Did Robert Lincoln Ride the Funeral Train to Baltimore?

[loetar44]

Thanks Eva for your remark, but grave robbery, maybe it’s better to speak here of vault robbing was not an uncommon practise in the 19th century. Not in the first place to steal Lincoln’s or Willie’s corpse but to steal artifacts, personal effects or other objects. Body snatching (by "resurrectionists" or "resurrection-men”) was even common purpose, to sell the corpse for dissection or anatomy lectures in medical schools. Remember that the body of Ohio congressman John Scott Harrison, son of president William Henry Harrison, was snatched in 1878 and sold to the Ohio Medical College, where it was discovered by his son president Benjamin Harrison. I know that Lincoln’s vault was guarded, but not all the time and not for years. So, I think it is not unrealistic to think that “certain men” could steal something out of the vault and sell it, simply by unlocking the door with a false key or so, and locking it again after stealing some objects. Or they could break the lock. So, I thought that “locking alone” was not sufficient, that more protection was necessary, because it was Abraham Lincoln, who rested in the vault. Just a thought.

Scott, I thought of the receiving vault in the first place, but it also goes for the temporary vault.