How accurate is Death by Lightning? Fact-checking new Netflix series

Death By Lightning is a new historical drama currently receiving rave reviews, but how much of the Netflix series is true?

Death by Lightning stars Michael Shannon as 20th President of the United States James A. Garfield, and Matthew Macfadyen as the man who assassinated him, Charles Guiteau.

All four episodes are now streaming on Netflix, and the series kicks off with these words onscreen: “This is a true story about two men the world forgot. One was the 20th President of the United States. The other shot him.”

But just how true is Death by Lightning? The following breaks down the veracity of four key moments in the show. SPOILERS ahead…

Was Charles Guiteau’s brain kept in a jar?

Yes, the US government really kept assassin Charles Guiteau’s brain in a jar.

The show commences with that jar being found in an Army Medical Museum in Washington DC in 1969. According to Death by Lightning creator Mike Makowsky – who was speaking to USA Today – the authoroties did indeed cut Guiteau’s brain out of his head to keep as a medical specimin.

“I don’t think that doctors in the time were equipped to look through a brain and understand,” says Makowsky. “So they sort of just saved it for the future and then forgot about it for a number of years.”

The showrunner says he got a chance to view the brain, which is currently stored on a medical base in Maryland.

Did the President have no protection?

Yes, 19th century Presidents didn’t have security detail, with the Secret Service only taking responsibility for the President’s protection at the start of the 20th century.

“Presidents at the time would have office hours, essentially, everyday in the White House,” says Makowsky. “Anybody could show up and have an audience with their president.”

That’s depicted in the show via a somewhat chaotic meeting with constituents.

“It was incomprehensible to men of Garfield’s era that anyone would ever want to go out and shoot a president, even though, of course, 15 years prior Lincoln had been killed,” adds Makoswky. “But he was killed days after the Civil War. And it was a very, very, very politically charged moment.”

Indeed, the show’s title comes from a grimly ironic Garfield quote that’s said during Episode 3, when wife Lucretia asks about paid protection, and James responds: “Assassination could be no more guarded against than death by lightning – it’s best not to worry too much about either one.”

Was James A. Garfield loyal to his wife?

No. Before he became President – but while married to Lucreita – James Garfield might have had an affair with Kate Sprague, the partner of his political rival Roscoe Conkling.

The affair isn’t depicted in the show, but Garfield does admit his weaknesses to Lucretia – pictured above in the series – saying she’s the one person who knows that he’s the furthest thing from “a great man.”

Makowsky says of the alleged affair: “At a minimum, she and Garfield at one point, when Garfield was more rooted in the Washington scene, the two of them enjoyed a very close friendship.”

Was Garfield killed by an infection?

Yes, while Guiteau shot him in the back in the middle of a station, it’s likely that the President was killed by an infection caused by his doctors, or some other source.

In Death by Lightning, a doctor warns the surgeon working on Garfield about sepsis, and complains that his equipment is not properly sanitized. In response, the surgeon calls his fears “superstition, not science.”

According to a PBS article (as per USA Today), Garfield’s death was indeed caused by sepsis during his aftercare: “The doctors’ dirty hands and fingers are often blamed as the vehicle that imported the infection into the body.

“But given that Garfield was a surgical and gunshot-wound patient in the germ-ridden, dirty Gilded Age, a period when many doctors still laughed at germ theory, there might have been many other sources of infection as well.”