What happened to Booth after the manhunt

[Lincoln Wonk]

I found this photo in the Hagley Museum archives that gives a good idea of the sideshow fervor around Booth: http://cdm16038.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/r...ll8/id/180[/url]

[L Verge]

Over the years, we have had a number of elderly gentlemen visit Surratt House and tell me that they visited the Booth mummy at sideshows as children. Some said they paid 15 cents to get in and others said 25 cents. If per chance it surfaces again, I suggest that the examiners heed the advice of the late Dr. John K. Lattimer and wear hazardous suits. That mummy should be ticking....

[Jim Page]

I saw what was supposed to be a "Booth mummy" when I was a kid. It was at the Florida State Fair in Tallahassee, if my memory is correct, and the year would have been 1964 or 1965. There's no way of knowing whether the mummy I paid a quarter to see is the one under discussion; it's my understanding that there was more than one of these mummies touring in carnivals and sideshows in those days.

Of the many bizarre sights I saw that day, the one I remember best is the "Bonnie and Clyde Death Car." It was actually worth a quarter to see, but, like the Booth mummy, may have been a phony,

--Jim, Ever Credulous

[Jim Garrett]

There's a mummy????

[LincolnMan]

When you think about it-it's kind of bizarre that it was considered okay to display a "mummy" of anyone, much less those that were purported to be that of JWB- I mean we are talking about people who were once alive. Seems very disrespectful-but I suppose it wasn't thought to be back then.

[Linda Anderson]

(04-03-2013 06:55 AM)LincolnMan Wrote:  When you think about it-it's kind of bizarre that it was considered okay to display a "mummy" of anyone, much less those that were purported to be that of JWB- I mean we are talking about people who were once alive. Seems very disrespectful-but I suppose it wasn't thought to be back then.

I agree that it was disrespectful, Bill. Circuses showed the same sort of disrespect with their side shows.

"The "Ten-in-One" offers a program of ten sequential acts under one tent for a single admission price. The ten-in-one might be partly a freak show exhibiting "human oddities" (including "born freaks" such as midgets, giants or persons with other deformities, or "made freaks" like tattooed people, fat people or "human skeletons"- extremely thin men often "married" to the fat lady, like Isaac W. Sprague)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sideshow#Ty...ttractions

[RJNorton]

I do not recall what book I read this in, but I once read that there were at least 5 alleged Booth skulls and "mummified remains" making the rounds of sideshows and county fairs in the USA. This would be c.1920's-1950's. Possibly this information was in C. Wyatt Evans' book, but my memory is too foggy to be sure.