CRAIG BROWN: Jackie’s bloody link to a royal assassination

This Friday marks the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

As they set off for Dallas that morning, President Kennedy said to his wife Jackie: ‘You know, we’re heading into nut country today.’

Hundreds of books have been written about what happened next. And – given the great tangled mass of contradictory conspiracy theories – even more have been written about what never happened.

As they were driving past the cheering crowds, the Governor’s wife said to the President: ‘You certainly can’t say that the people of Dallas haven’t given you a nice welcome’. Kennedy replied: ‘No, you certainly can’t.’ They were to be his last words. Jackie was waving at the crowds on her side of the car as she heard the Governor shriek: ‘Oh, no, no, no.’

She looked round as the next shot was fired.

The author William Manchester describes what happened next: ‘Jacqueline Kennedy has seen a serrated piece of his skull – flesh-colored, not white – detach itself. At first there is no blood. And then, in the very next instant, there is nothing but blood spattering her…

‘Gobs of blood as thick as a man’s hand are soaking the floor of the back seat, the President’s clothes are steeped in it, the roses are drenched, Kennedy’s body is lurching soundlessly toward his wife… one fragment, larger than the rest, rises over the President’s falling shoulders and seems to hang there and then drift towards the rear, and Jackie springs up on her stained knees, facing toward the sidewalk, crying out, “My God, what are they doing? My God, they’ve killed Jack, they’ve killed my husband, Jack! Jack!”.

‘She cries and sprawls on the sloping back of the car, defeated, tumbling down toward the street.’

The assassination of US President John F Kennedy was one of the most seismic events of the 20th century

Two hours after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy was obliged to attend the swearing-in of his successor, Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One

What was Jackie Kennedy doing, reaching out over the boot of the car? In the frenzy, she was trying to recover the piece of her husband’s shattered skull that had landed there.

It was an irrational act, given that she thought he was already dead, though wholly understandable for someone in a state of shock.

That all happened 61 years ago. Roughly 60 years before that, another wife had reacted in an eerily similar way to the assassination of her husband.

Queen Victoria’s grandchild, Princess Ella of Hesse, was the wife of the cold and unpopular Grand Duke Serge, who had, until recently, been Governor General of Moscow.

The following month, a terrorist’s bomb exploded in the Grand Duke’s carriage, and he was blown to pieces. ‘The head and everything else were broken and scattered over the snow,’ ran a police report. My wife, Frances Welch, describes this gruesome incident vividly in her new book, The Lives And Deaths Of The Princesses Of Hesse.

‘One of Serge’s booted feet, fingers and parts of his skull had been gathered up… His heart was found on a nearby roof. Ella set about frantically gathering up the remaining body parts and taking the rings from the severed fingers.’

Very few women in history have witnessed their husband’s assassination, so it is remarkable that Princess Ella’s reaction was almost exactly the same as Jackie Kennedy’s, six decades later.

Grand Duke Serge was assassinated in 1905 when terrorists placed an explosive device in his horse-drawn carriage

‘Everything was blown to pieces’ recalled author Frances Welch of the assassination in her new book, The Lives And Deaths Of The Princesses Of Hesse

Very few women in history have witnessed their husband’s assassination, so it is remarkable that Princess Ella’s reaction was almost exactly the same as Jackie Kennedy’s

Serge had been a stickler for order and tidiness. ‘In her deranged state, Ella worried about upsetting her dead husband, “Hurry, hurry. Serge hates blood and mess”.’

Upon Ella’s return home, her niece Maria was horrified by her appearance. ‘On her right arm the sleeve of her blue dress was stained with blood. There was blood on her hand, too, and under the nails of her fingers, in which she gripped tightly the medals that my uncle always wore on a chain at his neck.’

Two hours after her husband’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy was obliged to attend the swearing-in of his successor, Lyndon Johnson on Air Force One.

On that same plane her husband’s corpse lay in its coffin. Mrs Johnson recalled Jackie’s pink Chanel dress being ‘stained with blood’, adding: ‘One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked – that immaculate woman – it was caked with blood, her husband’s blood.’

Kennedy aides suggested she change out of the blood-spattered suit for the swearing-in, but she refused. ‘I want them to see what they have done to Jack,’ she said.