PASSED AWAY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 54, 18 October 1911, Page 2

PASSED AWAY

AN ACTOR IN THE LINCOLN TRAGEDY. The death of Major Rathhone in a German lunatic asylum will (writes S. G. P. Coryn in the “Argonaut”) probably bE the last of the lessor tragedies associated with the assassination of President Lincoln. It will be remembered that Major Rathbone and Miss Harris were among the occupants of the Presidential box at Ford’s Theatre at the moment of the crime. Major Rathbone received a severe wound in his effort to capture Booth, and although he recovered from the physical injury the shock to his nerves was irreparable. Soon after the healing of his wound he married Miss Hands and ultimately became American Consul at Hanover. There he murdered his wife in a moment of homicidal mania and doubtless under an irresistible impulse to repeat the historic crime which had unseated his reason. His actual insanity was beyond question, and he was committed to a criminal lunatic asylum for the remainder of Ids days, and in this same asylum he has just died. It is hard to imagine anything more pitiable. Major Ruthbone served with distinction in the Civil War. He may be said to have shared the martyrdom of the President and to have suffered even more poignantly. For these many years he has been forgotten even by his countrymen, but the news of his death will at least awaken the hope that his existence was made as tolerable as his condition would permit.