Mary Lincoln and Suicide

[RJNorton]

(07-19-2017 01:11 PM)Gene C Wrote:  it's been a while since I read it, and I'm at work, but did W A Evans mention this in his book on Mrs. Abraham Lincoln?
considering the time in which is was written, he may have bypassed that subject.

Gene, he did write about it. Here is what he wrote:

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"On May 21 the Chicago dailies carried a story relating an attempt at suicide made by Mrs. Lincoln the previous day. In some way she had eluded her attendants, left the hotel, gone to a drug-store in the Grand Pacific Hotel, and asked for some laudanum and camphor for neuralgia of her arm. Knowing her mental condition, the druggist told her to call again in half an hour, at which time it would be ready. When she left, he trailed her to Rogers and Smith's drugstore, Adams and Clark streets, where he heard her order the same drugs. Slipping into the prescription department, he told the clerk the circumstances, whereupon the clerk declined to sell laudanum to Mrs. Lincoln. She then went to Dale's drug-store and repeated the order, and again the sleuthing druggist was able to prevent the sale. After this she returned to the Grand Pacific drug-store and was given a bottle of colored camphor water, labeled " Laudanum and Camphor.*' She left the drug-store and, while under observation, drank the mixture. In ten minutes she returned for more of the same medicine. She was given a bottle of the same placebo, and this she swallowed. Meanwhile her son, who had been summoned, arrived and took his mother in charge.

There is no reason to disbelieve this story because of the jury verdict, or for any other reason. Many people have momentary urges to self-destruction many thoroughly sane people. If such people yield, it is done promptly and under impulse. There is no evidence that these urges with Mrs. Lincoln were more than momentary, or that she ever had any trouble in resisting them. The nature of her mental malady was such that efforts at suicide were not to be expected."