Mary Todd Lincoln by Jean Baker

[Susan Higginbotham]

(11-23-2019 12:23 PM)Gene C Wrote:  In this book, author Jean Baker disagrees with the stories that Mary attempted suicide the day before she was committed to the Bellevue Place Sanatorium. She states several reason (page 326-327) on why the Chicago newspapers reporting her attempted suicide, got it wrong.

Among Ms. Baker's reasons, Mary was to closely watched to get away to purchase the poison and drugs unnoticed,
and the news first appeared in a newspaper owned by Robert Lincoln's former law partner.
She states this, "was more a son's exculpation of filial treachery than a mother's demonstration of suicidal tendencies".

Norbert Hirschorn, a physician, gives a far more balanced account than Baker's in the fall 2003 Lincoln Herald. Among other things, he notes that Baker claims that Mary would have had to walk three miles and back to procure the drugs--when in reality, the drugstores in question were one or two blocks from her hotel.