JWB Seduction Charge (Not Breach of Promise)

[jparkuntz]

This is a follow-up to my post of a few weeks ago of a 4/16/1865 Philadelphia Sunday Mercury clipping that indicated that JWB had seduced a young woman in Philadelphia in 1857-58 and that resulted in a requisition being sent from the Governor of Pennsylvania to Virginia to have Booth returned to face that charge.

I have a couple of follow-ups. George Alfred Townsend wrote in his 1865 Life, Crime, and Capture of John Wilkes Booth: "For an affair at his boarding-house he was compelled to pay a considerable sum of money, and it happily occured just as he was to quit the city [Philadelphia]"

Art Loux mentions this quote in his John Wilkes Booth Day-By-Day, but says it is dubious because another source said Booth was staying at John Sleeler Clarke's, not at a boarding house.

Today I went to the Pennsylvania State Archives and found the requisition. See attached. "Seduction" was a pretty serious felony, punishable by a fine and between 7-21 years in prison.

Luckily for Booth (but not the USA), his lawyer Robert M. Lee Jr. "connived" to get the charges dropped for a payoff. Had Booth been held accountable, he would have been behind bars in 1865.

Maybe Philadelphia City Archives might have more details of the charge.

Jerry Kuntz
Warwick NY