Every time the name Kennedy is uttered amongst a group of people the conversation will usually lead onto a discussion about the political inauguration of Jack, the assassination of Bobby, the drunken disasters of Ted and the shame Jackie brought on the family name when she wanted out of the Camelot dynasty. The entire world knows who the Kennedy’s are and what they have become in American political history. Well, at least the Kennedy history that people were allowed to hear and speculate about.
Born on the 13th September 1918 she was the first daughter for Joe and Rose Kennedy and their third child. Rosemary wasn’t like her other seven siblings; she was shy and passive and spent as much time on her own while growing up. Her reaction to public outings that the family took was often to cower in the corner and hide behind her big brother Jack (JFK).
Anthony Summers, a non-fiction writer based in Ireland has researched the Kennedy family intensively for his two non fiction works “The Kennedy Conspiracy” and “Not in Your Life Time”, has spoken to the Express about the faux pas that was Rosemary Kennedy’s “mental instability” within the realms of the American royal family.
“Rosemary’s IQ”, Summers says, “was somewhere in the range of 80-85, which is by no means fantastic, but it doesn’t suggest anything remotely mind altering. However, with the rest of siblings reaching IQ’s of somewhere between 120 and 130, she had no way to compete with them. Therefore Joe had no problem bringing it down to a certain mark, where it reached mild retardation.”
In “The Kennedy Conspiracy” Summers suggests that once Jack was no longer around to deal with Rosemary‘s nervous mood swings would have to take things into his own hands.
“It was clear that Rosemary had a nervous disposition, was depressed and had concerns about the way in which she was perceived by others. Would I call that a mental health issue which warranted such a drastic solution? Most certainly not” was the response Summers gave when asked about how he felt about Rosemary’s treatment.
Joe Kennedy started speaking to doctors about his daughter when she was in her early twenties and spent the majority of her time hidden away from the world. Neuro-surgeon Walter Freeman was called upon to assess the girl and make a decision that would lead to the ruination of a young life. He along with his assistant James Watts came to the conclusion if 1941 that a pre frontal lobotomy would be the best thing for the young daughter of the progressive Kennedy.
The following excerpt is a brief account from James Watts’ medical notes on what procedure they undertook with Rosemary:
We went through the top of the head, I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. "We put an instrument inside," he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.
It was the 61st surgery for both men and was considered a success by them both. However Summers says the overall result of the young mind that was left in disarray is considered the fist of the Kennedy tragedies.
Left in a darkened room during her post op care Rosemary Kennedy was not the girl she had been prior to the invasive operation. She now had no attention span, rarely converse with others, even her beloved Bobby and Jack found it difficult to keep her distracted long enough for nurses to check on her stitches in the days that followed the surgery.
In ’47 Rose was moved to St. Colleta School for Exceptional Children where she would live out the rest of life and would pass away quietly on the 7th of January 2005. She stared vacantly while being told the sudden deaths of her siblings, the timely passing of her parents and the tragedy that ended her nephew’s life. She, like them was no longer on this earth.
“Mental health was the taboo of 1940’s America and that would not help anyone make their way to Camelot. Joe Kennedy was advised wrongly during the consultations about his daughter’s health, unfortunately she is a statistic of someone “lost” while neuro- surgery was still massively experimental.
Eunice Kennedy, Rosemary’s younger sister suffered greatly from losing her older sister and spent much of her adult life dedicated to the sufferers of mental health, so much so that she founded the Special Olympics which was all “for Rosie” she told Summers during an interview in the early 90s.
The Express did attempt to make contact with Eunice Kennedy but the response was a generic tone explaining that Ms Kennedy had multiple commitments at this moment in time but would ask that any information written about her sister’s medical history be treated with the privacy and dignity she deserved. She never appreciated the lime light before or after her illness in 1940.
The irony of that response is that although she didn’t enjoy the lime light like the rest of her family she ended up in the darkness, alone.
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