Kenealy was born in
Portslade in 1859. She was the second of the eleven children of Elizabeth and
Edward Kenealy. Her father became a notorious
Queen's Counsel barrister after his unusual behaviour in the
Tichborne Case. She became a doctor at the
London School of Medicine for Women after a home education. Kenealy started to practise medicine in 1888 but diphtheria obliged her to give up medicine in 1894. In 1893 she wrote
Dr Janet of Harley Street which was successful. Its lead character is a female physician who adopts a younger woman who is escaping from an unhappy marriage. One of the Syfret tales was a short Gothic story called "A Beautiful Vampire".1895 saw her letter to the
British Medical Journal published. In the letter she reported that she had refused treatment to a pregnant woman with
syphilis after seeing that she already had a child with
congenital syphilis. Kenealy, like other doctors, found the effects of syphilis troubling. This was the first account of a woman doctor advising on the treatment of a sexually transmitted disease. Kenealy was a
eugenicist and she asks BMJ readers to advise on whether failing to assist the "birth of such a child as laid its dull misshapen head against my knee that morning" was a good course of action. Her question drew mixed responses and some medical men attacked her approach. Her book
Feminism and Sex Extinction (1920) focused on what she perceived as the harmful effects of the women's rights movement. Kenealy was intrigued by the effect that the Earth's rotation might have on evolution. Her 1934 book explained "the phenomenon of sex: its origin and development and its significance in the evolutionary process." She believed that people from the northern hemisphere were more male. Moreover, she wrote that every part of the cosmos had male and female aspects; this included people who had more maleness on the right side of their bodies. Men were also criticised by Kenealy for spending too much time dancing. She considered that they should spend more time thinking about marriage. This view was parodied in the magazine
Punch. Kenealy was an
anti-vivisectionist. ==Death and legacy==