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The lost Kennedy: the tragic life of JFK’s sister Rosemary
historyextra ^

Posted on 08/03/2021 5:01:40 AM PDT by MarvinStinson

[JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, had his own daughter Rosemary Kennedy, lobotomized in 1941 when she was 23 years old.

She was a vegetable for the rest of her life.

Good work, Dad.]

Rosemary Kennedy in 1938, ready to be presented at Buckingham Palace.

In November 1941, Joseph Kennedy (without consulting his wife) authorised two surgeons, Dr Walter Jackson Freeman and Dr James W Watts, to perform a lobotomy on Rosemary. She was just 23 years old.

Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy

The lobotomy – a new ‘psycho-surgical’ operation that involved separation or removal of pathways between lobes of the brain – was believed to be a cure for a multitude of psychological delinquencies such as alcoholism and ‘nymphomania’ [the term given to uncontrollable and excessive sexual desire]. Up to 5,000 lobotomies a year were performed in the United States during the 1940s, the majority on young women. In total, Dr Freeman was singlehandedly responsible for almost 3,000 of these procedures. An article in the Saturday Evening Post in May 1941 praised Freeman’s “pioneering” work and offered hope that the surgery could make patients who were “problems to their families and nuisances to themselves” into “useful members of society”.

Drilling holes into Rosemary’s skull, Dr Freeman inserted a knife and began cutting away the frontal lobes of her brain. Strapped tightly to the table, she was awake and terrified through the procedure. Suddenly, she fell silent and lapsed into unconsciousness.

What happened to Rosemary Kennedy?

The operation had been a catastrophic failure. Rosemary could no longer walk or talk. Even after years of therapy, she could utter no more than a few words and never fully recovered the use of her limbs. Her autonomy, such as it had been, was effectively over. She was to live for the next 64 years hidden away in institutions, needing full-time care.

Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff records that doctors had ordered Rosemary Kennedy “to have no visitors, because they could disrupt and confuse her”. It’s possible that Joseph also directed there to be no visitors, aiming to avoid the charge by political rivals that there was ‘lunacy’ in the family. Whatever the reasons, writes Koehler-Pentacoff, “Rosemary received no visitors during the bleakest years of her life”.

She occasionally showed tiny signs of progress, but these would vanish again, and for the last years of her life she was huddled in a wheelchair, unrecognisable as the vibrant, beautiful woman who had dazzled the British press in the 1930s. She died in 2005, at the age of 86.


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: kennedy; kennedys; lobotomy
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To: ryderann

Heard the same. There was nothing wrong with her other than she was an alley cat like her father and brothers. She was a political liability.


21 posted on 08/03/2021 5:53:39 AM PDT by paddles ("The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." Tacitus)
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To: CatOwner

All women should look up the word hysteria and what it meant for women in the 1800s and early 1900s. No doubt the word was used on Rose.

We have it good compared to what our ancestors went through. I have an antiflexed uterus. Exams were painful..but then i looked at what they used to do with women like me..and i tried to remember that when on the exam table.


22 posted on 08/03/2021 5:54:34 AM PDT by RummyChick (To President Trump: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3923111/posts)
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To: MarvinStinson

https://allthatsinteresting.com/rosemary-kennedy-lobotomy


23 posted on 08/03/2021 5:56:41 AM PDT by knarf (I say things that are true, I have no proof, but they're true)
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To: metmom

“What does it profit a man” comes to mind.”


24 posted on 08/03/2021 5:57:57 AM PDT by FES0844
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To: MarvinStinson
Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but the story I read years ago was:

The institution she was in was located in Michigan. The Kennedy’s then purchase a building in the area so visits to here could be deducted on their taxes as a business expense.

Yeah, the Kennedy’s were/are complete scum.

25 posted on 08/03/2021 6:00:09 AM PDT by Michael.SF. (Never do anything illegal, when you are doing something illegal. )
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To: The_Media_never_lie

“Even though JK had lots of faults and made the Kennedy fortune off of alcohol, he was patriotic and pro-American, unlike modern day democrats who hate America first.”

He was a dunce of a diplomat who sided with Neville Chamberlain and did everything imaginable for FDR to want Kennedy to just stay in the Embassy, see no one, particularly the press and NOT give his views on foreign policy to anyone. From FDR’s view the only thing worse would have been to have Kennedy running around Washington D.C. and making domestic matters worse. Which is why FDR sent him to GB, to get him out of the country.


26 posted on 08/03/2021 6:05:45 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: RummyChick

The other bizzare thing Drs believed was the wandering womb theory. I dont know if it had been thrown out in the 40s but it was still believed in the 1930s.

Your womb would wander through your body causing all kinds of problems..physical and mental.

Joe could have believed Rose problem was that her womb wandered to her brain..sort of..


27 posted on 08/03/2021 6:11:55 AM PDT by RummyChick (To President Trump: https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3923111/posts)
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To: MarvinStinson

Kennedys - Fighting a War on Women for a Century


28 posted on 08/03/2021 6:13:24 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: MarvinStinson

I have a natural aversion to being enamored about ANY celebrities, no matter how they came by that status, so frankly Scarlet I really don’t give a dam about the Kennedy’s, any of them; or the Bushes, or the Clintons, or the Cuomos, or any “movie stars”, ect., ect., ect.


29 posted on 08/03/2021 6:15:38 AM PDT by Wuli
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To: MarvinStinson

Are Biden supporters all lobotomy’s fruit?


30 posted on 08/03/2021 6:30:39 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: RummyChick

Our current Joe’s brain has wandered from his body.


31 posted on 08/03/2021 6:32:47 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going...)
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To: Elsie

Excellent question.


32 posted on 08/03/2021 6:33:54 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
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To: MissEdie
What happened to Rosemary spurred the development of the Special Olympics.

Parental guilt?

33 posted on 08/03/2021 6:36:55 AM PDT by 1Old Pro (Let's make crime illegal again!)
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To: The_Media_never_lie
for her dad to authorize this drastic procedure

What an idiotic thing to say. That entire mongrelized, perverted family was nuts. And he was the source.

34 posted on 08/03/2021 6:39:53 AM PDT by LouAvul (Lying headlines from fake news articles written by pimps masquerading as journalists.)
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To: MarvinStinson
In November 1941, Joseph Kennedy (without consulting his wife)

It wasn’t until after Joe suffered a massive stroke that Rose went to go see her daughter again. In a panicked rage, Rosemary attacked her mother, unable to express herself any other way.

Truly heartbreaking for mother and daughter. The old man was truly evil.

35 posted on 08/03/2021 6:42:25 AM PDT by Bon of Babble (Rigged Elections have Consequences)
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To: LouAvul

The procedure was touted as a miracle cure.


36 posted on 08/03/2021 6:42:57 AM PDT by The_Media_never_lie (A world in which dogs write poetry is more believable than the world as seen through the Media)
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To: .44 Special
They were trash. With money. That latter criterion made them celebrities. That's the way Americans think, viz. trash who are rich, famous, powerful ....... become idols.

Just look at sports figures.

37 posted on 08/03/2021 6:43:55 AM PDT by LouAvul (Lying headlines from fake news articles written by pimps masquerading as journalists.)
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To: Chauncey Gardiner

Nailed it


38 posted on 08/03/2021 6:44:38 AM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s.....you weren't really there..)
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To: jerod

They behaved....just like their father !
Ask any attractive female thay encountered !


39 posted on 08/03/2021 6:45:41 AM PDT by Reily
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To: The_Media_never_lie
Your post lauding his patriotism is still idiotic. He was scum. And his offspring were scum.

And who cares how the procedure was perceived back then? Abortion is considered viable and beneficial today. Are you one of its supporters as well?

40 posted on 08/03/2021 6:48:39 AM PDT by LouAvul (Lying headlines from fake news articles written by pimps masquerading as journalists.)
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