Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

Something else that bothers me about Dr. May's claim that he recognized the neck scar on the body as the scar he made on Booth's neck is that apparently Dr. May only saw the wound shortly after it had been reopened and never saw it again. He said Booth came to see him "about a week" after the wound had "united" and explained that it had been reopened during a play when an actress grabbed him too roughly around the neck. Dr. May said the wound would now have to heal by granulation. Granulation does not even begin until about five days after the wound has occurred and typically takes three weeks for a minor wound, longer for a larger wound. So when Dr. May saw Booth and his reopened wound, the granulation process had not even begun or had just barely begun, and Dr. May said nothing about ever seeing Booth again. Leaving aside the fact that it is virtually impossible to distinguish one granulation scar from another as long as they are about the same size and location, how would Dr. May have known how the scar looked after it had completed the granulation process if he never saw Booth again?

Also, I am struck by the unbelievable amount of incriminating evidence that was allegedly found on the body. Conger and others claimed that they found the following items on the body after they pulled it out of the barn: Booth's diary, pictures of girlfriends, a pin with a stone engraved to "J. W. Booth," and six personal letters to Booth's friends! Holy cow, Batman! What a mother load of damning evidence to be found on a guy who was fleeing for his life and who was trying to hide his identity! So we are supposed to believe that Booth shaved his mustache at Dr. Mudd's house to try to avoid being easily recognized, but he carried a mother load of evidence that revealed his identity.

Any man with an ounce of common sense who was running from the law would have avoided carrying any paper or item that could have identified him. If anything, he would have been carrying fake papers. Booth quickly found out that practically the whole country detested him for what he had done, and he knew that federal soldiers would be crawling all over every conceivable escape route. But we are supposed to believe that he carried on his person an astounding amount of evidence that gave away his identity.

True, the six personal letters went "missing" and have never been seen since they were supposedly found on the body, but the point is that federal officers on the scene swore that they found the six letters on the body.

A word about the point that Peddicord described the JWB initials that he allegedly saw as being "pale, straggling characters . . . as a boy would have done it" before Asia Booth Clarke's book was published. A few points come to mind:

* One, I would repeat the point that Peddicord's story, given in 1906 (41 years after the fact), contains several obvious holes, chief among them being his failure to mention the alleged Todd-Stafford finding of the initials, which would have occurred right in front of him if it happened and if his story were true, and his fantastic tale that he and Sgt. Harley, "while eating" no less, uncovered the body's face, pulled out a photo of Booth that they just happened to have with them, compared the photo to the body's face, and saw that the face and the photo matched.

What amazing luck that two sergeants assigned just that evening to guard the Montauk just happened, by cosmic coincidence, to have a photo of Booth on them!

Not surprisingly, Sgt. Hartley, writing in 1926 (61 years after the fact), corroborated Peddicord's tale in a letter. Neither man ever explained why they had a photo of Booth with them. Moreover, Hartley implied that the initials he supposedly saw were on the arm: he said he had to "strip up the sleeve" to see them.

Dr. Steers buys this in its entirety and presents it as valid evidence (Blood on the Moon, pp. 264-265).

* Two, leaving aside the dubious nature of Peddicord's story, let us assume for the sake of argument that Peddicord did in fact see the JWB initials on the back of the hand. His description of the writing could just as easily match an attempt by an adult to write the initials on the back of a hand of the dead body. We must remember that they did not have ball-point pens back then. Try using an old-fashioned stylus pen to write letters on the back of your hand. The result might well look like the writing was done by a child.

Finally, some traditionalist authors quote Army surgeon G. L. Porter's claim, made in 1911 (46 years after the fact), that he saw the initials JWB on the body--on the right hand of the body--when he helped bury the body in the Old Arsenal Penitentiary . They usually fail to mention that Porter also claimed that the face was "unmarred" and that it had no mustache (and apparently no chin hair either--or at least Porter mentioned none):

Quote:Booth’s handsome countenance was unmarred by the agony of his lingering death. His moustache and the long lock of hair which had hung down his forehead Booth cut off at the house of Dr. Mudd, where he had stopped in his flight. ("How Booth's Body Was Hidden," The Columbian, 1911, p. 68, available at https://ia800208.us.archive.org/8/items/...0port.pdf)

So what's it going to be? No mustache or a big, dirty mustache? A face that was unrecognizable as Booth and a face whose "lineaments" bore no resemblance to Booth, or a face that was "unmarred" and that matched his photo? A little stubble on the chin or "quite a growth of beard"? JWB initials with stars around them, or JWB initials with no stars around them? JWB initials on the left hand, or the left wrist, or the left forearm, or the right hand?