THE WIDOW OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Patea Mail, Volume 1, Issue 40, 28 August 1875, Page 3

THE WIDOW OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

Few stories in real life are more melancholy than that of which the last chapter reaches us from America. The widow of President Lincoln has been declared to be insane, and a Court in Chicago has ordered her to be confined in an asylum in Illinois. The murder of the Emperor Maximilian by the Republicans of Mexico overthrew the reason of the unhappy Carlotta ; and the assassination of President Lincoln by the hand of Wilke Booth has made his widow a maniac. We are informed that Mrs Lincoln, from the time of the assassination of h< r husband, has displayed constantly increasing signs of mental aberration. Not long after his death she caused a scandal in New York by advertising for sale at auction all the fine dresses, laces, and jewellery which she had purchased, or which had been give to her as the President’s wife. Not long after this she was with difficulty restrained from committing in public some extraordinary acts the conception of which denoted a disordered mind. It was hoped that a change of scene might restore her mind to its natural tone ; she was induced to make a journey to Europe, and she spent some time in a very quite way in Germany, France and Belgium. A stange story has been related apropos of a visit which she paid to the Empress Carlotta, at this period. Something like two years ago, Mrs Lincoln returned to the United States, and made her residence at Chicago. There the evidences of her disordered mind became more than ever apparent, and her only surviving son, Mr Robert Lincoln, a few days ago filed a petition in

the County Court for her restraint as a lunatic. The Court after hearing the evidence, granted the prayer of the petition ; and Mrs Lincoln was ordered to be ctnfmed in an insane asylum. She has income of about £1,500 a year. At the announcement of the verdict Robert Lincoln took the hand of his mother affectionately, when she exclaimed, with a reproachful tone, “Oh, Robert, to think that my sou would ever have done this !” After being removed from the Court-room, where she was adjudged insane, she was put under the strictest surveillance, it being thought she might do i n jury to 1 icrself. She, however, escaped from her room,'hurried to the drug store of Frank Squires, and ordered a compound of camphor and laudanum, ostensibly for neuralgia. The clerk informed her it would take about ten minutes to make it, whereupon she took a carriage and drove to two other drug stores. She was followed by Mr Squires, who in each case, prevented the druggist from giving her the compound. She finally returned to the first place and procured a mixture which she supposed was what she wanted, but which was harmless. She drank this as she left the store, and as it had no effect, she tried to leave her room again to obtain a larger dose, but was prevented. She was removed to a private hospital at Batavia, Illinois.