Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

Now that I have had the chance to read all of what Dr. May said about Booth’s neck surgery and the body ID on the Montauk, several points come to mind:

* If Charles Dawson really did see the initials “JWB” tattooed on one of the body’s hands, why did no one else who identified the body mention this crucial evidence? When Dr. May expressed disbelief that the body was Booth, why didn’t Holt or Eckert or Bingham or Baker say, “Hey, Doc, look at the initials ‘JWB’ that the National Hotel clerk Charles Dawson noticed on one of the hands”?

No, I do not buy the story of Sgt. John Peddicord, given in 1903, that while helping to guard the body on the Montauk, he lifted the blanket that covered the body and—talk about lucky—just happened to lift the blanket in just the right spot to see the initials “JWB” on the back of one of the hands. Peddicord even conveniently added the detail that the letters looked like they were written by a “boy.” Of course, by then the whole world knew that as a youth, Booth had used India ink to write his initials on one of his hands. Furthermore, with all the brass and others hanging around the body, are we to believe that no one noticed Peddicord lifting the blanket?

When Holt interrogated the other Montauk identification witnesses, he never asked any of them if they had seen the initials “JWB” on one of the hands. He asked them if they had identified the body based on any peculiar or specific features, but said nothing about any initials on the hands. From all appearances, Holt did not know about the initials until Dawson mentioned them when Holt took his statement after the identification. So Dawson said nothing about the initials to anyone when he viewed the body? Would he not have naturally called this specific evidence to everyone’s attention?

I suspect that Dawson did not see any initials on the body’s hands but that he claimed he did because he had seen the initials on Booth’s hand at the National Hotel when Booth signed for rooms, signed bills, etc. If Dawson did see the initials on one of the hands, it is extremely odd that no one else saw them or knew anything about them during the identification.

* Some place great importance on Dr. Barnes’ and Dr. May’s statements that Dr. May “described” the wound on the neck “before he saw it.” But in his first statement, Dr. May reported that he merely told Barnes that the scar would be “a large ugly-looking scar.” He said nothing about describing its location or its size, just that it was “a gaping wound, which had to fill up by the process of granulation” and that this caused it to leave “a large ugly-looking scar.”

For one thing, Dr. May would not have been able to positively identify a large granulation scar as a scar that he made.

Additionally, there were thousands of soldiers walking around who had large scars on the back of their neck—from shrapnel, from bullets that grazed their neck, from exposure to fire when the woods around them caught fire (as happened in several battles), from hand-to-hand combat, from bar fights, etc., etc. So that was hardly a “unique” feature, and both doctors surely knew it.

Indeed, Dr. Barnes said that the scar’s only “peculiar appearance” was that it looked like a burn scar instead of an incision scar, which is not “peculiar” at all. Furthermore, burn scars usually look different from incision scars, because of the nature of the damage they do to the skin.

* In this 1887 article “The Mark of the Scalpel,” Dr. May claimed that he told Barnes about the scar’s “position, size, and general appearance,” but this is not what May said in his statement 22 years earlier. Nor did Dr. Barnes say anything about Dr. May describing the scar’s location and size. In fact, Barnes merely said that Dr. May stated that the scar looked like a burn scar because the wound had been reopened before it had finished healing (The Conspiracy Trial for the Murder of the President, Ben Poore transcript, volume 2, p. 61)

* In his 1887 article, Dr. May also claimed that at his request the body was “placed in a sitting position.” Not that it really matters, but no one else mentioned this being done.

* Surprisingly, few writers have noted Dr. May’s statement in his 1887 article that the body’s “lineaments” bore “no resemblance” to those of Booth. This statement appears just before his observation that there was no resemblance between the body and Booth. Let us read it in context:

Quote:The body was on deck, completely concealed by a tarpaulin cover, and Surgeon General Barnes and his assistants standing near it. By his order the cover was removed, and to my great astonishment revealed a body in whose lineaments [distinctive features] there was to me no resemblance of the man I had known in life! My surprise was so great that I at once said to General Barnes, "There is no resemblance in that corpse to Booth, nor can I believe it to be that of him." (“The Mark of the Scalpel,” p. 55)

This is important because “lineaments” is a medical term for “distinctive features, especially of the face.” Thus, Dr. May was saying that not one of the body’s—especially the face’s—distinctive features bore any resemblance to Booth.

Lafayette Baker, who got a very good, prolonged look at the body on the Montauk, said the body was fairly well preserved:

Quote:At Washington, high and low turned out to look on Booth. Only a few were permitted to see his corpse for purposes of recognition. It was fairly preserved, though on one side of the face distorted, and looking blue like death, and wildly bandit-like, as if beaten by avenging winds. (History of the United States Secret Service, Philadelphia, 1867, p. 506)

So Dr. May should have been able to recognize the body as Booth if it was in fact Booth’s body. Yet, when he saw the body, he said the distinctive features bore no resemblance to Booth’s, that there was “no resemblance” between the body and Booth, and that he could not believe it was Booth.

* Baker’s comment that “high and low turned out to look on Booth” is especially interesting and important because Dr. May stated in his 1887 article that there was great doubt that the body on the Montauk was Booth and that he believed that this was why he was called to identify it. Said Dr. May,

Quote:After the death of Booth, strong doubt existed whether the body brought to the Navy Yard at Washington was that of the man who had assassinated the President. In fact, it was openly asserted that it was not his body. Probably in consequence of this, a commission of high functionaries of the government was formed to obtain evidence as to its identification, and I received a summons to appear before it. (“The Mark of the Scalpel,” p. 54)

Dr. May was talking about the autopsy and identification on the Montauk. The “commission” consisted of Baker, Holt, Eckert, and Bingham, all of whom were present at the autopsy. Holt took Dr. May’s statement on the Montauk later in the day.

Why were people “openly” claiming that the body was not Booth? Because, as Baker stated, people “high and low” showed up to see the body, which is hardly surprising, but only a hand-picked few were allowed to see it, whereas in previous cases involving the body of a notorious murderer, such as John Brown, there was no such secrecy (much less a hurried and secret burial).

* In his April 27 statement, Dr. May stated that the body was “freckled” and that he did not recall that Booth “was at all freckled.” Booth was not freckled, and no case of livor mortis is going to magically cause a corpse to develop freckles.

* In his 27 April statement, Dr. May said something that could indicate that the body had a beard. He made this comment in the context of contrasting how the body looked with how Booth looked: "When he came to my office he had no beard, excepting a moustache."

This is interesting because Detective Wardell said that the body had “a growth on his chin” and that it had a “shaggy and dirty” moustache (D. Mark Katz, Witness to An Era: The Life and Photographs of Alexander Gardner, Rutledge Hill Press, 1991, p. 162, quoting Wardell’s detailed August 5, 1896, letter to historian Osborn Oldroyd). Wardell, who carried the one and only autopsy photo to Baker, defended the suppression of the autopsy photo and also stated that he believed the body was Booth. But Wardell apparently did not know that Booth shaved his moustache at Dr. Mudd’s house and was never known to wear a beard—and 10 days is not enough time to grow a shaggy moustache nor to grow what anyone would call a beard, especially in Booth’s weakened condition.

* Finally, neither Dr. Barnes nor Dr. May mentioned seeing Booth’s dentist, Dr. William Merrill on the Montauk, much seeing him make an identification based on dental evidence. There is no statement by Merrill in the official records, and his name does not appear on the military commission’s list of witnesses. If Merrill had identified the body as Booth based on dental evidence, this would have been much stronger evidence than the presence of “a large ugly-looking scar” on the back of the neck. Holt would have taken Merrill’s statement and would have hammered home the identification of two fillings in the same teeth that Merrill had filled with fillings in Booth’s mouth.

Tellingly, there is some evidence that Merrill did come to the Montauk. We can safely assume that if Merrill was there and examined the body, his findings were unacceptable to Baker and Holt et al, which would explain why his statement/report is nowhere to be found and why he was not even listed as a witness.