Breaking a leg

[Dave Taylor]

I think John did a wonderful job in laying out the case for Booth having broken his leg from a horse fall, with the except of one piece of evidence. It is the same one Laurie has a problem with, and I don't blame her. It has to do with good old John Lloyd. I am not convinced that Lloyd ever said that he was told Booth's horse fell on him. Let me show you why.

(11-28-2012 11:29 AM)John E. Wrote:  

Here is the excerpt from the evidence that John posted. At first glance it seems to support the point of a horse fall: "The other rider complained that he had broken his leg from his horse falling". That statment seems pretty strong on the face of it. However, can this be corroborated? This account falls under the heading of John Lloyd in The Evidence, and even cites the Pittman and Poore transcripts as sources to the text. As Laurie pointed out though, at the trial Lloyd never mentions anything about being told the horse fell on Booth. The trial does agree with much of what is in this statement, but not that point.

While I don't have The Evidence book in front of me, previously I have gone through the other John Lloyd statments. He made three lengthy statements, I believe. I read each one of them carefully looking for any corroborating mention of the "horse fall" story. In all of those other lenghty statements he never mentions it. Not even once. That makes this one statement that John posted the sole source of Lloyd mentioning the horse falling. If that was it, I would say that it is still legitmate evidence but perhaps not as reliable.

However, the big problem with this Lloyd statement, is that it does not come from Lloyd. While placed under the John Lloyud header, he was not the author. If you look at the original document as cited (4:45), you will find that it was written by Colonel John Foster. This is not a verbatim transcript of his remarks like his other statements, and it does not bear his approving signature at the end to verify the contents. Rather this "statement" is a summary of evidence compiled by Col. Foster.

Here is the link to the beginning of the long memorandum written by Foster in which he summarizes the evidence from 24 different people including Lloyd. I'm assuming that Foster made his summaries by reading over the official statments of the witnesses and then boiling them down, but we can't be sure. Even if this was the case, we know from Lloyd's other statements that he never mentioned the horse falling anywhere else. Out of the 24, Lloyd's was the 22nd summary Foster wrote. In addition Foster had already written 37 pages before getting to him.

Here's my theory, Foster was tired and made a mistake. You're probably thinking, "Well that's a pretty unique thing to 'mistakenly' add to a summary of evidence." If you look at whose statment came right after Lloyd's, I think his error is perfectly logical. Right after Foster's summary of John Lloyd's testimony, he summarized the testimony of good ol' Dr. Samuel A. Mudd. The summaries even share part of the same page. Noticeably absent from Dr. Mudd's summary is any mention of the horse falling story. Dr. Mudd's rather plainly states that "Booth's leg had been broken" while we know, as John posted, that Mudd stated to officals that, "one of their horses had fallen, by which one of the men had broken his leg”.

In my eyes it seems quite logical, that Foster mistakenly added a piece of Dr. Mudd's statement to Lloyd's account. However, even if this is not the case, the undeniable point is that what Col. Foster wrote in his summary of Lloyd's statements is not corroborated in Lloyd's accounts. As such it can not be trusted or used. If it came straight from Lloyd in one of his lengthy statements then it would have credibility. But since it does not come straight from Lloyd and cannot be corroborated by either his testimony at the trial or his official statements, it is little more than heresay. Find me any other source in which Lloyd attests to the "horse falling" idea and I'll concede. Until then, I put no trust in Foster's version and thus cannot include Lloyd as a proponent of Booth breaking his leg as a result of a horse fall.