Richard Dyer Mudd
Authors: J. H. Tanne
Journal: BMJ (2002)

Occupational physician who crusaded to clear his grandfather of involvement in Lincoln assassination

After he discovered the dark family secret as a young man, Richard D Mudd spent the rest of his 101 years trying to clear the reputation of his grandfather, Dr Samuel A Mudd, who escaped a death sentence by one vote for his involvement in the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

On Good Friday, 15 April 1865, just days after the end of the American Civil War, the famous American actor John Wilkes Booth shot President Lincoln as he sat in a box at Ford's Theatre in Washington beside his wife, Mary. Booth fired from behind, then leapt about 11 feet from the box to the stage, breaking the fibula in his left leg just above the ankle.

He cried, “Sic semper tyrannis” (“Thus always to tyrants”), fled limping through the backstage area, mounted his horse in an alley, and rode across a bridge over the Potomac River from Washington to Maryland.

Booth showed up at Dr Samuel Mudd's house at 4 am with a co-conspirator. Mudd was a southern sympathiser and had met Booth at least twice, although he claimed he did not recognise him. He may not have known of the assassination. Dr Mudd set Booth's broken leg and allowed him to rest. Booth travelled south with his colleague. They were found at a Virginia farm on 26 April. Booth was shot dead as the barn burned around him; his colleague surrendered.

Dr Mudd was charged with aiding Booth's escape. He and the conspirators were tried by a military tribunal and found guilty. Mudd barely escaped death and was sentenced to life imprisonment at Fort Jefferson, a huge fort in the Dry Tortugas, islands 70 miles off the Florida keys. While imprisoned, he heroically helped treat prisoners and staff during an outbreak of yellow fever. In 1869, President Andrew Johnson, whom the conspirators had also planned to kill, pardoned him. Dr Samuel Mudd died in 1883 at the age of 49, probably of pneumonia.

Samuel Mudd's family did not discuss the story and his son, Dr Thomas Mudd, became angry if his father's name was mentioned. Richard Mudd, Samuel's grandson, learnt that a book written by his aunt claimed that Samuel had been caught up in the frenzy around the assassination when he was only an innocent country doctor doing his duty to a patient. 

Richard studied at Georgetown University in Washington DC in the 1920s, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1921, a master of arts in 1922, an MD in 1926, and a PhD. Proving his grandfather's innocence became his life's work. He told the newspaper USA Today in 2001, “I was going into medicine myself, and I couldn't imagine being treated so brutally for doing a doctor's duty.”

Dr Richard Mudd had a distinguished career as an occupational physician and became medical director of the Chrevrolet Saginaw General Foundry, retiring in 1965. He wrote a dozen scientific papers and spent 22 years compiling the 1465 page Mudd Family in the United States, published in 1951.

Richard Mudd began his crusade to clear his grandfather's name in the 1930s. He maintained that Samuel Mudd was innocent and that his trial by a military tribunal was unconstitutional because he was a civilian and Maryland had functioning civil courts at the time. He gave speeches and lectures, got state legislatures to pass resolutions supporting his cause, and appealed to presidents. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan sent him letters of support, but said they did not have the authority to change the conviction by a military court. He started a campaign of bumper stickers that read, “Free Dr Mudd.” He arranged to place a plaque honouring Dr Mudd at Fort Jefferson. His son-in-law John Michele, a former FBI agent, wrote a pro-Mudd book.

In 1990, Richard Mudd filed a petition with the Army Board for Correction of Medical Records to set aside his grandfather's conviction and remove it from the record in the National Archives. The board agreed, but its decision was rejected by the Department of the Army, which also remarked it was not the board's role to decide historical disputes. Mudd appealed. Arguments will be heard by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in September, when Thomas Mudd, Richard's son, will replace his father as plaintiff.

The phrase “his name is mud” apparently does not refer to Samuel Mudd. “Mud press” was in use before the Civil War to describe scandalous newspapers. Richard Mudd told USA Today in 2001, “I'm very proud that my name is Mudd.”

Predeceased by his wife, Rose, Richard Mudd leaves two sons, four daughters, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Richard Mudd, former occupational physician Michigan (b Washington DC 1901; q Washington DC 1926), died in Saginaw, Michigan, on 21 May 2002.