Alice "Kiki" Preston (née Gwynne, formerly Allen; 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.
Her drug addiction earned her the nickname "the girl with the silver syringe", Preston was a fixture of high social circles in Paris and New York City, and a relative of the prominent Vanderbilt and Whitney families. Preston's life was marred by several tragic losses and her own mental problems, which eventually led to her suicide at age 48.
Biography
Early life
Preston was born in Hempstead, New York, the daughter of Edward Erskine Gwynne, Sr. (1869 – 10 May 1904) and his wife Helen Steele (d. January 4, 1958). Preston's mother 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. Preston's father was the nephew of tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt II and his wife, socialite Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt, making him a distant relation of the wealthy Whitney family.
Preston's parents were married in New York City on May 25, 1896. The marriage was a rocky one, and they were separated at some point before reconciling. Besides Kiki, they also had two sons, one being Edward Erskine Gwynne, Jr. (1899 – 5 May 1948), known as Erskine Gwynne, who later became a writer, the publisher of the magazine Boulevardier, and a columnist for the European edition of the New York Herald Tribune. Their other son, Edward C. Gwynne, joined the United States Army Air Corps in his early youth and was killed when his aircraft was shot down. Between 1898 and 1904, Preston and her family resided at different times in Paris, Nassau County, and Park Hill in New York.
Family bankruptcy
A socialite without regular employment, Preston's father was described as a man who "had extravagant tastes, expended money lavishly and was without business employment", a fact which led his family to legal troubles. In 1899, while in Paris, Gwynne obtained a loan worth several thousand dollars from a jeweler. In February 1901, Gwynne transferred his interest in his property to his mother, Louise Gwynne. In the fall of 1901, the Paris money lender filed suit against Gwynne, for an unpaid loan of nearly $50,000 for diamonds. Shortly after his mother's death, in June 1902, Edward Gwynne filed a petition in bankruptcy, with liabilities of over $56,000 and assets of $57. Two years later, on May 10, 1904, Preston's father died of acute kidney problems at the age of 35, on the same day the case of the suit was to be brought up in the court. Preston was five years old at the time.
After Louise Gwynne's death, the property that had been conveyed to her by her son was held in trust for Preston and her siblings. However, in February 1908, the Paris money lender revived his legal attack against the Gwynnes, demanding their property on the unpaid loan of $40,000. In March, following a long discussion, the suit against the Gwynnes was dismissed. The judge ruled that the realty transfer performed by Edward to his mother was not made with the intent to defraud creditors. However, he also spoke rather harshly of Preston's father, referring to him as a man who "may have had large expectancies, but seems to have been a drain upon his mother's financial resources".
Following her father's death, Preston was mostly raised in Paris, together with her brothers, although the family occasionally returned to their New York residence for brief periods of time. Preston was also educated in England. The money lender continued with a series of court appeals between 1910 and 1912, although the Gwynne family managed to emerge victorious from the lengthy legal battle.
According to writers Lynn Kear and John Rossman, Preston also worked as a cabaret performer in her youth.