David Herold - the Truth Told

[RJNorton]

Thanks for posting, Betty. It is an interesting article. I think what may have happened is that some authors followed the lead set by Osborn Oldroyd (1901). Oldroyd wrote about David Herold as follows:

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"David was a stupid, insignificant looking young man, with slender frame, and irresolute, cowardly appearance. He had a narrow forehead, small, dark hazel eyes, thick black hair, and an incipient mustache. At one time he took up pharmacy for a livelihood, and clerked at three different drug stores, the last one for W. S. Thompson, who kept on the southwest corner of Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. For eleven months he was employed in the drug store of Francis S. Walsh, 608 Eighth Street S. E., and during that time lived at his house. While there Mr. Walsh found nothing objectionable in his character, but in many ways he was unstable, and very little reliability could be placed in him. Although twenty-three years of age, he was more like a boy than a man. His conversation was light and trifling, and he was very easily persuaded and led. It is, then, no surprise that such a boy was only wax in the hands of a man of determined and resolute will, of pleasing and fascinating manners, such as J. Wilkes Booth."