Richard Rogers Peabody (23 January 189226 April 1936) was an American psychotherapist who specialized in alcoholism.
Peabody grew up as a member of the upper class in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended Groton, where his grandfather was headmaster, and later enrolled at Harvard as had many of his family before him. He married Polly Jacob, the daughter of another blue-blooded Boston family, with whom he had two children. He served as a captain during World War I in the American Expeditionary Force.
Upon returning from World War I he became an alcoholic. His lost his inheritance because of his drinking and his wife to an affair. After their divorce, he sought help through the Emmanuel Movement and later wrote a book, The Common Sense of Drinking, in which he described a secularized treatment methodology. He was the first authority to proclaim that there was no cure for alcoholism. His book became a best seller and was a major influence on Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson. He died at age 44.
Early life
Born on 23 Jan 1892 to Jacob Crowninshield Rogers Peabody and Florence Dumaresq Wheatland, his family was among the upper-class of Boston society. By the early 20th century a case could be made that the Peabodies had supplanted the Cabots and the Lodges as the most distinguished name in the region.
As a youth, Peabody attended Groton, a small and elite prep school that his uncle, the Reverend Endicott Peabody, founded. He then attended Harvard, although he did not graduate, perhaps due to his growing fondness for alcohol. His great-great-grandfather was Salem shipowner and privateer Joseph Peabody who made a fortune importing pepper from Sumatra as well as opium from Eastern-Asia and was one of the wealthiest men in the United States at the time of his death in 1844. Another of his ancestors was Massachusetts Bay Colony Governor John Endecott, who ordered the hanging of non-conformist Quakers, but who none-the-less was a friend of Roger Williams.
Marriage
In 1915, with his uncle Reverend Endicott Peabody officiating, he married his long-time girlfriend, 24-year-old Mary "Polly" Jacob. Polly was a debutante who at age 19 had received a patent for the first modern brassiere. They lived in a stone cottage on Quaker Ridge and Dick commuted to a job at Johns-Manville in Manhattan. After a year of marriage, Polly became pregnant, and because the icy steps of the stone cottage were unsafe, they moved to an apartment on Fifty-third Street in New York.
Polly found Dick's temperament to be far from her own. When they had a son, William Jacob, on February 4, 1916. Dick was at first excited to become a father, but soon tired of the demanding infant that took up so much of his wife's time and energy. Polly found "Dick was not the most indulgent of parents and like his father before him, he forbade the gurgles and cries of infancy; when they occurred he walked out, and often walked back unsteadily."
Polly concluded that Dick was a well-educated but undirected man and a reluctant father. Less than a year later Dick Peabody enlisted at the Mexican border where he enlisted in Battery A, Boston's "crack militia," which was charged with stopping Pancho Villa's cross-border raids. Polly and Billy moved in with Dick's parents at their North Shore estate where they summered. Less than a year after he returned home, he enlisted to fight in World War I. Their second child, a daughter, Poleen Wheatland ("Polly"), was born on August 12, 1917, but Dick was already in Officers Training Camp at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the artillery.
Dick became a captain in the United States Army's 15th Field Artillery, 2nd Division, American Expeditionary Force. Polly was largely cared for by his parents, but found, "My father-in-law was a stickler for polish, both of manners and minerals." Her mother-in-law wore "nun-like dresses and in bed or out wore starched cuffs as sever as piping." Her husband meanwhile was enjoying life at the front as a bachelor.
When the war ended, Richard remained in Paris for a while, enjoying the adulation of the French. When he returned to the United States, he started a shipping business of his own using Polly's inheritance for capital. In April they moved back to the stone cottage at Quaker Ridge. Dick's shipping business went under. Polly and Billy moved in with Dick's parents at their North Shore estate where they summered.