with some things just by the style that she's writing in. But do you feel that you got to know,

what was she like as a teenager? What was Rosemary like just from reading her diaries? What did she like to do? Oh, she was such a teenager in many ways. she loved those Hollywood magazines that were popular back in the 1930s as well, because her father was involved with making films in Hollywood studios. So she got to meet stars, so she wrote about them. She liked boys, you know, she wanted to go to dances. She was very happy in some of her letters, just really, really happy and cute. She loved fashion. She just, you know, love beautiful clothes.

makeup and in some way she was a typical teenager. She just didn't know how to control herself or to, you know, she just was an incredibly free spirit that was sometimes untethered. And in the 1930s, that could be problematic. Okay, so she, part of these massive doses of hormones that she's getting, she is developed enough to be able to she can write and she can express herself and she can engage in social events. So what was it?

and you touched on it just there, that started to concern her family, because it sort of feels like that she would have been okay at that stage. I mean, all right, she can't write novellas and operas, but who can? And she might have just, you know, need a bit of extra support with some stuff. But her behavior does shift when she's a teenager, doesn't it? It does. And they become worried. You know, she would sometimes wander off and get lost.

Or she would start. talking to strangers and they were worried very, you know, and back in the 1930s, very wealthy people were very worried about kidnapping. You know, there's the Lindbergh story and other kidnappings that were happening. And so they worried about Rosemary being lured by a stranger because she just was, she had no filter. She had no ability to discern character and things like that. So they worried very much. And that I felt for them that they were afraid. But, they had her in private schools for years and years, so they felt that she was safe in those environments. But it was frustrating for her because there were academic demands that she could not

meet. And that was a source of pain and anguish, not only for her, but for her family as well. How is this playing out within the context of this developing dynasty of the Kennedys with political aspirations and this, from what I've read quite overbearing father, who has very, very strict demands. And there's Roseberry in the middle of that who is going to struggle to fit into this. But how did they see her within this? So I think at some point, Joe really began to see her as a liability. And so they doubled their efforts to keep her happy, but away from the public limelight. She was beautiful, and photographers followed her everywhere and took pictures of her, and because she was so striking. And, of course, she was kind of trained to be quiet in public and not to say much, which only added to her mystery and allure.

It wasn't like people could see her sitting at a table somewhere and say, oh, that person has disabilities or different abilities. they just assumed she was being quiet and a little bit of aloof, but it made her so intriguing. So the paparazzi was there all the time, too, taking pictures of her, and that made Joe and Rose nervous. And when they would go to events and say they would be dancing, her brothers would step right in and fill her dance card or their closest friends who knew what was going on with Rosemary and they would step in. but she would write letters and say how frustrated she was because she wanted to dance with other boys, not just her brothers and their friends. So, yeah, it was hard to keep tabs on her.

I was looking at some pictures of her in preparation for talking to you. She was beautiful. And you sort of look at this. This is a pretty lethal combination that we've got here as far as her parents are concerned. She is extremely beautiful. She's extremely young. She's very naive.

she doesn't have the mental acumen to be able to understand quite what people are like around her, very trusting, and she's pumped full of hormones. Like, this is, I can understand why her parents would be very worried about this. Right, right. And her siblings were worried too. They were brought up to be very protective of her, to accommodate her, to be with her frequently, which is one of the amazing things that I learned about the Kennedys. they raised their children to view each other as best friends, not just siblings, that no one could be closer to you and have your back like a sibling could.

And the older siblings looked out for the younger siblings. And so she was raised in that environment. And she viewed herself as an older sister too. So she wanted to be protective, but she didn't have the ability to do that. Those siblings, Jack and everyone, were brought up to be very protective. and to include rosemary and everything, which is the interesting part of that story, that even though she physically, she had a difficult time with sports, she could not figure out playing tennis very successfully or swimming she did take to or riding bikes or sailing. She couldn't tell the difference between right and left, etc. So they accommodated her and they always, you know, applauded her for whatever she could do on the tennis court, sailing. So she grew up with that confidence, which was really amazing. And of course, then we end up with Eunice, who starts the Special Olympics. And, you know, she helped change the world. And it's because

of Rosemary and growing up with her and accommodating her disabilities and helping her navigate the world as a full human being. So that's one of Rosemary's great legacies. I'll be back to talk More about Rosemary after this short break. Listening to you talk there is, it doesn't seem that she's, I don't want to say bad, I don't want to say bad, but like she doesn't seem like she's that bad. Like it's nothing that a family that I know or have

would be horrendously embarrassed about. She mixes up left and right, and she can't write properly on the page, and she just needs a bit of extra support. I'm not a Kennedy, you know, which is a whole other level, isn't it? Right. Maybe I've misread this,

but things started to change after a visit to Buckingham Palace, and I think it was 1938. That's right. Rose had agreed to have Rosemary and her younger sister, Kick, presented to the king and queen. And this was an annual thing that happened in Great Britain where important people, the wealthy, politically connected, et cetera, their young daughters would have like their debutante, you know, whatever that process is, you know, coming out to the public at the palace in front of of the king and queen. And Rosemary did do that. And in fact, that's sort of when the British public

in particular took note of her because she was so beautifully dressed and so quiet because they had drilled it into her not to say anything. But she was beautiful and gracious. And they worried that something would happen when she courtesied when she met the king and queen. She started to stumble, but she caught herself and it was beautiful. And the next day in the newspapers, they wrote, endlessly about Rosemary. And it was such an eye-opener for me to see her through their eyes because she was just beautiful. They wrote a little bit about kick, but not as much as they wrote about Rosemary. And in fact, Rose writes in her diary how upset she was about that. She wanted them to pay attention to kick more. Oh, I know. I don't know of any sisters that would do that. That's so lovely.

She sounds like such a sweet soul. Unfortunately, medical interventions were taken to curb Rosemary's behavior by her father. What was it that led up to that decision being made? As I mentioned before, she used to have these rageful moments where she would scream and yell and hit and throw things. And, you know, as an adult woman, basically, that was scary. And she hurt people. She hit family members and then caregivers. and when she lived in the convent in England,

the Mother Superior wrote to Rose and Joe how she constantly had to remind Rosemary not to be so fierce with the young children. She would read to the kindergartners in this convent school that she was at and she would lose her temper. So it was a problem. But then when they came back to the United States

in 1940, Rosemary returned because of the war. She was living in D.C. Washington, D.C. in a convent again. And here's this girl. She's 22, 23 years old. She doesn't want to live in a convent. So she sneaks out at night all the time. And she goes off and the nuns are out there looking for her at 2 o'clock in the morning. They find her. She's been drinking. And her clothes are all a shambles. She's got leaves in her hair. So they're worried about what was happening. And Joe and Rose, you can imagine, were incredibly worried. And Rose did look into a psychiatric hospital to have Rosemary sent there, but she decided against it. And then Joe went ahead and made the fateful decision to have her lobotomized.

That's a hell of a decision. Just hearing the word there, talk to me a bit about lobotomies at the time. Try and place it within a medical context because even the word is so scary. It is, and rightly so, but to our moderners, it's so bizarre. something out of a horror film, but what were they and why were people using them? It was a very new procedure to cut the fibers of the frontal lobes in the brain because it was believed that was the center of emotion and bad behavior, let's say. So these doctors developed the procedure in the 1930s.

It was actually a Spanish doctor who invented it, but then these two doctors in Washington, D.C., further developed it. And they promise people that if they performed this procedure on patients, they would become calm, they would be normal. So they're doing this procedure on people who are bipolar, intellectually disabled, schizophrenic. And actually, it became very popular to use on incarcerated women and prostitutes and things like that. So they'd only been doing the procedure for a couple of years. Rosemary was probably their, you know, 70th or 80th patient, and they had promised Joe that she would come out normal. And in fact, the procedure completely disabled her.

She couldn't walk or talk. She was incontinent when she came out of the procedure. And it was years before she could learn to talk again and walk. and she walked with a limp and one of her arms really she couldn't use very effectively and her speech was very limited. It was as barbaric as you would think it is, the process for the lobotomy. Because when you look into this medical history, it becomes quite apparent that they didn't know what they were doing.

They knew that they were going to go into the brain and either cut a bit out or do something to it, but they had no understanding of what that was actually going to do. do. This is horrendously experimental. And I was trying to understand why it became so popular. And maybe you can explain it a little bit more. But it seems like I suppose it probably would calm you down in the sense that it would render you disabled and severely hurt. Yes. Right. So back in those days, there were no patient protection laws that protected people from being experimented on. And, you know, these doctors and these researchers were so respected, people didn't question

it until their results turned out to be so terrible. They assured the public that most of their patients come out of the surgery, able to live completely normal, independent lives. But their research, which I looked at, showed the exact opposite, and that most of them had to be, have full-time care. 16% of them died. Oh, my God. And they didn't tell the public that.

They didn't tell anybody that. And one of the doctors ended up stopping lobotomies himself, like, you know, six years after he operated on Rosemary, because he realized it was just so bad. And so it continued for another 20 years or 30 years. And finally, it was outlawed. It is rarely done today. it is done on occasion for particular types of brain situations or conditions. And it's done with lasers. And here in the United States, there's a year-long process of petitioning, review boards,

guardians, and all this before it's actually done. And I interviewed a neurologist, a brain surgeon about the procedure. And he had done it himself a couple of times. And he said, it is so rarely done, rightfully so, but when it's done and it works, it changes that person's life. And he described two patients who had been institutionalized since they were like little kids, you know, nine, ten years old. And so when he operated on them, they were in their early 20s.

They came out of the surgery, and both of them were able to attend high school and college. And one of them went on to graduate school and became. a social worker and the other one was working in some other job. So he said in rare occasions, it really works, but clearly not all of them. So psychiatric hospitals, the majority of patients were actually men at the time back in the 30s and 40s, but 80% of the lobotomy patients were women. I didn't know that. It's crazy when you looked at the statistics. And because fathers, brothers, husbands had control over their wives' health care, they could order it to be done and the woman wouldn't have any say in it.

Could just have a wayward daughter or your wife has had one too many spending trips and you just take her to the hospital and I think she needs a lobotomy. Oh my God. I know. That's mind-blowing. That's wow. I might need a minute with that. So what was the procedure that they did on Rosemary?

Because I'm aware of what was called an ice pick lobotomy, which is where, well, you explain it, of what types of lobotomies are we talking about here. Right. The ice pick is actually like a high. ice pick that they put in the corner of the eye by the nose and tap in there and then put a scalpel in there and sever the fibers. That was not the procedure that was used on Rosemary. That procedure was developed maybe several years later, but they drilled holes in the sides of her face by her eyes and the skull by her temples. And that's how they went in on either side and

scraped the frontal lobes. And of course, they scraped too much. And she was completely disabled. You know, given the information they had, and it's hard to judge their decisions in one respect. However, once Rosemary came out of the hospital and out of this procedure, it was Thanksgiving right after that. And Rosemary was nowhere to be seen. The children didn't know what had happened to Her. Oh, my God. They didn't know. Rose used to write monthly letters to all the children and put everyone's name at the top of the letter. And it would be like a round robin letter giving everybody news on who was doing what and where and when. And that first letter after Thanksgiving, Rosemary's name was dropped. And Ted Kennedy, who was our senator here in Massachusetts, later in his memoir, said that he was nine years old when Rosemary had the lobotomy. And all he knew was that. that Rosemary had disappeared. No one told him where she was or what happened to her, but what he learned was that he better behave

or he might disappear too. Yeah, they never questioned their parents, never, ever, ever questioned their parents. It wasn't something that they did. They just grew up not questioning their parents' decisions. Did Rosemary's mother, Rose, did she know what was going to happen? Or was this completely, Joe just took Rosemary into the hospital

and agreed to it? So that isn't clear. it appears that Joe discussed it with Rose, and she discussed it with their daughter, Kick, who was then a reporter for a newspaper in Washington, D.C. And Rose asked her to check out these two doctors who are operating at a hospital in D.C. And she did, and she came back to her mother and wrote to her and said, Mother, what they're doing just isn't good. It's not for Rosemary.

It just isn't good. So Kick knew what the discussion was. Rose knew. Now, whether she knew that Joe went ahead. did it anyway or she agreed, I have no idea, no idea. But what is disturbing to me is that she did not see Rosemary for 20 years. What? As a mother, you know, how do you decide not to see your child for 20 years? Wow. Yeah. So, I mean, that most traumatic for Rosemary especially, but I'm just trying to think of what that must have been like as a Kennedy child is just suddenly your sister has

vanished. Her name has been removed from family letters. When did they find out what happened to their sister? So Kick and Jack and Joe clearly understood what had happened. And they knew that she had been placed at a hospital in Beacon, New York, the Craig Institute. So they were aware of, Kik must have figured it out pretty quickly. But they didn't question their parents' decision. So they knew where she was. But Jack did not see her until. until 1958, she had been moved from New York to an institution in Jefferson, Wisconsin, and he was out there on the campaign trail, and he went by and saw her, and he was shocked, and it changed him. And Eunice probably saw her about that time as well. And so they were so

deeply affected, especially Eunice, that once he became president, she started campaigning for better health research and support for families with people with disabilities. And so Jack signed some really important legislation before he was assassinated that expanded the National Institute of Health so that they had a women and children division. All health research was centered on men and their bodies and whatever tests worked for that, then it was applied to women and children. So it was recognized that we need to do different research, building hospitals and mental health facilities and clinics throughout the country. That was part of the legislation that Jack signed as well. And Eunice was pushing all of that stuff forward. And of course, she went on

to start the Special Olympics too. Is there any sense that Rosemary knew what was going to happen to her, or any awareness that she had been taken to a hospital or going to have an operation or anything at all? So I don't know that. I think she must have been told she was going to the hospital. Now, what she was told, I have no idea. But knowing her personality that she always wanted to please her father and do whatever he asked her to do.

So I would imagine he said to her, you need to do this, Rosemary. So she had no expectation that it would totally disable her. I do know that when Rose finally went to see her in 1962 for the first time, the nuns at the facility in Wisconsin gave interviews and said that when Rosemary saw Rose, she went into a rage and started hitting her. Oh, wow. She knew who her family was. She knew that she had been separated from them. where was her mother for 20 years?

I'm really struggling with that. I try to be compassionate and understanding in all these things, but that seems unbelievable. Why do you think that Rose, presumably as soon as this lobotomy had happened, it was very, very obvious the extent of the damage, and they just put her in institutions immediately afterwards, just straight from the hospital to an institution. Why do you think that Rose didn't see her daughter for 20 years?

I cannot figure that out. I cannot figure it out. Now, I know they wanted to keep it quiet and keep her out of the public eye because, as you mentioned earlier, Joe was determined that his sons were going to have political careers, that Joe, you know, Jr. was going to be president. Of course, he was killed during World War II, and that didn't happen. So his goal of getting his sons into politics was utmost importance to them. So keeping it quiet, what happened to Rosemary was vital to of the family's success, or so they thought. But Jack and Eunice thought differently once he was in office. They wanted the world to know. And that's when the world learned that Rosemary was in an institution. And the family gave rights to an article in the Saturday evening post about how

Rosemary was born differently. But they didn't talk about the lobotomy. That didn't come out until the 1980s. How did that come out? So it was historians that figured it out. And Rose had always been a little cryptic in the words that she chose when she discussed Rosemary after 1962. And then Doris Kearns Goodwin actually was one of the historians that pieced it all together and found out the entire truth. I imagine shame must have been a significant motivator. They prepared of just what they made that decision and look what it did to their daughter. That must have been incredibly painful. And people ask me when I give lectures, you know, why didn't Joe and Rose sue the doctors?

Well, first of all, that didn't happen back then. Nobody sued doctors. And that would have brought attention to what happened. Right. I don't want to say, did she get better? Because it was a lobotomy. You don't bounce back from that. But she spent, how old was she when the lobotomy happened?

She was 24 years old, 23 years old. Yeah. So she spent the vast majority of her life in institutions following. this at just 24. Did she improve? Did she? What happened to her? She did.

So the Kennedys had a tremendous wealth, obviously, so they could pay for the best care possible for her. And Rose and Joe both felt that Catholic institutions were the best. So she was moved from the facility in New York, which was a psychiatric hospital. It was not a rehab hospital. And they sent her to this St. Colettas in Jefferson, Wisconsin. And there she got physical therapy and daily exercise. The family paid for an Olympic-sized pool to be built on the property. She had her own little cottage and two nuns that lived with her and took care of her.

She learned to walk and talk a little bit. And she couldn't take care of herself, but they provided everything for her. And she had friends that were in the facility as well. And she enjoyed music. and, you know, she had a life and she did improve. And then once the family told the truth about her, they all started visiting her. And there were some great family photos of her siblings and then her nieces and nephews visiting with her. And the family really, really loved her and cared for her.

Her visits with Rose afterwards were fraught, always fraught with tension and anger. on the part of Rosemary and worry, anxiety, and a little guilt, I would imagine, on the part of Rose. You've met some of the people that cared for Rosebury, haven't you? What did they say about her? So they thought that she was lovely and they, you know, these nuns had such tremendous compassion. And there was also a little anger with Rose. They felt that she was not attentive enough. but that was their job and their passion was to take care of her and people like Rosemary. So they were, you know, they couldn't understand the way Rose was either, you know, why she behaved the way she did.

But they just accepted it and they did what they needed to do for Rosemary. So she has a very long life being supported and looked after, clearly some deep issues with a mother. But what do you think Rosemary's legacy is? within American history and within the Kennedy family? So her siblings loved her so much, which is kudos to Rose and Jo, that family unit and the way they were raised is so important. And her life and what happened to her

affected them so deeply that, as I mentioned before, we are a different world today. We now make sure that we accommodate people who have different abilities, who have capacities that are different than mainstream. So that is her legacy. And the work continues. But it was out of their love and their experience of Rosemary that Jack and Eunice and Gene and Ted Kennedy,

all of them that survived, were committed to during their lives and their careers. It's such a sad story, but there are flashes of hope in it in the resolve of some of her siblings. Not to atone, because I didn't have anything to atone for, but to try and fix the system that had led up to what happened to Rosemary. Right. And they've passed it down to their children and their grandchildren, and so her nieces and nephews and great nieces and nephews love her, and they carry on that legacy themselves in the work that they do,

which is pretty powerful. Where's she buried? Where's Rosemary buried? She's buried outside of Boston in a cemetery there with her parents. It's such a heart-wrenching story. it's going to take me a while to sit with it. But did this story affect you as an author going through it? It did.

And I was very angry with Rose and Joe from the start of the book. And then while I was working on the book, my son developed schizophrenia. And it was a nightmare and it was scary. And we did everything we could do to protect him, get him help and resources. And even in the early 2000s, it was such a hard thing to do and to get the help that he needed, that we needed to support him.

So I suddenly could appreciate the anguish and the frustration that Joe and Rose were facing almost 100 years before trying to take care of a child with disabilities when there were no resources whatsoever available to them, no answers for them. So I toned down my anger a little bit because I recognized the frustration that they experienced. Oh, Kate, you have been phenomenal to talk to today. I knew you would be, but you've been absolutely sensational. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? They can go to my website, katecliffordlarsen.com, you know, all one word. There's more information there. Thank you so much. You've been amazing to talk to. Well, thank you very much. This has been fun. Thank you so much to listening for the first installment in this mini-series on the Kennedy Women. We will have episodes on JFK's wife Jackie, his affairs, and we'll also be looking at the so-called Kennedy Curse.

If you like what you heard, please do drop us a review, I promise we do read them all. The senior producer on this podcast is Charlotte Long. The producer is Stuart Beckwith. This podcast includes music by Epidemic Sound.