Mary Todd Lincoln

MARY TODD LINCOLN

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Mary Todd Lincoln was apparently a little wild in her day, its said that she enjoyed the good life, and spent money frivolously.

Sadly, Mary also went through moody episodes, that sometimes ended in public outbursts.

Not the conduct you would expect from a first lady!

But according to a researcher, her bizarre and often alienating behavior, had nothing to do with a bad attitude.

During Mary’s time, no one could quite understand why she behaved that way.

Sadly, these depressive episodes, violent mood swings, and bouts of ill health, may have led some to call her insane.

Mary’s eldest son, Robert, even had her institutionalized later in life.

Since then, experts have considered what caused Mary’s unhappiness.

In particular, they have wondered if her physical symptoms ~ including pale skin and intense headaches ~ had something to do with it all.

On 4th November 1842, Mary married Abraham Lincoln.

The couple exchanged wedding bands inscibed with the reminder

“Love Is Eternal.”

In 1843 the pair welcomed their first son, Robert Todd Lincoln, their second, Edward, arrived three years later.

As the Lincoln clan grew, Abraham’s political career progressed. This often left Mary at home alone with her children, and she started experiencing anxiety as a result.

As Abraham’s political star rose, Mary's behaviour became erratic.

She often spoke her mind, and didn’t hold back ~ which was precisely the opposite of how women at the time were expected to comport themselves.

Mary had something of a reputation for being fiercely jealous.

She would apparently scream at any woman, who dared to walk near her husband.

At home, by contrast, Mary excelled at creating a loving environment for her children and husband.

Even so, she needed to carve out quiet corners to deal with her migraines and the depressive episodes she’d experienced since losing her mother when she was six.

Things got worse for Mary when she suffered a string of debilitating losses.

First, her father died in the summer of 1849 after a battle with cholera.

Then, in February of the following year, she and her husband witnessed little Edward succumb to tuberculosis.

Apparently, Mary believed in destiny, and she felt that her son’s death was fate working directly against her.

Mary’s fortune changed with the births of two more sons: William in late 1850 and Thomas three years later.

During the same decade, Abraham’s political career reached the highest possible level when the Republican Party tapped him as their nominee for president.

As history shows, of course, he went on to win the election and assume office in 1860.

While the Lincolns were in the White House, Mary’s mental and physical health seemed to decline further.

For one thing, she injured her head in a carriage accident, ultimately making her headaches even worse.

Along with bouts of depression, the mother of four experienced erratic mood swings and a violent temper.

She would even have outbursts in public, which was not the behavior expected of a president’s wife at the time.

Mary had a bad reputation for spending wildly while in the White House, transforming the presidential residence into a regal estate with all-new decor.

At some point, her reckless dealings with money enraged her husband, who warned her that she’d burn through his presidential salary before he even left his post.

In 1862, her third-born and favorite son, William, contracted typhoid fever and passed away.

Losing William then pushed Mary into a dark depression, and she stayed in bed for weeks.

The first lady also experienced sleeplessness and nightmares, leaving her barely able to take care of her youngest son, Tad. Ultimately, the president hired a nurse to supervise Mary.

After Lincoln's re-election in 1964 and the end of the Civil War, he and his wife thought they had survived the worst.

They would be very wrong.

On Mary and Abraham’s April 1865 trip to Ford’s Theater, John Wilkes Booth snuck up behind the president and shot him.

Booth used a single-shot .44-caliber derringer pistol, and the bullet passed through Lincoln’s brain, fracturing both orbital plates.

Mary had been holding her husband’s hand at the time, and screamed in horror when he slumped beside her.

Mary descended into an understandable fit of hysteria.

Instead of trying to calm the first lady down, the helpers removed her from the room and away from her husband.

When Mary saw Abraham again, she fainted.

Sadly, the president passed away before Mary came round from her fainting spell.

Losing Abraham naturally pushed Mary into yet another depressive episode.

She didn’t go to his funeral, instead, she spent the next 40 days in bed.

After that, the widow had to decide what to do, and where to go next, as she was no longer the nation’s first lady.

Mary and her two living sons, Robert and Tad, moved to Chicago.

In Chicago, Mary finally began to grieve her husband’s death.

She did so in private, to the point where she became a recluse. Then came one final tragedy: her youngest son, Tad, died.

This heartbreak only made Mary behave more erratically, and her depression worsened drastically.

Four years later, Mary’s eldest and only living son, Robert, had her committed to an Illinois asylum.

The former first lady felt so helpless about the decision, that she went on to visit multiple pharmacies, hoping to get enough medication to end her life.

Thankfully, an employee at one of these establishments sensed her plan and gave Mary a placebo, thwarting her suicide attempt.

Mary later left the mental health facility and traveled around Europe for four years.

It was in Springfied in 1882 that Mary slipped into a coma and suffered a stroke on the 11th anniversary of Tad’s death.

Sadly, she died the next day.

In the years since Mary’s passing, psychologists and historians have debated what had caused her to behave in such a strange way.

But while experts had plenty of theories to explain Mary’s decline, none of them seemed to fit the situation perfectly.

Experts have credited her mood swings and erratic spending to bipolar disorder.

In 2016 Dr. John Sotos presented an entirely different hypothesis about Mary’s behavior.

He had looked at the former first lady’s remaining medical records, which had come from her four-month stint in the mental health facility.

According to Sotos, the information was more than enough to diagnose Mary with pernicious anemia.

Pernicious anemia stems from a deficiency in vitamin B12, which the body needs to produce red blood cells and nerves, and make sure a person’s DNA is working as it’s supposed to.

Before doctors isolated vitamin B12, though, they had no idea why people were getting sick and suffering from the illness.

The condition is a degenerative disease – meaning it gets worse over time.

Both Mary’s behavior and health did indeed decline as the years passed.

She suffered from a laundry list of pernicious anemia-related side effects, including headaches, pallor, and the sensation of needles poking her body.

Pernicious anemia also comes with psychological side effects, meaning Mary may have dealt with hallucinations and delusions that she considered very real.

Without B12, the brain shrinks in size ~ something that can cause paranoia.

In old age, the former first lady also lost her ability to talk and see.

Unfortunately for Mary, doctors of the period were not aware of pernicious anemia, so they had no way of explaining her declining mental and physical health.

Mary and others who suffered from the condition basically had a death sentence, and that wouldn’t change until the mid-1920s.

Today, we’d probably look on Mary more kindly.

Think of all the losses she had to endure, including the loss of her children, and most famously, witnessing the death of her beloved husband.

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Source~ https://social.entrepreneur.com/.../bizarre-behavior...

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https://ko-fi.com/thetudorintruders

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Mary Todd Lincoln

White House Historical Assn.