Laura Keene dress

[Steve]

A piece of the dress Laura Keene was wearing in Ford's Theatre is now up for auction (April 2022):

https://nypost.com/2022/04/01/bloody-dre...-sale/amp/

[Gene C]

Anyone know what happened to the rest of the dress?

[AussieMick]

( Spoken in an Elizabeth Taylor- Southern accent) :
Why, Sir, I'm sure only a Yankee could ask such a question.

[RJNorton]

Could someone please remind me...how do we know the blood on Keene's dress is Lincoln's and not Rathbone's?

[Linda Anderson]

Roger, the blood on the dress of Laura Keene was discussed in the thread, Clara Harris's Bloody Dress. The discussion on Laura Keene's dress starts at Post #15.

Calebj123 states in Post #20 that:

"There has been an analysis done on the bloody dress worn by Laura Keene and it showed up inconclusive, but nothing was done on Clara's dress."

https://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussi...-1266.html

[RJNorton]

Thank you, Linda. I have always been confused as to the truth of what took place in the box, and whose blood ended up where. To add to the confusion, Clara Harris stated that Laura Keene was never even in the box. And William Ferguson, who said Keene was indeed in the box, noted, "It is true that blood was found on Miss Keene's dress, but it came from Major Rathbone...His wound bled very profusely...[and] it was the blood from Major Rathbone's wound, that in the midst of the excitement...got on Miss Keene's dress." (from Reck, p. 123).

(I do realize most historians accept Laura Keene's presence in the box, but I am clueless how to know for certain whose blood got on her dress.)

[RJNorton]

Thank you, Linda. I have always been confused as to the truth of what took place in the box, and whose blood ended up where. To add to the confusion, Clara Harris stated that Laura Keene was never even in the box. And William Ferguson, who said Keene was indeed in the box, noted, "It is true that blood was found on Miss Keene's dress, but it came from Major Rathbone...His wound bled very profusely...[and] it was the blood from Major Rathbone's wound, that in the midst of the excitement...got on Miss Keene's dress." (from Reck, p. 123).

I do realize most historians accept Laura Keene's presence in the box, but I am clueless how to know for certain whose blood got on her dress. And I have great respect for Daniel Weinberg. But couldn't the darker blood still have come from Rathbone? Isn't it possible she had both Lincoln's blood and Rathbone's blood on her dress?

[Steve]

Here's Laura Keene's account from the April 17, 1865 edition of the New York Herald:



Keene says that she brought water to the box and then tried to console Mary. I'm thinking it's more likely the blood on her dress came from Rathbone.

[AussieMick]

Most documentation refers to Major Rathbone's artery being cut. Lincoln's wound was obviously horrendous.
But the amount of blood flowing from each man? And the fact that people would have been trying to clamp something over the President's wound?
By the time Miss Keene arrived the area would have been awash (almost) with the Major's blood and the President's wound was apparently already clotting.

[GustD45]

Didn't Miss Keene also state that she held the President's head in her lap? Let me look that up and I will post it, but I am sure she said she held the President's head in her lap.

---

Yes, she had written in her memoirs that she cradled the President's head. I found an article in True West Magazine that discusses it. Here is the link if anyone would like to read it.

https://truewestmagazine.com/she-cradled-lincoln-head/

[Linda Anderson]

I just found an interesting article by Billy J. Harbin titled, "Laura Keene at the Lincoln Assassination." It was published in the Educational Theatre Journal.

Here's the preview.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3205119?sea...b6d6ec518b

You can register for up to 100 free articles a month.

https://support.jstor.org/hc/en-us/artic...to-Content

[AussieMick]

Sorry, but I just cannot imagine Mary Lincoln sitting there (regardless of how distraught she must have been ) whilst another woman held Lincoln's head .

[RJNorton]

Linda, that is an excellent article. It is one of the best I have ever seen as it includes so many eyewitness accounts. Rather than take a strong stand, the author states, "It more or less boils down to this: which eyewitnesses do you believe?" Billy J. Harbin notes that the accounts given nearest to the event generally do not mention Keene in the box, while it's the later accounts that do. This, in itself, could conceivably be considered an argument against Keene's presence.

If true, I find Seaton Munroe's account one of the strongest arguments that the blood was Rathbone's not Lincoln's. Munroe stated:

Seaton Munroe, an attorney, met up with Laura Keene as she was departing the State Box and related:

"Making a motion to arrest her progress, I begged her to tell me if Mr. Lincoln was still alive. "God only knows!" she gasped, stopping for a moment's rest. The memory of that apparition will never leave me. Attired, as I had so often seen her, in the costume of her part in "Our American Cousin," her hair and dress were in disorder, and not only was her gown soaked in Lincoln's blood, but her hands, and even her cheeks where her fingers had strayed, were bedaubed with the sorry stains!"

Based on what most of the folks in the box stated then I think this large amount of blood most likely came from Rathbone, not Lincoln. One of the doctors in the box, Dr. Taft, said that Lincoln's wound bled very little. In all honesty, however, Munroe's account came 31 years later.

[RJNorton]

Thank you to Steve for sending this. Steve writes, "It's a letter written on April 16, 1865 by assassination witness Julia Shepard which was printed in the April 1909 edtion of The Century Magazine. She seems to be describing Maj. Rathbone leaving a trail of blood down the stairs and out the door."

[RJNorton]

Anyone know what happened to the rest of the dress?

"Where the rest of the dress is, no one knows. It disappeared someplace," said Daniel R. Weinberg, owner of Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, Inc., in Chicago, during a phone interview with FOX Business.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/fa...nated-sale