Among the many snippets of human body bottled and stored at the M眉tter Museum in Philadelphia is one that isn鈥檛 cloaked with the anonymity afforded to most anatomical specimens. Its sometime owner was this man 鈥� John Wilkes Booth, the actor whose most celebrated 鈥減erformance鈥� in a theatre was to kill a member of the audience, Abraham Lincoln. The specimen itself comes from the muscle surrounding the neck bones of the infamous thespian. Or does it?
No one doubts that the specimen came from the corpse that was buried under the name J. W. Booth. What is disputed, and has been for the past 150 years, is the identity of the corpse itself. Was Lincoln鈥檚 assassin really captured and killed by the authorities 鈥� or was his escape and survival the final episode of a successful conspiracy?
AT THE age of 26, John Wilkes Booth was a successful actor treading the boards from Virginia to Massachusetts. But the notoriety he earned on the night of 14 April 1865 owed more to his skill at firing a bullet than delivering a line. He burst into the box at Ford鈥檚 Theatre in Washington, where Lincoln was watching a performance of Tom Taylor鈥檚 Our American Cousin. After shooting the president dead he leapt onto the stage with a cry of 鈥淪ic semper tyrannis鈥� 鈥� thus always to tyrants.
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The deed performed, he exited stage rear, fled the theatre, mounted a waiting horse and made his getaway. On 24 April he turned up at a Virginia farm owned by the Garrett family some 100 kilometres south of the capital. Two days later a detachment of Union cavalry caught up with him and surrounded the barn where he was sleeping. They set fire to it. One of them, Sergeant Boston Corbett, shot Booth in the neck and partially severed his spinal cord. He died soon after.
His body 鈥� or at any rate a body 鈥� was wrapped in a horse blanket, moved by road and river to the naval yard in Washington, and transferred to a ship, the Montauk. A series of people boarded the Montauk to carry out a formal identification. One was Booth鈥檚 dentist, who recognised a couple of gold fillings he had recently inserted. Another was a Dr John May, who had previously removed a tumour from Booth鈥檚 neck. The corpse bore a matching scar.
The autopsy that followed was performed by the US surgeon general and another doctor. This confirmed that Booth had been killed by a gunshot wound, the ball entering 鈥渢wo and half inches above the clavicle, passing though the bony bridge of fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae, severing the spinal chord and passing out through the body鈥hree inches above the clavicle.鈥� The third, fourth and fifth vertebrae were removed and are stored in the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
The small piece of tissue given, courtesy of the surgeon general, to the M眉tter Museum probably came from muscle in the neck. The museum authorities appear to have been uncertain what to do with it, and for many decades it languished in obscurity. Preserved in a small bottle inside an old Royal Baking Powder tin, it was mislabelled as having come from Booth鈥檚 thorax.
Following the autopsy, the bulk of the body was first buried in the grounds of the Washington Arsenal, but was later disinterred and moved a couple of times. In 1869 it was surrendered to the Booth family for burial in Baltimore鈥檚 Green Mount cemetery.
That should have been the end of the story. It was not. As the assassination of John F. Kennedy was later to show, you cannot kill an American president without also seeding a rash of alleged conspiracies. One theory about Lincoln鈥檚 death is that Booth was in cahoots with various government officials. Others suggest that Edwin Stanton, secretary of war, was desperate to capture Lincoln鈥檚 assassin and needed a body: if necessary, any body. But the conspiracy theorists agree on one thing: despite being identified by the dentist and surgeon, and the evidence of the autopsy, the real Booth escaped. The body was someone else鈥檚.
According to one theory, the real Booth lived out the rest of his life in Oklahoma under the name of David George. This man鈥檚 deathbed confession of his real identity prompted an enterprising local undertaker to mummify the body and put it on display. Even greater enterprise was shown by a lawyer called Finis Bates, who later bought the body and exhibited it at circuses.
Many historians are inclined to dismiss this and similar tales of conspiracy as complete tosh, not least because of the number and variety of witnesses who would need either to have been part of the plot or to have been greatly deceived by it. But Gretchen Worden, director of the M眉tter Museum and custodian of the smaller fragment of 鈥淏ooth鈥�, points out that there are enough gaps and inconsistencies in the historical record to capture the interest of anyone with a faintly suspicious mind. If, as his sister claims, Booth had his initials tattooed on his right hand, why did one of the witnesses who identified the body report it as being on the left? Why did May later write that his first reaction on seeing the corpse was that it bore little resemblance to Booth? And so on.
One way to resolve the question of identity would be to exhume the mouldering remains buried in Green Mount cemetery. A petition to do just this was filed in the Baltimore Circuit Court in 1994. Among the applicants were Virginia Kline, Booth鈥檚 first cousin twice removed, and Lois Rathburn, a great-great-great niece. The application was refused, partly because the judge was unimpressed by the historical evidence produced, but also because there were no plans to collect the one form of evidence that might have been really persuasive: DNA. The judge was told that a DNA test could not be done because none of the known descendants was sufficiently closely related to guarantee a conclusive result. For the same reason, no DNA analysis has been carried out on the material preserved in the museums.
James Starrs of George Washington University Law School, who identified the remains of the outlaw Jesse James in 1995, was the only forensic scientist to give evidence at the court hearing. He continues to take an interest in the debate. As he points out, we now appreciate the full potential of mitochondrial DNA as a means of identification. What is needed, he says, is a mtDNA sample from a member of the Booth family in the same matrilineal line. If, for example, Booth鈥檚 grandmother on his mother鈥檚 side had a sister, it might be possible to trace a line of direct female descent. Alas, no such person is known.
There is one other test that should be decisive: a comparison between Booth鈥檚 DNA and that of his mother, Mary Ann. Her identity is not disputed, and she is also buried in Green Mount cemetery. To carry out such a test would require not one but two exhumations, something the court might be reluctant to sanction. On the other hand, it could no longer object on the grounds that no one planned to sample the body鈥檚 DNA.
In any event, no one has submitted an application to the court and Worden doubts that any further attempt will be made. She regrets this. 鈥淚鈥檓 curious, not so much because I have any particular doubts, but simply because it would settle the matter once and for all.鈥� For the present, and perhaps for ever, John Wilkes Booth seems likely to be left at rest 鈥� if not exactly in peace.