Kiki Preston

Kiki Preston, née Alice Gwynne (1898 - December 23, 1946) was an American socialite, a member of the Happy Valley set, and the alleged mother of a child born out of wedlock with Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George V. Known for her drug addiction, which earned her the soubriquet "the girl with the silver syringe", she was a fixture of the Paris and New York high social circles, and a relation to the powerful Vanderbilt and Whitney families. Her life was marred by several tragic losses and her own mental problems, which eventually led to her suicide at 48.

Biography

Early life

Alice "Kiki" Gwynne, later more commonly known as Kiki Preston, was born in 1898, in Hempstead, Nassau County, Long Island, New York, the daughter of Edward Erskine Gwynne, Sr. (1869 – 10 May 1904) and his wife, the former Helen Steele (? – 4 January 1958). Edward Gwynne was the nephew of tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife, socialite Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt, making him a distant relation of the prominent and wealthy Whitney family. Her mother, Helen, was a great-granddaughter of Justice Samuel Chase, one of the signatories of the United States Declaration of Independence, as well as a granddaughter of Joshua Barney, commodore of the United States Navy during the American Revolutionary War. She was descended from Peter Jacquette, the second Dutch governor of Delaware.