Kathleen Cavendish

Short Biography

When President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joseph Kennedy ambassador to the United Kingdom, his daughter Kathleen (nicknamed "Kick" by her family) spent a year and a half living in London. She was educated in London at Queen's College.Kennedy worked at Cissy Patterson's newspaper, the Washington Times-Herald in 1940, writing a column titled, "Did you happen to see . . . ?". In 1943, she returned to England to work in a centre for servicemen set up by the Red Cross. Despite the opposition of her Catholic mother, Kennedy married William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, an Anglican and the eldest son and heir-apparent of the 10th Duke of Devonshire, on May 6, 1944. Her eldest brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. was the only member of the Kennedy family to attend the ceremony. Four months after their marriage, her husband was killed in action while serving in World War II. Her husband's younger brother Lord Andrew Cavendish, married to Deborah Mitford of the famous Mitford sisters, became the heir-apparent to the dukedom.Popular on the London social circuit and admired by many for her high spirits, Cavendish eventually became romantically involved with Peter Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 8th Earl Fitzwilliam. The couple planned to wed after Fitzwilliam's divorce; however, while on a trip to the south of France, Fitzwilliam and Cavendish were killed as the result of an airplane crash in Saint-Bauzile, Ardèche, France.Only Cavendish's father represented the Kennedy-Cavendish family at her funeral. Her mother did not attend and, allegedly, discouraged Cavendish's siblings from attending as well.Kathleen Cavendish is buried in the Cavendish family plot at Saint Peter's Church in Edensor, England, near Chatsworth in Derbyshire. The gymnasium at Manhattanville College is named in her honor.