Kiki Preston
Toronto Daily Star, 16 September 1924
Alice "Kiki" Preston (1898-1946) endured upheavals when very young: her father, mentioned above, declared bankruptcy in 1902 and died of acute kidney problems in 1904.
She married Horace Allen in 1919; he became an executive in a plastics corporation. She filed for divorce in November 1924, on the grounds of desertion. In 1925, she married Gerry Preston, an investment banker, and they eventually moved to Kenya, becoming part of a group of expatriate aristocrats known as the Happy Valley Set. She became addicted to drugs, and had an affair with Prince George, the Duke of Kent, who became addicted as well.
Her life ended tragically: her husband died in 1934 and, after enduring the deaths of many of her friends and relatives, she jumped out of a window of her fifth-floor apartment in New York in 1946.
Created June 6, 2025.