Assassination-Related Suicide?

[Jill Mitchell]

I found online from Project Gutenberg a copy of Between the Lines: Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After by Henry Bascom Smith. In his book (see File XLI in the online version) he writes:

The following from the New York "Tribune," April 29th, 1865, describes one of those who had knowledge before the act. He had been intimate with Paine, and undoubtedly we were creeping up too dangerously near him. The suicide was buried in Greenmount Cemetery, and in the darkness of night we dug the body up as mentioned by the "Tribune." This was the only time I ever acted the part of a ghoul. If I remember right, the man was a builder and committed suicide out behind a barn in the country:

Suicide in Baltimore.

"A well known citizen of Baltimore committed suicide last Monday, a short distance from this city, by shooting himself with a pistol. No cause could be assigned for the rash act except that he had recently seemed depressed and melancholy. Subsequent events have induced the suspicion that he was someway implicated in the conspiracy, and last night the body was exhumed, embalmed, and sent to Washington, by orders of the Government. The affair causes much speculation, and there [311]are many reports in connection with it as well as some facts which it is deemed imprudent to publish at present."

(New York Tribune, April 29, 1865.)

Any idea who this was and from whence the suspicion that he was connected with the assassination? I'm wondering what the facts are which were then deemed too imprudent to publish. Digging up up a body seems to be to more than a little overkill (no pun intended) if there was only a vague suspicion, due to suicide, that the unnamed individual was connected with the assassination.

[L Verge]

Jill - It's great seeing you post on this forum. You always find significant things to bring to people's attention. This time, you have hit me with something that I don't ever remember seeing before. Another piece to ponder.

[RJNorton]

Jill, only my wife knows how much time I have spent looking up, reading, and quoting testimony from all the tremendous work you did here. Thank you!!

[BettyO]

Quote:Any idea who this was and from whence the suspicion that he was connected with the assassination? I'm wondering what the facts are which were then deemed too imprudent to publish. Digging up up a body seems to be to more than a little overkill (no pun intended) if there was only a vague suspicion, due to suicide, that the unnamed individual was connected with the assassination.

This was speculation, pure and simple. Thompson boarded at the Branson Boarding House in Baltimore and was an acquaintance of Powell. He was a young newly married fellow who had lost just about all of his money in a tough business deal right before the assassination. He went into a tail spin and due to the financial fiasco, developed a deep depression, took a gun and went out behind a barn and killed himself. Of course, speculation was that he was in on the conspiracy because he boarded at the Branson House and knew Powell. Powell was on good, friendly terms with all of the Branson boarders according to recent findings and authorities seemed to think that the suicide was the result of Thompson's fear that Powell's capture would result in his singing about Thompson's "involvement." Not so. Thompson had left the boarding house right after the assassination about the time of Powell's capture and he reportedly had told other boarders that he suspected that there would be "trouble" at the Branson's establishment. He moved into cheaper lodgings with his bride and it was from that boarding house that he went out and shot himself.

Kauffman reiterates this in AB and I think Roscoe also hit on it in Web of Conspiracy.

It was all poor timing and sheer coincidence.

Glade to see you post here, Jill! Your work is VERY MUCH appreciated!

[Jill Mitchell]

Thanks, Betty. I was sure that if anyone knew the answer to the possible identity of the individual in question, it would be you. It still leaves the question: If this was indeed Thompson, why dig up, embalm and ship the body to DC? I wonder what they thought they would find--a swallowed capsule perhaps? (Now I'm speculating..ridiculously, no doubt.) Do you know from your sources if he was, as Henry Bascom Smith seemed to recall, a carpenter or builder?

[BettyO]

I think he was a contractor or builder; I'm at work now and can't check my notes.

[Jill Mitchell]

OK...after pondering this, the only somewhat rationale explanation I can come up with for digging up and embalming the body is to establish that the corpse in question is or is not that of John Wilkes Booth. From the newspaper report, the suicide occurred on Monday, April 24, when Booth was still being hunted. The burial of the suicide would have taken place while Booth's body was on its way to DC to await identification by Dr. May. Until the body of Booth can be positively identified, some question may have existed as to whether the individual who committed the suicide was Booth himself. Many thought that he would be headed toward Baltimore after the assassination. Still leaves a lot of interesting questions...but does this sound plausible?

[Rsmyth]

Was the boarder Joseph Thomas?

[L Verge]

Much more plausible than a lot of other things we have had thrown at us over the years of studying our favorite topic.

[BettyO]

Yes it was Joe Thomas. According to The Evidence (I think page 1196) Woolley said that Thomas was a " successful businessman" who " took to drink and as a result killed himself." I have another statement/ article in my files which states otherwise. I'll dig it out.

[Jill Mitchell]

OK...I am officially confused again. I looked up the references cited by Betty. Mike Kauffman in American Brutus (p. 325) says: "In Baltimore, authorities thought they were on to something when they learned that Joseph Thomas, who had once lived with Powell at the Branson house, had slit his own throat. News of his death did not reach Stanton until much later, and he angrily ordered General Wallace to have the corpse disinterred and embalmed for identification." Note "slit his own throat," not "by shooting himself with a pistol" as reported in the newspaper article cited by Henry Bascom Smith. Roscoe, page 512: ""So did the suicide of one Joseph Thomas, an inmate of Mrs. Branson's boardinghouse in Baltimore. Thomas was reported as having been a friend of Lewis Paine's. Stanton ordered the body disinterred and shipped to Washington for official examination. Department files contain no record of the inquest, but the suicide is noted with appropriate satisfaction." The references in The Evidence are to Joseph Thomas, but do not indicate the manner in which his suicide was accomplished. Provost Marshal Wooley in his letter of April 28 to Lew Wallace says of Thomas (Evidence, p. 1381): "Thomas was boarding at the Howard House, was in excellent circumstances, had a good business, was a man of very quiet demeanor, but of late had been drinking whiskey to a very great excess and to this the cause of his suicide seemed to be universally attributed." I did not find any citation Kauffman provides for "slit his own throat" and haven't been successful yet in finding anything about Thomas to establish cause of death. I think it safe at this point to say (1) that the body that was disinterred was that of Joseph Thomas, and (2) that Stanton, if a fit of pique ordered its exhumation on the pretense of establishing a positive identification. I would think the weapon of choice for a drunkard to (successfully) commit suicide would be the pistol rather than the knife, so wish we knew more about the source of Kauffman's "slit his own throat" reference.

[L Verge]

If the body was sent back to Green Mount for re-burial, would there be records as to cause of death in the cemetery files?

[BettyO]

Good question, Laurie! Likewise - there should be a death certificate filed in the Maryland State Archives. I have never read anywhere else that he "slit his throat" - more or less that he shot himself. He was not known especially as a "friend" or intimate of Lew Powell but more or less as a boarding house acquaintance.

[Cliff Roberts]

Here are a few documents concerning the unlucky Joseph Thomas. He had a brush with the law on January 10, 1865, when he was caught selling liquor to soldiers at a "low den" at No. 18 Bath St. He paid a fine and was released. A few days after his death, the Provost Marshall was ordered to dig up his body and have it "embalmed or preserved for recognition." Nothing was said about sending it to Washington. The order came from Edwin M. Stanton himself and referenced the fact that Thomas was known to have lived in the same house as Payne [sic], the Branson residence at the corner of Fayette and Eutaw. Stanton also ordered the Branson house searched and the inmates arrested.

Thomas' family appealed to a friend in the State Legislature who wrote, on April 28, to Provost Marshal Woolley requesting that the matter be kept from the press on the chance that Thomas was innocent, but that if he was guilty of being connected with the assassination, they wanted the world to know about it.

Finally, here's a clip from the Baltimore Sun, April 25, 1865, p1, describing the suicide of Joseph Thomas, lumber merchant.