Breaking a leg

[wsanto]

(12-31-1969 11:46 PM)J. Beckert Wrote:  ...Would Booth be able to compose himself by then to appear as unassuming as he did? If he did break his leg in the jump, he managed to run on it for a short distance, mount his horse and get to the bridge, but I think the swelling inside the boot would start immediately and may have been throbbing by the time he got to the Navy Yard. Am I medically off base?

Depends. Again it is a case of adrenaline and alcohol. Given the circumstances he may not have realized the extent of the injury until well past the Navy Bridge. He probably felt the injury by the time he got to Cobb, but being an actor, was able to overcome whatever distress he felt in order to appear unassuming.

Assuming he was unassuming.

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(02-15-2013 05:35 PM)Linda Anderson Wrote:  Perhaps Booth told Jones that he broke his leg when his horse fell but he wanted Jones to spread the same story of him breaking it in the jump from the stage that he (Booth) wrote in his diary.

I doubt Jones would perpetuate a non-material fiction for Booth's sake in a book where he is recounting the events as he knew them and, in fact, incriminating himself to a degree twenty years after the crime.

[JMadonna]

I doubt Jones knew period. Only Booth knew and he said the leap from the stage. Which makes far more sense from a dramatic and egotistical point of view. It 'could' have happened as Booth said but the eye witness evidence and the wounds on the horse tells me it 'probably' didn't.

[wsanto]

(02-15-2013 09:31 PM)JMadonna Wrote:  I doubt Jones knew period. Only Booth knew and he said the leap from the stage. Which makes far more sense from a dramatic and egotistical point of view. It 'could' have happened as Booth said but the eye witness evidence and the wounds on the horse tells me it 'probably' didn't.

I don't know Jerry...This guy was sharp and competent and as close to this thing after the fact as anybody ever was besides Booth and Herold themselves. And a week in the woods is a long time.

Jone's book states that Booth dropped the pretense and came clean finally with Cox and then Jones by extension. No need for Booth to maintain a cover story to explain the injury when he was admitting to the assassination. He obviously trusted that Cox would be sympathetic and Cox came through with Jones.

Jones had intimate contact with both Booth and Cox during that week and ,for him, it was a matter of fact that Booth broke his leg in the leap to the stage. It is also clear he knew the falling horse to be a cover story presented to Mudd prior to Booth coming clean on his crime. No reason for Jones to lie about this. This is pretty strong corroboration.

Add to that the investigators in Bryantown somehow concluding Booth broke his leg in the leap prior to his diary coming into evidence and then add Booth's own claim in his confessional diary entry...

[JMadonna]

As I said only Booth knew.
Why would he tell the truth to Cox when a lie would generate patriotic sympathies and help him get the aid he needed?
An injury during an act of war makes him look like a 'hero'. A fall from a horse makes him look like a clumsy oaf loser.

Which story would you rather sell?

[Rhatkinson]

I added my thoughts under another post, but thought I would add them here as well as this post seems to be the better discussion on the leg. In short, I believe the most compelling evidence supports a break at Ford's for these reasons:

1. The main premise of Kauffman, et al, is that the only evidence supporting a fracture at Ford's comes from Booth's diary and, since it is incorrect about other issues, is a lie made up by Booth to embellish his act. He points to statements made by Herold, Mudd, and Lloyd that support a horse fall causation, but ignores that the same bias he accuses Booth of also applies to these three, albeit for differing reasons (e.g., Booth's bias to was make him sound more heroic/justified; their bias was to save their necks.) The point being that if you discount Booth's version because he had ulterior motives, you must discount the other three for the same reason.

(a) Mudd - (note: I actually attended law school with a direct descendant of Dr. Mudd and the subject of his involvement in the assassination is still a sore subject among Mark's family.) Anyway....it is almost too elemental to have to say, but ANYTHING Mudd said about how Booth broke his leg must be viewed VERY skeptically as he was trying to save his own life. He obviously could not admit that Booth broke his leg at Ford's because to do this would demonstrate he knew about Booth's murder when he treated him. Dr. Mudd was forced to admit (finally) that he knew Booth prior to the murder because too many people knew this information and he could not rely on word of it being kept from the government for long. However, that was ALL he was going to say unless forced to. If Booth's diary is to be disbelieved because he was a "bragger", then anything Mudd says must be even less believable. We KNOW that Mudd lied about other things (re: knowing who Booth was when he treated him, the December 1864 meeting, etc.) so it is safe to conclude that he lied about how Booth broke his leg.

(b) Herold - if you put any credence into Herold's claim, I invite you to go read his statements contained in the "The Evidence". You will immediate see that practically everything Herold said was a lie. Everything. He even claimed that he just "happened" to run into Booth on the road just outside of Washington on the night of the assassination and that Booth convinced him to go ride with him in the country for a couple of days at 11pm at night. Really, that's what Herold says. Yet, we are supposed to take the word of someone that untruthful for the "truth" about how Booth broke his leg. Just like Mudd, Herold had a VERY good reason to lie about how Booth broke his leg.

© Lloyd - this is the most troubling to me as Lloyd's testimony does indeed say that Herold told him Booth had broken his leg on a horse fall and Booth then admitted to killing the President. On its face, this would seem like good evidence supporting Kauffman's theory. I do not have a certain explanation for it, other that two theories: 1, that the transcript of his trial testimony was a mistake as others have hypothesized seeing that no where else in Lloyd's lengthy statements does he mention the horse fall, or 2, that Herold told Lloyd the horse fall "cover" not expecting that Booth himself would then blurt out that they were murders. One of those is a more reasonable (to me) explanation of why Lloyd said what he did (if he said it.)

2. The April 23, 2865 statement of Officer Wood that John brought up should not be overlooked, as to me is VERY compelling testimony that someone told him about the Ford's break. How could Wood have known this? Mudd damn sure didn't tell him (I can't imagine.) It is quite a mystery to me, but it ruins the theory that the "only" evidence of a Ford's break is from Booth's diary. Even though lots of people did never mention Booth seeming to be injured while running at Ford's, SOMEONE thought he broke his leg a Ford's just 9 days after the assassination - well before Booth's diary was found.

3. Thomas Jones' accounting that Booth broke his leg at Ford's should, in my view, be nearly indisputable evidence of the same. He would:

(a) be in a position to know from his first hand conversations with Booth and Herold following the assassination (i.e., if the Ford's excuse was just made up by Booth to favor him, Herold would know it was b.s. and Jones had a chance to speak at length to BOTH Herold and Booth and discern what was the truth), and

(b) have no reason to lie about that in his book.

Heath

[J. Beckert]

First - Welcome, Heath!

I've mentioned this before, but having never suffered a bone fracture, I don't know the extent of the pain that would generate. I did break a finger once, which was instantly extremely painful.

Booth may have fractured his bone in the jump. The horse fall, which is pretty evident actually occurred, finished the job. He may have felt a sting of pain with the fracture, but not enough to stop or hinder his escape. James Ferguson's account is the most detailed after Booth actually entered the box. He stated Booth briefly stopped as he neared the wings, shook the knife and said "I have done it!". I'm wondering if he could have been so casual about his escape if his leg was actually broken.

[Jim Garrett]

One of the rangers at Ford's, Arthur Doyle, feels it's likely that JWB may have had a hairline fracture from his leap. Then, he may have completed the injury in his fall from the horse.

[Bill Richter]

Booth complained about his back while at Mudd's especiailly to Mrs Mudd. I always thought that he popped a disk in the jump becaue of his spur ripping the flag threw hip off balance. I find it hard to argue with Mike Kauffman's presentation in the 1990 Blue and Gray which has been replicated in his new web site.

[wsanto]

(02-17-2013 11:12 AM)william l. richter Wrote:  Booth complained about his back while at Mudd's especiailly to Mrs Mudd. I always thought that he popped a disk in the jump becaue of his spur ripping the flag threw hip off balance. I find it hard to argue with Mike Kauffman's presentation in the 1990 Blue and Gray which has been replicated in his new web site.

What is the name of his new website? I'd love to check it out.

Doesn't Mr. Kauffman believe that Mudd was innocent and just a victim of circumstance? That was the conclusion I got from reading his book. Every element of Booth's relationship with Mudd or Mudd's behavior after the fact is presented in "American Brutus" with an excuse for Mudd's involvement as well as for his dishonesty.

If one starts with the conclusion that Mudd was innocent and lied to investigators only for the best reasons, then it makes sense to believe the horse-fall theory and to then build a rationale around it.

If you believe, as I do, that Mudd was a devious rebel agent who had perfected the art of deception and was very much involved with the conspiracy since his introduction to Booth, then the horse fall story is just another deceit concocted as a cover for his involvement with Booth the night of the assassination.

[L Verge]

wsanto - Have you read Ed Steers's excellent (and now out-of-print) book entitled His Name Is Still Mudd? It put into print what I had grown up with in Southern Maryland - Dr. Mudd knew exactly what he was doing.

[RJNorton]

Bill, the website is here. Mike Kauffman's arguments regarding the broken leg are here.

[wsanto]

(02-17-2013 01:29 PM)L Verge Wrote:  wsanto - Have you read Ed Steers's excellent (and now out-of-print) book entitled His Name Is Still Mudd? It put into print what I had grown up with in Southern Maryland - Dr. Mudd knew exactly what he was doing.

Yes i have it on my Kindle and you can still get it there. I belong to the Steer's school of assassination theory. I've read a lot his work after becoming hooked with "Blood on the Moon".

[brtmchl]

Couldn't the diary statement about breaking his leg during the jump to the stage and the staments made of injuring it when his horse fell, both be the truth? There were statments to the fact that Booth's horse did suffer injuries that corroberate injuries sustained from a fall. Weren't there? Could Booth have damaged his leg during the jump, but the accident with his horse made it worse? It seems to happen all the time in sport related injuries. Athletes routinley hurt themselves, keep playing, finish a game and days later go on IR because the injury was made worse. Had they stopped playing they may have missed a game or two instead of missing the whole season.

[L Verge]

Several people have suggested that over the past few years, and it does make sense. I have a question about the direction in which Booth's horse would have fallen. According to Davis at the Mudd farm, the horse had an injury on the inside of its left foreleg or shoulder. To me, that would seem that the horse would have pitched forward, not rolled to the left side trapping Booth's leg. Even if we concede that it pitched forward and then rolled, wouldn't an expert horseman like Booth be able to get his leg free before the horse rolled on it?

Here I go again, arguing over a question that I consider moot....

[brtmchl]

(02-17-2013 02:49 PM)L Verge Wrote:  Several people have suggested that over the past few years, and it does make sense. I have a question about the direction in which Booth's horse would have fallen. According to Davis at the Mudd farm, the horse had an injury on the inside of its left foreleg or shoulder. To me, that would seem that the horse would have pitched forward, not rolled to the left side trapping Booth's leg. Even if we concede that it pitched forward and then rolled, wouldn't an expert horseman like Booth be able to get his leg free before the horse rolled on it?

Here I go again, arguing over a question that I consider moot....

I have read that. That the horse rolled on Booth trapping his leg, but I also read somewhere ( and now can't remember where I read it) that the horse threw Booth against a rock. I want to say it was during an explanation of the injury to Dr. Mudd.