The Attempted Assassination ofTheodore Roosevelt

During a stop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on his 1912 Bull Moose campaign for the presidency, former president Theodore Roosevelt was shot at close range by John Schrank, a psychotic New York saloonkeeper. Schrank had his .38 caliber pistol aimed at Roosevelt's head but a bystander saw the gun and deflected Schrank's arm just as the trigger was pulled. Roosevelt did not realize he was hit until someone noticed a hole in his overcoat. When Roosevelt reached inside his coat, he found blood on his fingers. Roosevelt was extremely lucky. He had the manuscript of a long, 50-page speech in his coat pocket, folded in two, and the bullet was no doubt slowed as it passed through it. He also had a steel spectacle case in his pocket, and the bullet traversed this, too, before entering Roosevelt's chest near the right nipple. Although the bullet traveled about three inches after breaking the skin, it lodged in the chest wall without entering the pleural space. Roosevelt was examined in a Milwaukee hospital where he reluctantly allowed the surgeons to administer an injection of tetanus anti-toxin and then was observed for eight days in a Chicago hospital. He was discharged on October 23, 1912, only a few days before the election. The bullet had effectively stopped Roosevelt's campaign. He finished second to Woodrow Wilson but ahead of the incumbent President, William Howard Taft. The bullet was never removed and caused no difficulty after the wound healed. Roosevelt lived over six years with the bullet inside him; he died at age 60 on January 6, 1919.