Richard Kennedy (1848-1921) was working in a box factory in Amesbury, Massachusetts, in 1867 and boarding at the home of Mary B. Webster when he met fellow boarder, Mary Baker Eddy. After Kennedy and Eddy left the Webster residence, she instructed him in Christian Science in 1868. In 1870, while they were both living in Lynn, Massachusetts, Kennedy entered into a partnership with Eddy in conducting a healing practice. They gradually became estranged and the partnership ended in 1872. Kennedy continued on as a "magnetic healer," and Eddy came to believe that he was using the powers of his human mind as a "mental malpractitioner" with the intent to do her and others harm. Some biographers believe that he was likely behind the "conspiracy to murder case" in 1878, in which Eddy's husband and Edward Arens were falsely accused of conspiring to murder another estranged student of Eddy, Daniel Spofford. Kennedy was eventually committed to a mental institution in Vermont in 1918 and died there three years later.

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