Free Walking Tour

[Tom Bogar]

Concerning Mathews: in an interview with the Cincinnati Enquirer on April 16, 1881, Harry Hawk described being arrested and then released on Dr. Brown’s bond early Saturday morning. Then he and Brown “went into Charley Bennett’s to get a drink, and while several of us were talking, John Mathews came in and seemed to be in search of some one. ‘Who are you looking for?’ demanded one of the party. ‘I wanted to see if John Booth was here,’ he replied. With that the crowd took hold of him and threatened to hang him, saying, ‘Tell us all you know of this affair.’ He protested most vehemently that he knew nothing at all about it, other than what everyone knew, and after awhile they let him go.” I can’t immediately put my hand on the soldier’s report (my research from that book has been all boxed up since I’m deep into the next one) that described Mathews’ almost being strung up by the crowd from a lamppost and he (that soldier) saving him. But see also Bryan’s Great American Myth, p. 202, in which he says (without source) that Mathews in later years “would sometimes hint that he had come within an ace of being hanged on a lamppost.” (Of course, just above that Bryan erroneously says Mathews was rooming that week at Petersen’s.