Theatre tickets from night of Lincoln assassination sell for $262,500

A pair of theatre tickets used on the night Abraham Lincoln was assassinated have sold at auction for $262,500 (£215,453).

The tickets, sold by a Boston auction house, are dated 14 April 1865 and include handwritten details such as the prime front-row seat assignments.

Only one other used ticket, which is in the collection of Harvard University, is known to exist.

John Wilkes Booth shot and killed President Lincoln at Ford’s Theatre.

He entered the presidential box at the venue in Washington DC during the third act of Our American Cousin, which the president was watching with his wife, before firing the fatal shot.

He then jumped onto the stage and escaped through a back door. He was found and shot in Virginia 12 days later.

Mr Lincoln was treated by a doctor in the audience after the shooting but died the next morning.

The auctioned tickets are for section D, seats 41 and 42 – in the front row of the theatre’s upper level and “more or less directly across from the president’s box”, the auction house said.

“Good this night only” is printed on the front, and the top right corners have been clipped off.

The auction house described its pair as “in very good condition” with “some light creasing”.