26 Facts About Lew Bloom

Decades after his death, art conservators discovered that Bloom was the perpetrator of an art forgery involving an oil portrait that he claimed depicted First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln.

Lew Bloom was born Ludwig Pflum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Ludwig and Louisa Pflum.

The family eventually moved to Reading, Pennsylvania, where Lew Bloom attended Poplar Street School.

Around 1871, the family moved to Williamsburg where Lew Bloom began working as a jockey.

Lew Bloom spent several years touring in variety shows with his jockey act before relocating to Dover, Delaware, where he competed in horse match races.

Lew Bloom then returned to Reading where he and a friend opened the Drovers' Hotel.

Lew Bloom performed song and dance acts at the hotel and began competing as a lightweight boxer.

Lew Bloom later became the stage manager for his friend's second establishment, The General Taylor Hotel.

The duo performed song and dance numbers and comedy skits in blackface until Lew Bloom left the duo and went to New York to perform comedy as a solo act.

In 1885, Lew Bloom was cast in the play Nobody's Claim, followed by a role in The Red Spider in 1888.

Lew Bloom's "Society Tramp" character was a philosophical, shabbily dressed homeless man who drank frequently and was generally treated poorly by other characters.

Typically, tramp characters like Lew Bloom's included slapstick comedy routines as well as dancing or pantomime.

At least one critic during that time said that Lew Bloom had become "the worst act on the bill" of vaudeville shows.

Lew Bloom later moved to New York and occasionally returned to his hometown of Reading to spend time with his family and attend Elks Club meetings.

Lew Bloom trained horses for Metropolitan Race Clubs in the New York and Pennsylvania area and in Cuba.

On December 10,1929, Lew Bloom was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, New York City.

Lew Bloom died there two days later of "complication of diseases" at the age of 70.

Lew Bloom was buried at Charles Evans Cemetery the following morning.

In early 1929, Lew Bloom made news when he announced that he had acquired a previously unknown oil portrait of former First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln, the widow of slain president Abraham Lincoln.

Lew Bloom claimed shortly before President Lincoln was assassinated on April 14,1865, Mary Lincoln commissioned painter Francis Bicknell Carpenter to paint a portrait of her as gift to her husband.

Bauman determined that Lew Bloom, who painted his own works, had likely altered the original portrait himself.

Bauman believed Lew Bloom painted over the original portrait, forged Carpenter's name and created the fake affidavit.

Susan Lew Bloom was born in 1855 and was only five years old when Anna Neafie died in 1860.

James M Cornelius, the curator of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, believes that Bloom was able to pull off the hoax because all the participants in his story were unable to refute his story as they were dead.

Cornelius believes that Lew Bloom sought out the Lincolns not only make money from the sale of the portrait but to legitimatize its authenticity.

Lew Bloom was likely aware that the surviving Lincolns were eager to portray Mary and her son Robert Todd Lincoln in a positive and sympathetic light after the family had received a great deal of negative publicity after Robert had his mother forcibly institutionalized in 1875.