Booth's Body

[Dr. Todd Descendant]

I like this photo of a supposed Booth body exposition from the Hagley Museum and Library collection: http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/ref/collec...ll8/id/180

I'm sure the Booth family loved that. I wonder whose mummified remains were making the rounds in that exhibition.

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I recommend the R. B. Garrett Letter in the Ida Tarbell Collection that Rob Wick mentioned a few weeks ago on the body on the monitor. Garrett says it was Booth, no question about it.

As to the removed vertebrae--they were evidence?

I would think without the photographic evidence to support their origin, the vertebral pieces wouldn't be worth much from an evidentiary standpoint. Yes? How would those pieces prove anything? We live in a world of DNA evidence and such. One could truly get away with murder back then.

I've reread that news article from 1865 linked to early in this thread by me, and wonder not if the corpse on the deck was Booth, but whether the body being rowed out was his. Perhaps the government was concerned that some shifty folks might attempt to steal the body and - I don't know - take it around the carnival circuit? grin