Identification of Booth's body

[RJNorton]

A person aboard the Montauk who said he saw the J.W.B. initials was John Peddicord. The article below is from the Roanoke Evening News, June 6, 1903, and it was posted last year by another forum member.

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I might add that Asia Booth Clarke's memoir was still unpublished at the time of Peddicord's statement, so he would not have known that she had written, "He had perfectly shaped hands, and across the back of one he had clumsily marked, when a little boy, his initials in India ink."

In the article Peddicord noted that the letters were "in pale, straggling characters, 'J.W.B.', as a boy would have done it."