Evening Star (Washington, D.C.)
11 May 1865
THE ALLEGED CONSPIRATORS
More about Doctor Tumblety - New facts.
(From the Rochester Union, 9th.)
As Tumblety resided in Rochester many years, and is well known here to
almost all our citizens, we need not tell them that
the stories floating about in the newspapers are erroneous. His name is J.
H. Tumblety, and Blackburn is an alias he has
assumed somewhere. His mother resides here still, and he has other
relatives, all respectable citizens. He is of Irish
origin, and no half breed, and has no Indian blood. He will be remembered
by many, some fifteen years or more since, as a
peddler of books upon the cars, and subsequently in other avocations, not
long in any one here in town. He once had an office
in Smith's Block, where he went by the name of Philip Sternberg, and
treated a certain class of diseases. When one H. J.
Lyons, an "Indian Herb Doctor", had an office over the Post Office,
Tumblety used to be with him, and he probably picked up
the information requisite to start him in his profession there. When ready
to go abroad as a full fledged "yarb" Doctor, he
procured a certificate of character, signed by a dozen or twenty of our
most respectable citizens, who gave their names not
knowing that he intended to practice medicine. Tumblety went to Toronto
and there put out his shingles as a physician, and
published the names he had procured here. When the papers came back those
who had signed the certificate of character were
much annoyed.
Subsequently Tumblety was arrested at Toronto on the instigation of the
regular faculty as a quack, and he was taken before a
court. There he produced some kind of a certificate which he had obtained
from a Philadelphia College, and escaped with a
fine of twenty pounds, which he paid, and resumed practice with
considerable eclat. Subsequently he had a difficulty in
Montreal, which cost him a considerable sum to get out, but all tended to
give him the notoriety he sought, and he probably
made a great deal of money by being prosecuted by the "regulars." He
afterwards figured at Buffalo and other cities along the
borders.
When the war broke out he appeared at Washington, and was once gazetted as
a surgeon on the staff of General McClellan, but
this was subsequently denied and explained. Tumblety has not been here
that we can hear of in three or four years. Reports
state that he was arrested in St. Louis. He will probably get notoriety
enough out of his last arrest to gratify his ambition
in that direction for a lifetime, if he is able to show that he is
innocent. Those who knew him best say that he was no
politician, and they think he would not be likely to engage in such a
diabolical scheme as that in which his man servant,
Herold, was concerned. This is, we believe, a truthful sketch of "Dr.
Tumblety" so far as it goes.