The Kellys were Irish, Roman Catholic and Democrats Philadelphia society was English, Episcopalian and Republican.
The class distinctions were so immutable that the Kellys knew they would never be accepted into high society, no matter the extent of their wealth. The river was very like a social dividing line.īut membership in Philadelphia’s élite depended more on history than geography: one was “in society” only if a family could be traced back to colonial times, before the War of Independence. The most respected, established families-Protestants with “old money” like the Drexels, Biddles, Clarks, Cadwaladers and Wideners-lived across the river, in western suburbs along the ?so-?called Main Line, in eighteen communities (among them, Overbrook, Merion, Wynnewood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr, Rosemont and Radnor). On the banks of the Schuylkill River, East Falls has always been a quiet residential neighborhood, known for its easy commute to downtown Philadelphia. The infant was baptized Grace Patricia, in memory of an aunt who had died young, and (so Grace Kelly believed) “because I was Tuesday’s child”-who, according to Mother Goose, was “full of grace.” Bridget’s Roman Catholic Church, a three-minute, half-mile drive from their home in the upscale neighborhood of Philadelphia known as East Falls. On December 1, the Kellys took the baby to St. Kelly escorted his wife, Margaret Majer Kelly, to Hahnemann, where, after an unexceptional labor, she bore her third child and second daughter.
Although Hahnemann accepted emergency cases from every socioeconomic class, it catered, unofficially but famously, to the demands of the rich from the counties of eastern Pennsylvania.Įarly in the morning of Tuesday, November 12, 1929, John B.
Unusual luxuries characterized the private rooms: a telephone and radio were installed at every bedside nurses could be summoned and addressed by call-buttons and two-way speakers and high-speed elevators whisked visitors to the wards. In the late 1920s, the Hahnemann Medical College, at the corner of Broad and Vine Streets in Philadelphia, was one of the largest private hospitals in the United States. I never really felt pretty, bright or socially adept.-Grace
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