Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(10-13-2018 04:31 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  Was an autopsy photo ever taken? Thanks to Steve for sending this article from the April 1, 1891, edition of the Buffalo Commercial. Lawrence Gardner, son of Alexander Gardner, gives his account: [snip]

With all due respect to the Gardners, Alexander Gardner was practically a government employee during the war and was close to senior figures in the War Department. Not only do we have Wardell's detailed first-hand account of watching the autopsy photo being developed and of his delivering it to Baker, but we have a contemporary report in the New York Tribune, published the next day, based on sources who were at the autopsy, stating that "a photographic view of the body was taken before it was removed from the Monitor" (Katz, Witness to An Era, p. 160).

In any case, Lawrence Gardner's account seems to me to be devastating for the claim that the body was Booth. Even though L. Gardner went along with the identification, his account is further confirmation that the body looked nothing like Booth. Importantly, L. Gardner said the body had a heavy beard ("quite a growth of beard"), and that the face was very much freckled. I think his observation is worth quoting again:

Quote:On removing the tarpaulin from the body, we were all struck by the lack of any resemblance to Booth. We had a number of photographs [of Booth] with us and endeavored by comparison to find a likeness between the photographs and the body, but there was no resemblance. The hair was very black and the cheek bones quite prominent, and these were about the only things that gave it any semblance to the photograph. On the face was quite a growth of beard, probably that of a week or ten days, and it was evident from the features that there had been great bodily suffering.

I had seen Booth but once in my life, and that was at the National Theater for a moment on the afternoon of the assassination. and I must say I could see but little resemblance to the man I met on that day. His face was very much freckled, as a result of exposure. ("Wilkes Booth's Body: The Story of Its Identification," Buffalo Commercial, April 1, 1891)

"Very much freckled" as a result of "exposure"? That does not work. Intermittent "exposure" to the elements for 10 days is not going to produce a bunch of freckles on a person's face. When Booth was forced to hide outdoors during those 10 days, he naturally would have remained in the shade. Furthermore, the top part of the corpse was covered for most of the trip to the Montauk, so the dead body's face would have had minimal exposure.

Heavy freckling does not occur as a result of intermittent exposure to sunlight for just 10 days. When I was in the Army and I did combat training exercises in hot environments, including the Mojave Desert, my fellow soldiers and had to spend many hours per day exposed to intense sunlight. We could not stop to find shade, and some of those training exercises lasted up to two weeks. I never saw anyone develop freckles as a result of that prolonged exposure to sunlight. I never developed any freckling as a result of that exposure.

As for L. Gardner's belief that the heavy beard growth happened in just a week or 10 days, there is no way that a normally beardless person is going to grow "quite a growth of beard" in 10 days, especially given the stress that Booth's body was under during those 10 days. Try it some time. My hair grows very quickly--I would say above average quickly--but I can't grow "quite a growth of beard" in 10 days. After 10 days, people can tell that you are starting to grow a beard, but no one would describe it as "quite a growth of beard."