Death of Lincoln 150

[RJNorton]

(04-20-2015 10:16 AM)DKEast Wrote:  Also Seward didn't have the steel neck brace on (which saved his life) and they showed Booth getting shot in the barn in broad daylight.

Hi Doug. Most likely the show was actually correct in showing Seward without a steel neck brace. This is a common error in many books. Two authors immediately come to mind who have tried to correct this historical error. Betty, in her first edition of Alias "Paine", writes, "As the secretary was supported by a framework backrest, the weapon glanced off the metal in a shower of sparks." (p. 81). She also writes about this on p. 67 of her brand new Second Edition (highly recommended - kudos, Betty!). Dr. John Lattimer writes about the event in his paragraph entitled "The Protective Collar Fallacy" in his book entitled Lincoln and Kennedy: Medical and Ballistic Comparisons of Their Assassinations.(Doug, if you have the book please see p. 102). Quoting from that page, "The assassin's knife, in striking at the secretary of state from above, went behind him each time because of the assassin's miscaluculation of how thin the old gentleman's thorax really was....It seems clear that it must have been the backrest which was struck rather than any device attached to the patient or to the patient's broken jaw as has been stated."

In her diary on April 12 Fanny Seward wrote, "In the morning, in place of bandaging, Dr Norris secured the fractured jaw by a wire from one tooth to the other. The operation was less painful than we apprehended, & the arrangement much more comfortable than the bandaging." Absolutely nothing said about an "iron neck brace" capable of deflecting blows from a knife.

Dr. Lattimer goes on to write, "Close examination of the record by Dr. Gunning and now ourselves shows that the devices on his broken jaw were applied only after the attempted assassination. Nowhere is there a description of a protective collar before the attempt on his life."

So the oft-told account of how a steel protective collar (or neck brace) saved Seward's life makes for a good story, but it's probably not true. Most likely the sparks seen were not due to any steel neck collar worn by Seward (as he was not wearing one); rather they were due to Powell's knife striking the metal backrest of the bed he was in.