Booth's mistress, Ella Starr, and other "unknown" Booth ladies!

[Jenny]

I forgot to post this but I did find the copy of that note a while back. Here it is for those interested. Looks like it was "boy" and "E.S." as opposed to "baby" and "E.T."

Envelope:


Note:


Note that the "E.S." letters are identical to the letters of Ella's signature in her police statement.

Speaking of the police statement, I was actually showing it to a friend who noticed a potential mistake overlooked by historians. Ella Starr is often cited as "Nellie Starr" or "Ella Starr," "Ella Turner," and "Fannie Harrison." Well, my friend immediately pointed out that the "Fannie Harrison" signature is NOT the same handwriting as Ella Starr's nor the individual who wrote down most of the statement.

That means three people wrote on the document: the Justice of the Peace who wrote out the entire statement in bold, narrow lettering, Ella Starr who signs once in the middle as "Nellie Starr" and then writes the word "Washington" and again signs, this time as "Ella Starr," at the bottom. The third person? That would be whoever wrote the name "Fannie Harrison" next to "Ella Starr."

Check this out. I underlined Ella Starr's handwriting in red and the "Fannie Harrison" signature in blue (I didn't bother to mark the handwriting of the authority that takes the actual statement).


Closer comparison:


My opinion on this? I believe that Ella did not go alone when she was arrested the first time and gave this statement (apparently around six in the morning on the 15th before her suicide attempt later that day and her second arrest on the 17th).

If the police came to get her at five/six in the morning, everyone in the house was most likely asleep. I am sure the police probably woke everyone in the entire house up, and perhaps one of the other prostitutes/a boarder, a lady named Fannie Harrison, saw Ella in her distress and volunteered to accompany her to the police station. Thus when Ella gave her statement to police, the woman Fannie Harrison would have been with her. The Justice of the Peace would have had this woman sign the statement as well as Ella because she was a witness to the taking of the statement and Ella signing it. I don't really see any other explanation. Fannie Harrison was not an alias of Ella's. She was someone else entirely in my opinion.

Thoughts?