Kiki Preston: The Girl With the Silver Syringe

Author:
Rupert Taylor
Updated:
Apr 1, 2024 9:32 PM EDT

The opium poppy; the source that Kiki Preston turned to for comfort.
Public domain

A Troubled Life

The phrase femme fatale could have been created to describe Kiki Preston. Less refined descriptions might be appropriate for a debauched drug addict and home wrecker.

Connected to the Rich and Powerful

Through her father, Edward Erskine Gwynne, Sr., she had bloodlines connected to Cornelius Vanderbilt II. Her mother, Helen Steele, brought genes from Justice Samuel Chase, a signatory of the United States Declaration of Independence.

So, Alice “Kiki” Gwynne was born in 1898 into what amounted to American royalty. But, privilege does not necessarily equate to happiness. The marriage of Alice's parents was a rocky one marked by separation, reconciliation, and money troubles.

Edward Gwynne was described as a man with extravagant tastes but without the income to pay for them. This led him into the company of a Parisian jeweller who was happy to advance funds. But, Gwynne wasn't able to repay the loan; some accounts suggest he never intended to repay it.

Bankruptcy followed in 1902, with Gwynne declaring assets of $57 set against liabilities of $56,000. He died two years later at the age of 35, when Alice was just five.

Edward Gwynne had taken the precaution of transferring property he owned into the hands of his mother. That, and family money, ensured that Alice Gwynne was raised as a rich American heiress ought to be raised; education in Paris and England with occasional shopping trips to New York.

Kiki Tries Domesticity

In 1919, Kiki married Horace R. Bigelow Allen, described as an industrialist involved in plastics. They lived in Paris and, conventionally, Kiki produced a daughter, Alice, and a son, Ethan.

But, something in Kiki demanded excitement that raising two children wasn't providing. This is when she met Alice de Janzé and Josslyn Hay. She was known as Countess de Janzé and he the 22nd Earl or Erroll, Lord Kilmarnock.

De Janzé was an American heiress with a fondness for drugs and bed hopping. Josslyn was a British aristocrat described as “an absolute cad.”

Shortly after meeting Hay and de Janzé, Kiki ditched her husband and married a banker named Jerome “Jerry” Preston. Together, they joined these two dodgy characters in what became known as The Happy Valley Set.

The Happy Valley Set

In the 1920s, some aristocratic wastrels started to settle in the newly formed British colony of Kenya. Some of them gathered in an area near the Aberdare Mountains that became known as Happy Valley because of the way its denizens conducted their lives. On the surface, they ran farms but their major preoccupation was holding parties.

There were barons, earls, a couple of marchionesses, and a sprinkling of untitled spongers and hangers-on.

Many were members of distinguished households who were paid to stay away from Britain so their disreputable antics didn't appear in newspapers and besmirch the family names.

Some of the Happy Valley Set. From left to right Raymond de Trafford, Frédéric de Janzé, Alice de Janzé, and The 3rd Baron Delamere.
Public domain

As the booze and drug consumption rose, the inhibitions fell. Time for some parlour games.

Kiki and the Prince

The third son of Britain's King George V, and fifth in line for the throne, Prince George was a party animal. Inevitably, he turned up in Happy Valley where Kiki was ready to show him what fun cocaine and heroin could be.

The sex was also huge fun, sometimes it is said, involving three-way action in which Kiki was the only female; Prince George being bisexual.

The upshot of all the frolicking was a pregnancy, but the details get a bit muddied up.

It's very likely that royal sperm fertilized a non-royal egg and the owner of the egg was said to be Kiki. However, smart money said the mother-to-be was Violet Evans, daughter of a Canadian coal magnate.

However, the unfounded rumour that Kiki and George had a secret love child spread rapidly and damaged the image of high moral standards, also unfounded, the royal family liked to portray.

A child was born and, eventually, put up for adoption. Scandal was avoided.

Word got back to the royal family that Prince George was having way too much fun with some people of dubious repute. By the late 1920s, he was ordered to sever his relationship with Kiki Preston and to give up the nasty chemicals he was putting into his body.

Prince George, Duke of Kent.
Public domain

By the early 1930s, Kiki's persistent drug use was beginning to take its toll. It was also hitting her circle of friends, who started to die. Still in her mid-30s, Kiki's cousin and a brother died, then it was the turn of her husband and a brother-in-law.

Then, in 1941, Josslyn Hay, earl and lord, was found unresponsive with a bullet entry wound behind his left ear. The man who held the unofficial title of king of Happy Valley was dead and that meant the party was over. A darkness settled on the drug-addled heiress.

She moved to New York and lived in the Stanhope Hotel. Depressed and in poor health she jumped from her fifth-floor apartment on the night of December 23, 1946. She was 48 years old.

Bonus Factoids

Prince George's illegitimate child was adopted by Katherine Canfield and her husband Cass; he was an American publishing executive. They named the boy Michael. He worked as a diplomat and in publishing and for five years was married to Caroline Lee Bouvier, Jacqueline Kennedy's sister.
Prince George continued his scandalous ways including arrests for cross-dressing in public that were hushed up. He died in a plane crash in August 1942 many of the details of which are still secret.