Major Rathbone's accomodation in Hannover

[chrishunter]

This is another great find Eva!

(07-18-2013 07:16 PM)Eva Elisabeth Wrote:  Today I received the entire articles from the "Hannoverscher Courier", Dec. 24+25, 1883. There are still some very interesting new (to me at least) details in them.

I’ve already posted a comment on most of the article dated Dec. 24. Not in the former clipping respectively post were the statements that Rathbone was rich, well-educated and happily married. His physicians had sent him to Germany. He had been injured so seriously due to the deed that at first it was impossible to move him to a hospital.

The other article (of Dec. 25) states as follows:
Since June 6 the 45-year old former major Rathbone had lived, together with his wife, her sister, a governess and three kids (9,10 and 14) in an appartement in Heinrichstrasse.
[Now you have to rewrite history:] According to his sister-in-law he had sustained severe head injuries during the assassination of President Lincoln in a theater in New York. [Good it was not from “Der Spiegel”…]
The deed is more or less described as in the other article, additional details are the following:
Rathbone knocked at the door to the children’s bedroom demanding to see them, Clara –from behind - advised the governess to lock the door and led him back into their bedroom. When the sister and the governess broke the door open after the deed, Clara lay blood-covered on her bed whereas Rathbone, bleeding out of five wounds, at first lay on the floor besides the stove. He managed to rise and reach his bed, then he lost consciousness.
He had fired three shots from a new revolver, the dagger knife had also been new.

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(07-02-2013 09:54 PM)calebj123 Wrote:  There are no books about the couple, other than Thomas Mallon's "Henry and Clara" which we all know takes a lot of liberties and must fill in the holes with fiction.

Caleb –Idon’t know wether this is interesting to you. I just finished reading “Henry and Clara”. As to the fiction – the directors of the hospital during Rathbone’s stay there were Dr. Ludwig Snell (from 1856 – 1892, he let a telephone system and gas lighting be installed) and Dr. Erich Gerstenberg (1892 – 1915). From what I read in the Mönkemöller booklet I sent you I personally doubt Rathbone had his own apartement. (I know,the NYT article of Oct.31,1910 states it differently, but they also asserted he was a consul. And the Courier states Lincoln was asssassinated in NYC.) A consul assigned to Braunschweig (Brunswick) indeed existed, I remember reading that in the Stadtarchiv Hannover (but didn’t pay further attention because I focused on Rathbone). What I also doubt (my personal opinion) is that Rathbone planned to leave Han(n)over soon as the book suggests. He was listed in Hannover’s 1884 directory (this and the Courier article also suggest the family rented a seperate appartment, not some rooms in a boarding house). The entry was voluntary. You had to apply therefor the previous year. So for the 1884 entry Rathbone had to apply until April 1883.
(Sorry, I know in English I should correctly spell Hannover with a single “n”, but it looks so very odd to me.)

May I ask the following: Is “asylum” an official, serious term for such kind of institution? I always thought that in this context “asylum” has a negative connotation like “nuthouse” or “bedlam” or is at least colloquial. The former German name of the institution was “Heil- und Pflegeanstalt.” Although “Heilanstalt” is a bit obsolete (it has been replaced by “Psychatriche Klinik”, “psychatric hospital”) it was always an official term (not a colloquial one) without any negative connotation. Since the institution was most serious and prestigious and the treatments were most modern in those days a colloquial or negative expression IMO would be inadequate.