Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

Three points: one about the 1869 identification, one about the JWB initials and the other tattoos on the hands, and one about the known scars on Booth’s body that nobody mentioned seeing on the body on the Montauk.

The 1869 Identification

It turns out that when the man in the barn's body was exhumed in DC and reburied in Baltimore in 1869, three of the witnesses who were allowed to see the body before it was reburied said the body's teeth had only one filling, but Booth was known to have had at least two fillings. Theodore Roscoe discusses this in The Web of Conspiracy, pp. 528-530.

Because of the greatly decayed condition of the body, Joseph Booth saw the need for dental identification. Miss Chapman recalled that the first thing that Joseph Booth said was that if the body was his brother, “it has but one plugged tooth in its head” (Roscoe, p. 529).

The undertaker, John Weaver, had brought the body to Weaver's funeral home in Baltimore and had also brought a dental chart that was supposed to be Booth’s. When Weaver produced the dental chart and the mouth of the body was examined, only one filling was found therein:

Quote:Mr. Weaver produced a dentist’s chart. Joseph Booth handed it to Charles Bishop. Bishop went to the corpse, drew down the lower jaw, “inserted his fingers and took out the plugged tooth.” It was shown to the witnesses present. (Roscoe, p. 529)

Booth’s biographer, Francis Wilson, sought to explain this problem with the explanation that Booth had had a second filling done shortly before the assassination and that Joseph Booth was unaware of this. Okay, then why was only one filling found in the body’s mouth? “Plugged” teeth, i.e., teeth with fillings, were very easy to spot.

Could this be why Dr. Merrill, Booth's dentist, apparently failed to ID the body on the Montauk on the night of the autopsy? Could this be why there is no official record of his being there that night, why there is no report by him in the records, and why his testimony was not taken by Holt that night, even though there is indeed evidence that Merrill came to the ship that night? Republican newspapers at the time falsely reported that Dr. Merrill had identified the body as Booth based on his teeth, and many books that espouse the traditional story repeat this claim, but there is no official record that even says Merrill was there, much less that he identified the body as Booth.

A logical deduction from all this is that Merrill came, saw that there was only one filled tooth, explained that he had personally done a second filling in Booth’s teeth, saw (as did May and L. Gardner) that the body looked nothing like Booth, and declined to ID the body as Booth. I agree that there is evidence that Merrill was on the ship that night, but there is no trace of his presence or his identification in any of the official records on the autopsy. You can bet that if he had identified the body as Booth, especially based on dental evidence, Holt et al would have made sure the world knew it.

The JWB Initials and the Other Tattoos on the Hands

I do not believe Seaton Munroe knew Booth well. I certainly do not believe his claim that he dined with Booth on the night of the assassination. But Munroe might just have been telling the truth when he said that Dawson told Holt that the JWB initials were written between “the thumb and the forefinger.” Why? Because two credible witnesses, both of whom wrote to the War Department before the autopsy occurred, said that Booth had a tattoo—either his initials or a cross—near one of his thumbs.

J. L. McPhail, the Provost-Marshal General of Maryland, wrote to Stanton on the day Booth was allegedly shot. McPhail was writing from Baltimore, Booth’s home town. He informed Stanton that Booth had a tattoo of a small cross “between the forefinger and thumb” on his left hand, and he added that “across the same hand” there were “several spots” (Official Records, Washington: GPO, 1894, series 1, volume 46, part 3, p. 963, available at https://books.google.com/books?id=YNc4AQ...q&f=true).

H. C. Young of Cincinnati wrote to Stanton before Booth had even been captured. Young explained that he was a loyal citizen, that he had known Booth for years, and that he was anxious to help identify the “villain Booth.” Young said that he was not sure which hand bore the initials but that they were “near the thumb.” Young also mentioned seeing scars on Booth’s “arms and body” and a scar that was either on the side of his head or on his forehead near the hairline. Said Young,

Quote:I have known him well for several years, and have attended on him while sick at the Burnett House in this city about one year ago last month. If I remember right he has several scars on his arms and body and one either on the side of his head or on the forehead at the edge of the hair, all of which, he has told me, he received in stage fights, except one. . . . I also think and am pretty sure that he has the initials J.W.B. in India ink on one of his hands near the thumb. (Roscoe, p. 417)

Yet, not one of the people on the Montauk that night saw a tattooed cross or three-letter initials near the thumb or between the thumb and the forefinger. In addition, the decades-belated witnesses who claimed to have seen the JWB initials, even though they were “pale” and were so small that you had to take a closer look to read them, said nothing about seeing a cross near the thumb and spots “across the same hand.”

None of Booth’s Scars Seen on the Body on the Montauk

Young’s reference to scars on Booth’s arms and body and on the side of his face is corroborated by numerous witnesses and is strong evidence against the claim that Booth’s body was the body examined on the Montauk. Booth did indeed have scars on his arms and body and a scar on his temple near his hairline, yet not one of these scars was mentioned by any of the people who saw the body on the Montauk. They should have at least seen one of the following scars, if the body had been Booth:

* As a child, Booth suffered “a large cut” on his head that had to be stitched (Alford, Fortune’s Fool: The Life of John Wilkes Booth, p. 15). (As a child, I suffered a cut on my head that required three stitches, and even all these years later that scar is still visible.)

* Booth once accidentally stabbed himself with a dagger on stage at Ford’s Theater while playing Romeo (Roscoe, pp. 417-418).

* Booth also stabbed himself severely under his right arm in Albany while playing Pescara (Alford, pp. 103-104; Roscoe, pp. 417-418). He did this when he accidentally fell on a dagger and “cut away the muscles for some three inches under his right arm,” and this wound was so severe that Booth could not perform for several days (Alford, pp. 103-104).

* In another stage mishap, a fellow actor “brought down his sword across Booth’s forehead, cutting one eyebrow cleanly through” (Alford, pp. 155-156).

* Booth also received a scar on the side of his face, near his hairline, when Henrietta Irving attacked him (Alford, p. 107; Roscoe, pp. 417-418). This scar should have been noticeable. Alford says that when Irving attacked Booth, she used “a dirk [dagger], cutting his face badly” (Alford, p. 107).

* On another occasion, Booth suffered a knife cut when he intervened in a fight (Alford, pp. 171-172).

Why did the identification witnesses on the Montauk, including the two autopsy doctors, say nothing about any of these scars, not even the scar on the side of the face or the one under the right arm? Why did the belated post-mortem witnesses—who claimed they saw the small, “pale” JWB initials—say nothing about any of these scars? Why? Because those scars were not on the body that they viewed, because they were not looking at the body of John Wilkes Booth.