Identification of Booth's body

[mikegriffith1]

(10-31-2018 09:19 AM)L Verge Wrote:  [quote='mikegriffith1' pid='73633' dateline='1540911378']
In an earlier reply, someone cited William Pegram’s 1913 article “An Historic Identification: John Wilkes Booth—What Became of Him?” and presented it as evidence that the body examined at the 1869 viewing was in fact Booth. But even a casual look at Pegram’s article reveals some serious problems with his claims, and in fact suggests that he fabricated his supposed identification or that the body he viewed was not Booth, or both.

For example, Pegram claimed that the body’s left foot was housed in a make-shift shoe that was made from the foot of the boot that Dr. Mudd cut from Booth’s leg (p. 328). Uh, no, Pegram could not have seen any such thing. The boot that Mudd cut and removed from Booth’s leg can be viewed at the Ford’s Theater National Historic Site. Here’s a picture of it: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2010630742/. Here’s a closeup: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/highsm.04758/. You will see that the foot of the boot is not missing.

Pegram said that both the left ankle and the left knee were disjointed (p. 328). Neither Dr. Mudd, Dr. Barnes, nor Dr. Woodward said anything about the left knee being disjointed, and it seems hard to believe that they all would have failed to notice a disjointed knee.

Pegram said that the body’s teeth were examined and that only one filling was found (p. 328). Well, that’s a big problem, because Booth had two fillings.

Finally, incredibly, Pegram claimed that the hair on the body’s head “had grown probably nearly a foot in length” (p. 328)! Sorry, but science tells us that that could not have been Booth’s body because hair does not grow after death. New cells must be created for hair to grow, but cell growth stops very quickly after death. There is no way on this planet that any corpse’s hair would have grown “nearly a foot” by that time, or by any time. I quote from a BBC article that debunks the old myth that fingernails and hair keep growing after you die:

Quote:In order for fingernails to grow, new cells need to be produced and this can’t happen without glucose. Fingernails grow by an average of 0.1 mm per day, a rate which slows as we age. A layer of tissue beneath the base of the nail called the germinal matrix is responsible for producing the vast majority of the cells which form the newest-growing part of the fingernail. The new cells push the older ones forwards, making the nail appear to lengthen from the tip. Death puts a stop to the supply of glucose, and therefore to fingernail growth.

A similar process occurs for hair. Each hair sits within a follicle that drives its growth. At the base of the follicle is the hair matrix, a group of cells that divide to produce the new cells that make hair strands longer. These cells divide very rapidly, but only when supplied with energy. This comes from the burning of glucose, which requires the presence of oxygen. Once the heart stops pumping oxygen round the body in the blood, the energy supply dries up, and so does the cell division that drives hair growth. (http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130526...ter-death)

In rare cases, depending on the nature of the death, hair and nails can grow a tiny, tiny, tiny bit, perhaps a fraction of an inch, but that’s it. In most cases, there is zero growth after death. Even an inch of post-mortem hair growth is impossible, much less 10-12 inches. Anyone can Google this subject and find hundreds of articles that explain the science behind this fact.

The Pegram article is a perfect example of how some defenders of the traditional story are prone to uncritically accept accounts that say what they want to hear. Steers cites Pegram as a witness. Did Steers ever read Pegram’s account? He dismisses the accounts of Basil Moxley, Joseph Ziegen, and William Kenzie, but he has no problem citing Pegram as a credible witness.

Quote:As usual, you have not offered your source for the statement that Booth had two fillings...

Huh? You need a "source" on the fact that Booth had two fillings?! His first biographer, Francis Wilson, noted that he had two fillings, and that the second one was done shortly before the assassination (John Wilkes Booth: Fact and Fiction of Lincoln's Assassination,, pp. 292-294; Roscoe, pp. 529-531).

(10-31-2018 09:19 AM)L Verge Wrote:  Moving right along, I believe I learned enough in biology and also from a family member who owned a funeral home that the hair and nails may not grow, but that the skin in which they "live" starts to recede (shrink, whatever) so that the hair and nails appear to be longer - again, not significantly, but it would appear as growth to the uneducated.

Oh my goodness. This is beyond absurd. If you use Google or Yahoo or Bing to research this issue in online medical sources, you will find that skin recession only creates the appearance of very slight growth. Skin recession might make it seem like hair or nails grew a fraction of an inch, but that's it--certainly nowhere near 12 inches. The article that I cited and linked mentions this fact. I guess you did not bother to read the whole article.

Obviously, the hair that Pegram saw on the body was visibly longer--he said "nearly a foot" longer--than Booth's hair, and so he explained this markedly longer hair by appealing to the old wives' tale (widely believed in his day) that hair and nails keep growing after you die.

(10-31-2018 09:19 AM)L Verge Wrote:  And finally, do you know anything in the world about the reputable authors/historians that you are "libeling" in your statements? Dr. Steers will be speaking on one of your favorite books, Dark Union, at the Surratt conference in April. Why don't you register for it? Ed will be participating in our Authors' Hour as well as speaking, so you will have plenty of time to argue with him. It will be a learning experience -- and we can invite our other learned guest speakers to join in. And, I am not being sarcastic here...

And I am not being sarcastic when I say that you need to get a dictionary and look up the definition of "libel." This is just absurd. Expressing the view that some scholars have uncritically accepted evidence because that evidence supports their view is not even on the edge of what constitutes "libel."

You have said far worse about every single scholar and author who disagrees with the traditional story, but I would never make the silly claim that you have "libeled" them.

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(10-30-2018 04:33 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  Concerning my query about deliberately mis-identifying the body ....

Mike, you write :
"I do not get this argument at all. What "risk" was there? How were they at "risk" of "being caught" when they were being asked--or coerced--to ID the body as Booty by the likes of Holt and Baker, i.e., the Judge Advocate General of the United States and the head of the National Detective Police? "

What risk was there? Sorry, I thought that was obvious ... and I have raised it before but you've ignored it ...
That Booth (probably one of the most 'famous' men at that time) would turn up in Canada or out West or where-ever. He wasnt known as being a recluse.
I'd call that a huge risk.

This is not the argument you made. We were talking about the witnesses on the Montauk. Go back and read my reply and your reply that preceded it. We were not talking about Booth. Now you have shifted the goal posts by half the length of the field.

As for Booth, yes, I would agree that there was some risk for him, since he was well known. But the theory that I advance, as opposed to the theory that you advance, posits that the Radical conspirators agreed ahead of time to let Booth escape, and there is ample evidence that he did.

Once Booth escaped the Maryland-Virginia area, he could rather easily have lived under an assumed name and could have either kept his face clean-shaven or grown a hefty beard, in addition to changing his hair style and length. Staying clean-shaven or growing a large beard would have altered his appearance substantially. Plus, it's not like people back then had ready access to photos of Booth, especially in rural areas.

(10-30-2018 04:33 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  AussieMick - I have made that same point numerous times in discussing the Booth escaped theory. JWB had too great an ego to go quietly into Henry David Thoreau mode for the rest of his life.

This is just arm-chair psycho analysis. A more reasonable scenario is that Booth had accomplished his great deed and would have had no desire to be executed. So he would have gladly decided to live under an assumed name and enjoy the rest of his life as he saw fit.

None of your speculation about Booth's mindset does anything to address the medical fact that bodies do not magically become unrecognizable and grow freckles in 10 days or less, and dead bodies do not grow "nearly a foot" of hair.

(10-30-2018 04:33 PM)AussieMick Wrote:  I have also used a quote from a former curator at Ford's Theatre, Frank Hebblethwaite, in regards to a "secret government cover-up:" Frank would remind folks (especially those who were not from the D.C. area) that "it's impossible to keep a secret in Washington for two minutes, let alone 150+ years!"

Sorry, but this is demonstrably erroneous. How many years did the government conceal the fact that the body on the Montauk was heavily freckled? (Answer: 25 years) How many years did the government conceal the fact that Dr. May's first statement upon seeing the body was that it bore no resemblance to Booth and that he could not believe it was Booth? (Answer: 25 years) When do you think the government would have revealed this information if Dr. May had not done so in 1887, 25 years after the fact?

Or, if Lafayette Baker had not revealed in 1867 that the War Department had Booth's diary, when do you suppose the War Department would have disclosed that fact? I think we both know the answer to that question. If Baker had not revealed it, we might never have learned of it, since Holt had the diary and locked it in his safe.

Are you aware of the new information on the Lincoln assassination that Dr. Robert Arnold uncovered in the National Archives? How many years passed before Dr. Arnold found that information? At least 150 years.

Or, let us look at modern cover-ups that were not uncovered until decades later. Off the top of my head, I can think of Operation Paperclip, Operation Northwoods, the Hoover-Ladd FBI memos on the fact that Army Intelligence had clear foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack, the CIA documents that revealed that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City months before the assassination, and on and on we could go. Sometimes--not always, but sometimes--governments can keep secrets, and can keep them for decades or longer.