Identification of Booth's body

[L Verge]

While searching for an answer to someone else's question today, I referred to Terry Alford's Fortune's Fool and then flipped to the inquest portion to see what Terry had to say: pp. 316-322, "...Fred Oarley...jumped up to observe the heavyweights [coming on board the USS Mahopac] Brig Gen. Joseph Holt, JAG of the Army, Congressman John A. Bingham, Republican stalwart from Ohio; Col. Lafayette C. Baker, head of the National Detective Police; Dr. Joseph Barnes, Surgeon-General of the U.S.; Major Thomas T. Eckert,...chief of the War Department telegraph office. Stanton and Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles had dispatched these men to the Washington Navy Yard to examine the remains of Booth, which reposed on the nearby Montauk. ...one reached the Montauk by use of the Mahopac's small cutter, Oarley was pressed into duty as ferryman for the officials." Here, I will resort to bullet points to get the main points across:

* ...Barnes stepped onto the Montauk as if he owned it and went immediately to the carpenter's bench , took a knife, and cut away the wrappings of the corpse (remember that Booth had been sewed into blankets at the Garrett house).
* "That's it," said Patrick Stafford, one of the Montauk's firemen standing nearby. "That's Booth." "Look at that," said Dr. George B. Todd, the vessel's surgeon, pointing to the marks on Booth's left hand. "What do you make that out to be?" Stafford leaned in to take a look, then straightened up. "J.W.B."
* Barnes had doubts that the soldiers had caught Booth. New York newspapers had described the actor as a "whilom fop," but the body was no longer that of a dandy. soiled clothing, remains smelled. hair was ineptly clipped and badly matted, no mustache at all, just a stubble of beard. The face was wild and worn and older than its years. The lower part was discolored by extravasation of blood -- freckled.
* Hundreds wanted to see also, but most were turned away at the Navy Yard gate, but dozens got an opportunity - steady stream of officers, sailors, marines, yard employees, carpenters, mechanics, and lucky civilian visitors.
* One of those allowed on was Seaton Munroe, whose brother was a Marine captain. Munroe was also a lawyer and man-about-town who knew Booth personally, so he was invited by Eckert to view the body. "I was soon gazing at the remains which needed no long inspection to enable me to recognize them." Munroe gave a statement to that effect to Holt and company. "I am confident that it is the dead body of John Wilkes Booth."
* Dr. May described the scar without looking at it so well that Barnes remarked on it. May said it would appear as an ugly scar or a burn rather than a proper surgical incision since it had been torn open while healing. May also asked that the body be put in a sitting position so that he could study the face. After careful scrutiny, May saw the familiar features and declared that he had no doubt that it was Booth's body.
* The autopsy began at 2 pm under an awning. Barnes removed the dressing around the body's left leg -- swollen and black to the knee, looked dreadful -- small artery had ruptured, resulting in considerable hemorrhaging under the skin -- fractured bone had cut its way through the flesh and protruded -- the wound had become gangrenous -- in one opinion, Booth could not have lived many more days. None of this was mentioned by Barnes in his official statement. However, it is consistent with Ruggles's or Bainbridge's later description.
* Barnes and Dr. J.J. Woodward raised the corpse again and measured the death wound to the half inch. Body lowered and board placed under the shoulders so that the head dropped backwards to expose the neck. Barnes used dissecting scissors and a spine chisel to open the neck and excise the affected vertebrae. Munroe saw "mutilated bone and viscera and blood-stained rags" from where he was standing. A Private Landes later wrote in his diary that it looked like a decapitation, "First man I seen without a head."
* The doctors duly noted the obvious: killed by a bullet fired at a distance of a few yards, fractured vertebrae and perforated spinal cord traveling through the neck with a slight inclination downward and to the rear. Large blood vessels were untouched - general paralysis immediate.
* "Booth must have suffered as much as if he had been broken on the wheel," observed Dr. Woodward.
* Vertebrae three to five as well as a piece of whitish spinal cord were wrapped in stout brown paper and given to the new Army Medical Museum. Barnes's messenger George Hallowell, was handed a piece of muscle tissue with embedded bone fragments. Body was resewn into its shroud of army blankets.

All of this is carefully cited in Dr. Alford's notes, and I have to add that having known Terry for over thirty years - about twenty of which were research years - he depends heavily on primary sources and documented secondary sources.

And now, Mr. Griffith, since you are convincing very few of us (hopefully none), and we will obviously never convince you, why don't we just hang this topic up and stop repeating the same things over and over again? Is there another, unrelated Lincoln topic that you might have questions about?