# President Harding Murdered? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 18, 2000, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882 "2000-03-18T17:27:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lissa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lissa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lissa)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2000, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/1 "2000-03-18T17:27:00Z")
A book I was reading claimed mysterious circumstances in the death of Warren Harding, and broadly hinted that Mrs. Harding might have had something to do with it. Supposedly, Harding had a mistress named Nan Britten, and Mrs. Harding was understandably pissed. She “became hysterical, vowing revenge, screaming ‘I made him, I made him president!’” She confronted her husband, who screamed that he had never loved her, was sick of the whole president thing, and wanted to give it all up to live with Britten and his love child. This scene was witnessed by a Tresury agent. While Harding was in Vancouver, he became gravely ill, and was rushed to San Fransisco, where he seemed to recover. Then, on August 2, he suddenly croaked while Mrs. Harding was reading to him. His physician ruled it a heart attack, and Mrs. Harding refused to allow an autopsy, or a death mask, which was a bit unusual for the times. A year later, the president’s widow was visiting the seemingly healthy physician who kicked the proverbial bucket in the same manner. The book suggested that she offed the doc to “keep her secret safe”. So, what do you guys think? Any truth to this? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2000, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/2 "2000-03-18T17:59:00Z")
Accordng to **NOT SO! Popular Myths About America from Columbus to Clinton** , Paul J. Boller, jr. it is not so. The story first appeared in the book [b[The Strange Death of Warren Harding\*\*, by Gaston Means, formerly of the Justice Department. It was published in 1930. A year or so later, the ghostwriter Means had used, May Dixon Thacker, wrote that she had been duped into writing the book by Means who was a “swindler, blackmailer, and perjurer.” Apparently, there was further information that Means was supposed to provide (including Nan Britton’s diary). When he could not produce that information, Thacker began checking his back story and discovered that his menial job in Justice never brought him near the Whitehouse and the whole thing was a hoax. * * * Tom~ ---
**Author:** ![Ukulele\_Ike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/df788c/32.png) [@Ukulele\_Ike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ukulele_Ike)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2000, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/3 "2000-03-19T06:13:00Z")
_Everyone_ knows that President Harding was found murdered in the Millard Fillmore Memorial Bathtub. ---
**Author:** ![Ringo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/779978/32.png) [@Ringo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ringo)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2000, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/4 "2000-03-19T06:39:00Z")
[Here](http://www.system.missouri.edu/upress/fall1998/ferrhard.htm) is a review of a book, _The Strange Deaths of President Harding_, that the reviewer asserts debunks the tale. That book is recent and was named after the book Tom mentioned. The there’s [this site](http://www.things.org/music/al_stewart/history/warren_harding.html) that claims pretty much what you’ve heard. Absolutely zero documentation, though - hardly compelling. And there is also [Grolier’s](http://gi.grolier.com/presidents/ea/bios/29phard.html) bio that does make the claim that he fathered a child by Nan Britton, but does not speak to the issue of his wife’s complicity in his demise. [Philadelphia Online](http://www.philly.com/packages/clinton/Krt/pastprez/pres/html/f.htm) has a little blurb about another alleged Harding affair. And here’s a snippett from an [interview](http://www.booknotes.org/transcripts/50394.htm) with the author of the book mentioned in the first link: > [@](#): > > Mr. FERRELL: There, indeed, was. Five physicians were in attendance, > including a former president of the American Medical Association and the > current president. The current president was Ray Liven Wilbur, who was at > that time president of Stanford University and formerly the dean of the > Stanford Medical School. All five of them said that he died of apoplexy, > which was an old-fashioned word for stroke. It couldn’t have been a stroke > because a stroke takes at least 10 minutes. He died instantly and that’s a > heart attack. > > LAMB: Why did they say apoplexy? > > Mr. FERRELL: Strangely, or interestingly perhaps, heart attacks were not > well-known, the existence of such possibilities. They were usually defined as > stomach upsets. The first heart attack that was discerned by a physician in a > patient happened in Chicago in 1910. There was an article published in 1912. > And for, perhaps, a decade and more, most physicians did not–either didn’t > read the article or didn’t believe that its author, who was an acutely > intelligent physician, a man named Harek, was correct about this. So they > paid no attention. > > But by the end of the 1920s, cardiology was a going concern. It hardly > existed beyond a nominal point in the early 1920s. I think the doctors simply > did not recognize what they were looking at. Later in that interview the author briefly touches on his disbelief in Nan Britton’s story. Having been POTUS, there are many sites that mention him, but not much material really addressing your question. I will note that Florence Harding died the following year. ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2000, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/5 "2000-03-18T20:51:00Z")
According to _Facts About the Presidents_ by Joseph Nathan Kane, one of the causes of death given for Harding was “enlargement of the heart,” whatever that means. I had an eighth-grade teacher–the kind you don’t dare contradict. She told us that Mrs. Harding “slipped Warren a Mickey Finn,” though she didn’t know whether any of us knew what a Mickey Finn was. And she then said Ïf “If you tell your parents what I just said about Harding, and they ask me, I’ll deny I said it.” (!) ---
**Author:** ![BobT](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/8e8cbc/32.png) [@BobT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobT)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2000, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/6 "2000-03-18T22:09:00Z")
The author of [ital]The Strange Deaths of President Harding[/ital] also mentioned that Harding had blood pressure that was off the charts. I think he was in triple figures in both diastolic and systolic. He wasn’t feeling well during much of his West Coast trip. ---
**Author:** ![pluto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f08c70/32.png) [@pluto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pluto)\ **Post date:** [March 19, 2000, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/7 "2000-03-19T05:38:00Z")
From _Only Yesterday_, by Frederick Lewis Allen, published in 1931: > [@](#): > > A rumor that the President committed suicide by taking poison later gained wide currency through the publication of Samuel Hopkins Adams’s _Revelry_, a novel largely based on the facts of the Harding Administration. Gaston B. Means, a Department of Justice detective and a member of the gang which revolved around Daugherty [a key figure in the Teapot Dome Scandal – pluto], implied only too clearly in _The Strange Death of President Harding_ that the President was poisoned by his wife, with the connivance of Doctor Sawyer. The motive, according to Means, was a double one: Mrs. Harding had found out about Nan Britton and the illegitimate daughter and was consumed with a bitter and almost insane jealousy; and she had learned enough about the machinations of Harding’s friends and the power that they had over him to feel that only death could save him from obloquy. Both the suicide theory and the Means story are very plausible. The ptomaine poisoning came, it was said, from eating crab meat on the presidential boat on the return from Alaska, but the list of supplies in the steward’s pantry contained no crab meat and no one else in the presidential party was taken ill…and the verdict of the physicians not being based on an autopsy, was hardly more than an expression of opinion. Yet it is not necessary to accept any such melodramatic version of the tragedy to acknowledge that Harding died a victim of the predicament in which he was caught. He knew too much of what had been going on in his administration to be able to face the future…Whatever killed him–poison or heart failure–did so the more easily because he had lost the will to live. In a later passage (further charges were brought by Means in 1930): > [@](#): > > Finally, Means drew attention to the astonishing mortality among those who had been in on the secrets of the gang. Not only had Smith dropped out of the picture, but also John T. King (who had received the Merton bonds), C. F. Hately (a Departmeent of Justice agent), C. F. Cramer (attorney for the Veteran’s Bureau), Thurston (the Boston Lawyer who represented many clients…), T. B. Felder (attorney for the Harding group), President Harding, Mrs. Harding, and General Sawyer. They had all died–most of them suddenly–within a few years of the end of the Harding Administration. ## Fortunately, these figures are long gone and we are currently enjoying “the most ethical administration in the history of the White House” with such notables as Bill Clinton, Janet Reno and Al “I didn’t know it was a fund-raiser” Gore saving us from further scandal and embarassment. “You have no choice but to be impressed.” Tony Rothman and George Sudarshan _Doubt and Certainty_ ---
**Author:** ![dougie\_monty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@dougie\_monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dougie_monty)\ **Post date:** [March 20, 2000, 10:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/president-harding-murdered/8882/8 "2000-03-20T22:19:00Z")
Hey, Pluto, as long as we’re discussing scandals, let’s take up Kenneth Starr. I don’t mean his effort to depose Bill Clinton, I mean his successfull effort to obstruct justice while he was working in the legal department of General Motors. [sarcasm] Goo0d for the USA? [/sarcasm]