Assassination Trivia

[Steve Whitlock]

(01-18-2021 01:21 PM)Steve Wrote:  

(01-18-2021 06:48 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  The only doctor I can think of is Dr. George Brainard Todd, but Dr. Todd said he never made it inside the box. I am one of those folks who has questioned Clara Harris' recollections. Can she really be totally trusted? For example, she said Booth made a trial run (actually looking in the door of the box) about an hour before the assassination. No one else other than Clara made this assertation. Given all the eyewitness accounts in Good's book, I would think others would have also seen this alleged trial run if it really occurred. So I also wonder if she might have been confused about the naval surgeon. Just my opinion.

I'm not saying there aren't problems with Clara's recollections, especially the ones she made years later. In the affidavit above, made a few days later, she says the soldier was wearing a Veterans Reserve Corp uniform - Bedee was in the 12th New Hampshire, not in the VRC. Maj. Rathbone called Lt. Crawford, who he ordered to guard the box, Col Crawford in his affidavit. So Clara possibly could've been mistaken about the Naval Surgeon uniform as well. It's just that even with the differing problems with Bedee and Clara Harris' accounts, they both seem to describe this other doctor besides Taft climbing up into the box.

Besides Dr. Todd, a Dr. Samuel A. Sabin also described being there in a letter to his wife written the following day:

https://archive.org/details/ninthnewyork...0/mode/2up

The way Dr. Sabin describes the wound to his wife sure makes it sound like he was treating Lincoln in the box. But he doesn't actually say he was admitted into the box - just that he saw the wound, after he ran to the box, and concluded there was no hope for the President. But maybe I'm being a little to lawyerly parsing Sabin's exact words to his wife.

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Just to clarify my above comment, Dr. Sabin describes running to the box, not climbing up to the box so he can't be the "mysterious Navy Surgeon" (for lack of a better description to call the individual).

We discussed this previously in the Genetic Lincoln thread of the Symposium. I still think the "Navy Surgeon" was Army surgeon C. D. Gatch, who was in attendance with his brother at the play. Several sources name C. D.Gatch as being one of the doctors, and he was included in a painting with others in attendance when Lincoln died. The brothers also claimed that C. D. Gatch climbed up into Lincoln's box.

Unfortunately, my notes for the Gatch brothers may be lost, along with all my research, when my computer bit the dust, and nothing was backed up.