Breaking a leg

[wsanto]

Heath,

We now have Thomas Jones, Harbin, and Dr. George Mudd on record with their opinions as to the broken leg. They all were characters involved with the story of the assassination to some degree. They all agree that Booth broke his leg leaping to the stage.

The problem is that they may all have been duped by Booth and his diary. If Booth, at some time, made up his mind to create the myth that he broke his leg at Ford's in order to embellish his legacy, he may have passed that myth on to Jones and Harbin and to the rest of the world with his diary. And Dr. George Mudd may have just been perpetuating the myth that had become the accepted truth at the time.

If Booth did create this myth; it worked. By April 28th it was being widely circulated in the neswpapers as the most likely explanation and it went on, as we all know, to become part of the history of the event.

Of course that doesn't explain Wood's telegrams. Even the mere fact that he mentions the break at Ford's days before Booth is captured and before anyone, other than Booth, has seen his diary tells me there is more to the story than just myth.

I tend to believe, as you, that it is far more likely that Booth lied about the horse fall in the early days of his escape than that he lied in his diary and to Jones and to Harbin about the break at Ford's.

[Rhatkinson]

I couldn't agree more with your analysis, Bill. Mike Kauffman has forgotten more on this subject than I could ever know, but in my view, the preponderance of the evidence falls on a break at Ford's.

As for Wood's source, I still suspect it was Swann, who was later forced to recant as that information, if true, would have sent Col. Cox to the gallows.

Heath

[RJNorton]

I posted this many months ago, but for folks new to the debate, here are Mike Kauffman's arguments scanned from Blue & Gray magazine, June 1990:

[wsanto]

(07-14-2013 12:25 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  I posted this many months ago, but for folks new to the debate, here are Mike Kauffman's arguments scanned from Blue & Gray magazine, June 1990:

The only semi-solid evidence presented by Kauffman that, in my opinion, supports the horse fall is the statement from Mudd's farmhand.

Does anyone have Thomas Davis' statement?

---

(07-14-2013 12:25 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  I posted this many months ago, but for folks new to the debate, here are Mike Kauffman's arguments scanned from Blue & Gray magazine, June 1990:

in my mind, the only evidence presented by Kauffman that, to a small degree, supports the horse fall is the statement from Mudd's farmhand.

Does anyone have Thomas Davis' statement to investigators?

[RJNorton]

Bill, there is a statement by Davis in The Evidence here.

[wsanto]

(07-15-2013 05:20 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Bill, there is a statement by Davis in The Evidence here.

Thanks Roger. I made the mistake of getting a digital copy of "The Evidence" for my iPad and it is hard to find the evidence you're looking for in that format. I need to poney-up and get the hard copy that I can leaf through.

[RJNorton]

(07-15-2013 11:44 AM)wsanto Wrote:  I need to poney-up and get the hard copy that I can leaf through.

That's two of us.

[wsanto]

Okay--here is the full extent of Thomas Davis' description of the horses within his full statement as published in "The Evidence." (as they say--emphasis mine)

"One of the horses was a small bay mare in excellent trim, with a piece of skin off on the inside of the left foreleg about as big as a silver quarter. I do not whether there was a soar {sic] on her head or not. The other was a roan horse, the pretty racker with a large scar just back of the saddle."

The bay mare was not lame but in "excellent trim". Thomas Davis did not indicate in any way that this horse had a left shoulder injury in this particular statement. The only injury he reported was but a very small piece of skin missing from the inside portion of her left front leg.

---

Hopefully Mr. Kauffman has access to other statement(s) made by Thomas Davis that includes the "badly swollen left shoulder" injury. If not, in my opinion, he completely mischaracterized Davis' statement to suit his theory.

[Jim Garrett]

Wow, over 24,000 views! Good thread Dave.

[SpruceCreekHawk]

I am new to the forum and realize this thread has been silent for over a year but I wanted to put in my two cents on Booth's threshold for pain. In 1925, William May (son of Dr. John Frederick May) wrote about the operation on Booth's fibroid tumor, "I distinctly remember the operation he performed on John Wilkes Booth in fact I assisted him (although only a boy of fourteen years of age) by holding the basin to receive the blood from the wound. We did not have trained nurses in those days. The operation was a minor one and was done for the removal of a fibroid tumor on the back of his neck, it was done without any anesthetic of any kind. Booth at the time was playing with Charlotte Cushman in Romeo and Juliet and during the play she embraced him with so much ardor that she tore out the stitches and tore open the wound. It then healed by what we call second intention and left a wide large scar that looked like the scar made by a burn." It was noted in the Daily National Republican that Booth gave a fine performance following the operation which they (unlike the younger May) characterized as a "severe surgical operation." This does not solve the question about where Booth broke his leg but demonstrates he had a pretty high tolerance for pain in April 1863.

[Gene C]

(10-01-2014 11:55 AM)SpruceCreekHawk Wrote:  I am new to the forum

Welcome to the forum, and nice avitar. I don't recognize the photo, who is it?

I wonder if back then the patient didn't try to get half drunk to help deal with the pain? They did in the movies.

[SpruceCreekHawk]

(10-01-2014 01:01 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(10-01-2014 11:55 AM)SpruceCreekHawk Wrote:  I am new to the forum

Welcome to the forum, and nice avitar. I don't recognize the photo, who is it?

I wonder if back then the patient didn't try to get half drunk to help deal with the pain? They did in the movies.

Thank you! It's an unknown woman from an daguerreotype picked up in a shop in Winter Park, Florida by my parents about 30 years ago. I used it as the centerpiece of an historical murder mystery set in Washington, D.C. in 1864 to represent the victim, Jane Tuell.

Booth certainly wasn't averse to drink and may well have self-medicated for May's surgery, but I'm guessing he couldn't have been completely sloshed for his performance. Then again, thinking of Richard Burton, maybe he could have been pickled and performed wonderfully.

[Dave Taylor]

Matthew Canning, Booth's former agent, also claimed to have been present during Dr. May's surgery on Booth. He stated the following to GATH in 1886:

"Somewhere about 1862 I was playing Booth in Washington City, and he began to have a boil on the side of his neck. It grew more and more inflamed, and at last was discernible from the house, and on his fine, youthful skin it made a bad impression. So I said to him one morning: ‘Come here, John, and take a ride with me. It is none of your business where I am going.’ I drove him to the house of Dr. May, a surgeon, and took him in there. May looked at his neck and said: ‘Why, this is a tumor. You will have to submit to an operation to be relieved of it.’ Booth said he would sit right down there and have it cut out. The doctor said to him: ‘Young man, this is no trifling matter. You will have to come when we are ready for you, when I have an assistant here.’

‘No,’ said Booth, ‘You can cut it out right now. Here is Canning, who will be your assistant.’ He threw himself across a chair and leaned his head on the chair-back so as to throw up his neck. ‘Now cut away,’ said he. The doctor told me that if I was to assist in the operation that I must pull back the skin or flesh as he cut. The first wipe he made with his knife nearly made me fall on the floor fainting. The black blood gushed out, and he seemed to have cut the man’s neck partly off. Booth did not move, but his skin turned as white as the wall. The doctor continued to cut, and notified me that I was a remarkable assistant for an amateur. Meantime my stomach was all giving away. The first thing that happened was I rolled over and fell on the floor, and Booth from loss of blood reeled and fell off the chair. When he came to the doctor told me that I was not as much of an assistant as he thought I was going to turn out to be. Booth was laid up for about a month…"

While it appears that Booth passed out from the blood loss, he apparently had a high enough threshold for pain to sit there while May was slicing his neck.

[Gene C]

Thanks for the link to your blog. I found your comment at the end interesting, "One part of the interview that I did not include in the post,was when Canning claimed that the bullett he shot into Booth came out of Booth's neck during the surgery with Dr. May. I'm thinking Canning just wanted to make it a more interesting story. A couple other later articles claim the bullett fell out of Booth in 1862 while he was performing. Who really knows?"

Thanks Dave!
I've learned so many interesting things here.

[SpruceCreekHawk]

(10-01-2014 04:24 PM)Dave Taylor Wrote:  Matthew Canning, Booth's former agent, also claimed to have been present during Dr. May's surgery on Booth. He stated the following to GATH in 1886:

"Somewhere about 1862 I was playing Booth in Washington City, and he began to have a boil on the side of his neck. It grew more and more inflamed, and at last was discernible from the house, and on his fine, youthful skin it made a bad impression. So I said to him one morning: ‘Come here, John, and take a ride with me. It is none of your business where I am going.’ I drove him to the house of Dr. May, a surgeon, and took him in there. May looked at his neck and said: ‘Why, this is a tumor. You will have to submit to an operation to be relieved of it.’ Booth said he would sit right down there and have it cut out. The doctor said to him: ‘Young man, this is no trifling matter. You will have to come when we are ready for you, when I have an assistant here.’

‘No,’ said Booth, ‘You can cut it out right now. Here is Canning, who will be your assistant.’ He threw himself across a chair and leaned his head on the chair-back so as to throw up his neck. ‘Now cut away,’ said he. The doctor told me that if I was to assist in the operation that I must pull back the skin or flesh as he cut. The first wipe he made with his knife nearly made me fall on the floor fainting. The black blood gushed out, and he seemed to have cut the man’s neck partly off. Booth did not move, but his skin turned as white as the wall. The doctor continued to cut, and notified me that I was a remarkable assistant for an amateur. Meantime my stomach was all giving away. The first thing that happened was I rolled over and fell on the floor, and Booth from loss of blood reeled and fell off the chair. When he came to the doctor told me that I was not as much of an assistant as he thought I was going to turn out to be. Booth was laid up for about a month…"

While it appears that Booth passed out from the blood loss, he apparently had a high enough threshold for pain to sit there while May was slicing his neck.

Thanks for posting this. I knew I'd seen it somewhere (Boothiebarn as it turned out) while researching Dr. May for the Tuell murder and remembered it to be more graphic than William May's description. From Canning's account it doesn't seem that Booth drank very much prior to the operation so perhaps his threshold for pain really was quite high.