Harding died in San Francisco on August 2, 1923, after falling ill during a western trip. Early explanations differed, and Florence Harding declined an autopsy. Those circumstances help explain public suspicion. The Miller Center describes underlying cardiovascular problems and assesses a heart attack as the most likely cause. [1]
The rumor developed in stages: surprise at the death, contradictory reports, growing knowledge of administration corruption, then a 1930 book giving the suspicion a detailed murder story. Gaston Means’s The Strange Death of President Harding implicated Florence. Its publication came after her death, when she could not answer it. In 1931 his coauthor, May Dixon Thacker, repudiated the account as a hoax. [2]
The absence of an autopsy leaves limits on retrospective diagnosis. It does not positively establish poison, suicide or a plot to silence the president. Modern historical assessments favor natural causes; they do not depend on proving that every decision by his doctors was correct. [1] [2]
The scandal’s genuine corruption gave the murder story an emotionally convincing setting. A convincing setting is still different from toxicology, a reliable confession or corroborated evidence of an assassin. The murder claim remains unsupported by the sources linked here.