Sons and parents

[RJNorton]

(01-16-2015 05:03 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  [quote='LincolnToddFan' pid='42780' dateline='1421352976']
What about the story that MTL did indeed try to commit suicide immediately after the verdict, before she was taken away? She reportedly tried to kill herself with an overdose but a quick thinking druggist gave her a placebo instead?

Toia, this is an interesting question as not 100% of authors accept the suicide attempt actually occurred. One of the doubters is Jean Baker. Regarding the "suicide attempt" Baker writes:

"Like so much else in the Mary Lincoln apocrypha, this story was probably false. Never before or after did she try to take her life, though she had ample opportunity to do so...What makes the newspaper story even more implausible is the suggestion that a fifty-six-year-old woman - stiff in limb and gait from arthritis and gout, readily identified in her widow's black, watched by three attendants, a sheriff's deputy, and a maid stationed in her room - could allude her guards, walk three miles, swallow the purgative camphor, and return again on foot to her room, just at the moment of her son's timely arrival and her removal to the asylum. This unlikely tale first appeared in a newspaper owned by Robert Lincoln's former law partner and was more a son's exculpation of filial treachery than a mother's demonstration of suicidal tendencies."

I believe Baker's account is in conflict with the majority of Mary Lincoln authors. I think an actual suicide attempt by Mary is accepted in most books I have seen.

My biggest single question regarding Baker's account is the distance Mary allegedly traveled. From what I have read all the drug stores involved were within a few blocks of each other, not three miles. Also, I agree with the arthritis but not sure I've seen gout listed before in her ailments.