Unlike the case of Wilson Kenzie where an old soldier appears to have embellished his military career, William Allen made no such claims about himself. All of the claims came from his widow some thirty years after his death. Her claims ran far afield, including the claim that her husband was in the Secret Service and worked for Lafayette C. Baker. She also claimed that her husband “was a living image of Wilkes Booth,” so much so that the newspapers of the day, needing a photograph of Booth, used a photograph of her husband “taken only a week before . . . , and printed it through the country captioned as the President’s assassin.”22
Mrs. Allen’s story that her husband was present at Garrett’s farm and that he later claimed the body was not that of John Wilkes Booth can be dismissed as another assassination fable fabricated by the elderly widow of a veteran who once served his country well. Of the three eyewitnesses who have been attributed with denying the dead man was Booth, two, Joseph Zisgen and William Allen, never left any statement of such a claim, while the third, Wilson Kenzie, made statements that are at variance with all of the known evidence. But the story of Booth’s escape does not die easily. Two remaining “witnesses” have also been used by “escape theorists” as offering proof that Booth did not die at the Garrett farm. They are Basil Moxley and Dr. Frederick May.
Basil Moxley was employed as the doorman at John Ford’s Opera House in Baltimore. In 1903 Moxley told a Baltimore newspaper reporter that he had been one of the individuals present at the interment of Booth’s remains in Green Mount Cemetery in 1869. He told the reporter that the remains had “red or reddish hair.” He referred to the burial of Booth in 1869 as a “mock funeral.” Moxley’s statement appeared thirty-four years after the event.23 As with the previous witnesses who left statements concerning Booth, how do Moxley’s claims hold up?
Following the examination and autopsy of Booth’s body on board the Montauk, the remains were sewn up in the same army blanket in which it had been placed at the Garrett farm. The body was then placed in a boat and taken ashore. While rumors soon surfaced that the body was weighted and dropped overboard into a remote part of the Potomac River, it was actually taken to the Washington Arsenal. Edwin Stanton testified during Andrew Johnson’s impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in 1867 as to the disposition of the body:
Q. What was done with the body of Booth?
A.I did not see him interred. I gave directions that he should be interred on the premises of the Ordnance Department; and the officer to whom I gave directions reported that he was so interred.
Q. Did you give directions as to the particular manner in which he should be interred?
A. I gave directions that he should be interred in that place, and that the place should be kept under lock and key.24
A wooden box, used to ship rifled muskets, was used as a coffin. The box was tightly sealed and buried beneath the floor of a room in the arsenal that had been used to store ordnance. Both Lafayette Baker and Thomas Eckert were present at the burial and later testified to the event. Eckert was later questioned before the House Judiciary Committee about the location of the grave:
Q. In what room was the burial to take place?
A. In a large room in the arsenal building.
Q. Please describe the room.
A. ... [I] t is the largest room in the building, perhaps thirty feet square, and possibly more. ... It is in the Old Penitentiary Building.25
After the body was buried, the brick floor was replaced and the heavy door to the building was locked tightly and the key turned over to Stanton.26
In 1867 the War Department decided to tear down the portion of the Arsenal building where Booth’s body was buried. Buried along with Booth were the bodies of Mary Surratt, George Atzerodt, Lewis Powell, and David Herold. On October 1, 1867, the five bodies were disinterred and moved to Warehouse No. 1 where they were reburied. Each grave contained a wooden marker with the name of the person in the grave. The graves remained undisturbed for the next sixteen months. In February 1869 Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth, wrote to President Andrew Johnson requesting his brother’s body: “Your excellency would greatly lessen the crushing weight of grief that is hurrying my mother to the grave by giving immediate orders for the safe delivery of the remains of John Wilkes Booth to Mr. Weaver.”27
Johnson agreed. On February 15, 1869, five days after receiving Edwin Booth’s letter, Johnson responded: “The Honorable Secretary of War will cause to be delivered to Mr. John Weaver, Sexton of Christ Church, Baltimore, the remains of John Wilkes Booth, for the purposes mentioned in the within communication.”28 Within the month Johnson would complete his act of compassion by releasing the remaining four bodies to their respective families and issuing presidential pardons to the three surviving conspirators serving their sentences in Fort Jefferson.
In compliance with Edwin Booth’s request, the body was turned over to John H. Weaver, a Baltimore undertaker not far from the Exeter Street house where the Booth family once lived. After Johnson ordered the release of the body, Weaver made arrangements for the Washington undertaking firm of Harvey and Marr to receive the body and hold it until Weaver could arrange to transport it to Baltimore for burial.
At Warehouse No. 1 two soldiers began digging away at the earth that covered the old musket box holding Booth’s remains. At six feet they hit a solid object and soon uncovered the makeshift coffin. When the box was lifted from the grave the name Booth could be made out in black letters on the lid of the case.29 The box was placed in a wagon from Harvey and Marr’s establishment and transported twenty blocks to a large shed located in the rear. Ironically, the shed turned out to be the former stable in the rear of Ford’s Theatre where Booth occasionally kept his horse.30 Its entrance was located on Baptist Alley only a few feet from the backstage door where Booth fled after shooting Lincoln.
It was near eight o’clock in the evening when the box was carried inside and placed on a makeshift table. A small, thin man sat in the main establishment quietly waiting word from the undertakers. He was the youngest son of Junius Brutus Booth Sr. and younger brother of John Wilkes. His name was Joseph Adrian Booth, and he had come to Washington from Baltimore to oversee the identification and shipping of his older brother’s remains.31 Joe would handle the details in Washington and in Baltimore.
From Harvey and Marr’s shed the body was shipped by train to Baltimore, where it arrived at 9:00 P.M. Among the people waiting at the train station was John T. Ford. Ford had always been and still was a close and loyal friend of the Booth family. His attachment to the Booths was not only financial, but involved his admiration for their outstanding theatrical abilities and for the small fortune they had helped him acquire. Later that night Ford would telegraph Edwin Booth in New York, “Successful and in our possession.” The saved telegram contains the penciled words on its reverse, “John’s body.”32
Among those waiting at Weaver’s establishment in Baltimore for Booth’s body were Mary Ann Booth and Rosalie Booth, Wilkes’s mother and sister. Present also were Joe Booth, John T. Ford, Charles B. Bishop, John H. Weaver, and John Ford’s brother Harry Clay Ford. They were all friends of the Booths and had known Wilkes intimately. The skull, hair, teeth, and legs were all examined closely. Several weeks before the assassination Booth had visited a Washington dentist who filled one of his teeth.33 The “plugged” tooth with its peculiar filling, the black curly hair, the broken left leg with its old shoe, and the high riding boot on the right leg were all identified. No one expressed any doubt at all. It was John’s body.
Over the next two days the remains were viewed by several other parties who expressed an opinion on the identity of the body. Norval E. Foard (a reporter from the Baltimore Sun), John W. McCoy, Thomas W. Hall, Theodore Micheau, Henry Mears, Joseph Lowery, William Pegram, Henry Wagner, and Basil E. Moxley all agreed. It was the body of John Wilkes Booth. None of the viewers expressed any doubt, including Basil Moxley who thirty-four years later would claim it wasn
’t Booth’s corpse.
On Thursday, February 18, the coffin containing the remains was placed in Weaver’s receiving vault of Baltimore’s Green Mount Cemetery in the northern section of the city. Here it remained until Saturday June 26, when it was taken from its place among the several coffins stored in the vault and carried to the cemetery plot where the Booth family would rest. The family had selected several of John’s former friends from the acting community as pallbearers. Among this special group was Basil Moxley, known by his friends as “Bas.”
In 1903, at the time the David E. George story appeared in newspapers across the country, Bas Moxley shocked the theatrical community by stating in an interview that he was present at the funeral of John Wilkes Booth in 1869 and it was not a funeral at all, but rather a “mock funeral.” The body Moxley viewed at Weaver’s establishment thirty-four years earlier was not the body of John Wilkes Booth; it was of another man, one with red hair. According to Moxley the government had pulled a switch and sent another body to Baltimore in 1869. Moxley didn’t stop with his claim that the body was not Booth’s; like most fabricators, he couldn’t stop talking: “You can search all records in Washington or interview any officials then in office who are now alive and I will wager you will be unable to learn of any reward being paid out for the delivery of John Wilkes Booth’s body to the government.”34
Moxley was wrong about the reward money. It had been paid out, all of it—a total of $105,000—and a search of the records proves it.
Moxley had been one of at least nineteen people who had viewed the corpse in February of 1869. At the time, he agreed with the others who examined the remains that they were those of John Wilkes Booth. He had not challenged the identification at that time or the color of the corpse’s hair, nor had he raised any question during the weeks after the burial. Only after the stories about David E. George appeared in the local papers thirty-four years later did Moxley come forward with his revelation.
The day after Moxley’s statement appeared in the Baltimore American, an interview with Sun reporter Norval E. Foard appeared. Foard was one of the six pallbearers along with Moxley in 1869. In the News American article Foard said, “if Mr. Moxley saw the remains in the Weaver shop and says the hair was red he is color blind.” Joseph T. Lowery, a Baltimore photographer who was also present at the 1869 viewing, stated: “There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that the face of the dead man I looked upon was that of the actor [Booth], whom I had seen many times in life. The features were the same, although considerably sunken. His dark hair, which was remarkably thick and curly, was well preserved.”35
A total of nineteen people had viewed the body in 1869 and eighteen of them agreed at the time that it was John Wilkes Booth. Whatever Moxley’s game, it had little effect in 1903. It was lumped together with Bates’s book and Mrs. Harper’s revelations as simply an attempt to gain notoriety. Wilson Kenzie, Joseph Zisgen, William Allen, and Basil Moxley form the foundation for the theory that Booth had escaped. These four witnesses provide no credible evidence that can counter the claims of dozens of others that the body in the barn was indeed that of John Wilkes Booth. But there is one other witness that proponents of this theory drag out from time to time, and he is an important witness with substantial credibility. His name is John Frederick May, a Washington, D.C., physician who served as Booth’s doctor on at least one important occasion.
In 1863, Booth came to Dr. May seeking medical help. Booth had developed a bothersome lump on his neck on the left-rear side approximately three inches below the base of the skull. Because it was an annoyance as well as a small disfigurement, Booth sought medical advice. May examined the lump and declared it a “fibroid tumor.” May told Booth it ought to be removed. Booth agreed and told May to go ahead and remove it. The minor operation resulted in a fine linear incision that May cautioned Booth to protect so that it could heal properly. If properly healed it would leave only a barely noticeable scar. A few days after the removal Booth returned to May. The new scar had been torn open, leaving “a broad, ugly-looking scar, produced by the granulating process.”36 The scar took on a distinctive appearance.
An interesting sidelight to this incident was later revealed by May. Booth asked the doctor to tell anyone who might ask about the operation that he removed a bullet that had lodged in the actor’s neck. Booth wanted to pass off the incident as a result of some jealous lover who sought revenge for one of his many sexual escapades. That Booth himself promulgated the story can be seen in the statement of Davy Herold while he was being interrogated following his arrest. His interrogators asked Herold when he first met Booth. His answer included this statement: “It was the night Booth played the ‘Marble Heart’—about two years ago, the time when Booth had a ball taken from his neck by some surgeon in Washington.”37
Just how the authorities learned that Dr. May was the attending physician is not apparent. Perhaps they learned from Herold’s statement. In any event, a messenger was sent to Dr. May’s residence requesting him to come to the Navy Yard at once to identify a body. Dr. May’s young son, William, accompanied him to the Navy Yard. In 1925 William May wrote an account of that day on board the monitor. May said that as a fourteen-year-old boy he had assisted his father in removing the tumor from Booth’s neck by holding a basin beneath the wound while his father operated.
Arriving on board the ship, Dr. May and his young son were met by Joseph Barnes, surgeon general. Barnes escorted the two over to the table where Booth’s body was laid out under a tarpaulin. Before removing the tarpaulin to reveal the body, Dr. May described the identifying scar to Barnes. William May quoted his father’s words to the surgeon general: “If the body lying under that tarpaulin is the body of John Wilkes Booth, you will find a scar on the back of his neck, and let me describe the scar before it is seen by me. It looks more like the scar made by a burn than the cicatrix made by a surgical operation.’38
Barnes replied, “You have described the scar as well as if you were looking at it.’ The judge advocate general then questioned May while still on board the monitor:
Q. Do you recognize the body as that of J. Wilkes Booth from its general appearance, and also from the particular appearance of the scar?
A. I do recognize it, though it is very much altered since I saw Booth. It looks to me much older, and in appearance much more freckled than he was. I do not recollect that he was at all freckled. I have no doubt it is his body. I recognize the features.39
In January 1887, May wrote an essay titled, “The Mark of the Scalpel.’40 In it he recounted his experiences, describing Booth’s coming to his office and his removing the fibroid tumor, the resulting scar, and his positively identifying the unusual appearance of that scar as a result of its having been torn open.41 May then gave the proponents of the conspiracy theory more fuel for their smoky fire. He said the corpse had a broken right leg. To May’s later chagrin, it was Booth’s left leg that was broken, not his right leg. May was a highly skilled clinician. His statement gave credence to those who claim Booth escaped. Forget the scar, the hair, the tooth, the physical appearance. In his place was another man, “much older’ whose right leg was broken and whose appearance was “freckled.’ Dr. May appeared to be describing a man other than John Wilkes Booth. And yet, May was asked point blank, “Do you recognize the body as that of J. Wilkes Booth?’ May answered, “I do recognize it,... I have no doubt it is his body.’42 May explained the difference in Booth’s appearance, writing that he had known Booth “in the vigor of life and health’ and was shocked to see him now as a “haggard corpse.’ The corpse which May examined bore the mark of his scalpel a year and a half earlier.
The conspiratorialists continue to exert surgical skill in carefully carving words and phrases from May’s account, making sure to leave behind the Washington surgeon’s emphatic conclusions, “I recognize the likeness. I have no doubt that it is the person from whom I took the tumor, and that it is the body of J. Wilkes Booth.’43 If Edwin Stanton and Lafay
ette Baker had conspired to substitute another body for John Wilkes Booth’s, why would they be so inept as to break the wrong leg? It is more reasonable to assume that May erred in writing his report and recorded the right leg instead of the left leg.
The government left little to chance. On the afternoon of April 27, an autopsy was performed on Booth’s remains by Surgeon General Barnes at the direction of Stanton. The autopsy report was published in the multivolume Medical and Surgical History as “Case—J. W. B.—Z’44 Stanton’s order calling for an autopsy and identification of the body is contained in a letter that he and Navy Secretary Welles jointly sent to the commandant of the Navy Yard who had asked Stanton what should be done with the body:
You will permit Surgeon General Barnes and his assistant, accompanied by Judge Advocate Genl Holt, Hon. John A. Bingham, Special Judge Advocate, Major [Thomas] Eckert, Wm. G. Moore, Clerk of the War Department, Col. L. C. Baker, Lieut. [Luther] Baker, Lieut. Col. Conger, Chas. Dawson, J. L. Smith, [Alexander] Gardiner [sic] (photographer) + assistant, to go on board the Montauk, and see the body of John Wilkes Booth.
Immediately after the Surgeon General has made his autopsy, you will have the body placed in a strong box, and deliver it to the charge of Col. Baker—the box being carefully sealed.45
At the conspirators’ trial one month later, Barnes was questioned by the Judge Advocate:
Q. State whether or not you made an examination of the body of J. Wilkes Booth after his death, when brought to this city.
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