Did John Wilkes Booth escape?

July 13, 2017 9:05 AM

Does anyone have access to passenger logs between 1865 and 1868 for ships going to Bombay from Liverpool? I am trying to verify or disprove the information from this link.
posted by figment of my conation to Grab Bag (6 answers total)

It's doubtful that those logs would help you: it would have been all too easy to use a name made up out of thin air, as there was nothing like the modern emphasis on government-issued identification. Not everyone had a birth certificate (hell, my own mother never had one, even though she was born in Philadelphia in 1929), and photo IDs in general were still in the future. True, John Wilkes Booth was seen on stage by a lot of people during his career, but how many people could have identified him on the street?

Then you get to that article: after keeping his mouth shut about Booth's alleged escape for thirty years, all of a sudden Booth's former dresser --- who has never said one word about this to anyone, ever before --- freely unloads the entire story to someone who himself claims that as a kid, he was in the audience and saw Booth shoot Lincoln. And by the way, notice that the newspaper editor who published the story never talked to the former dresser himself: you only have Young's word that A) Young was in Ford's theater when Lincoln was shot; B) Booth's old dresser was even alive thirty years later; and C) any proof whatsoever that any of this was anything other than the figment of Young's imagination.
posted by easily confused at 12:06 PM on July 13, 2017

According to this document from a Liverpool maritime archive the records don't exist.

And yes, I have to agree there is no way of tracking this down even if the records did exist. It was really easy to use a fake name in the 1860s. And even if you could fine a man named John Wilkes or John Booth those are pretty common names and could be someone else with the same name.
posted by interplanetjanet at 12:45 PM on July 13, 2017

Although it sounds like what you're looking for may not exist, for future reference, the Gjenvick-Gjønvik Archives have a metric shit-ton of information on transoceanic travel, including a large number of ship manifests.
posted by mudpuppie at 12:47 PM on July 13, 2017

I would research it the other way around. Was there an actor named James Kelley in the Richmond Theatre company?
posted by interplanetjanet at 12:49 PM on July 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

Booth did not escape, period. His body was pretty conclusively identified. Here's the poop from Wikipedia:

Booth's body was shrouded in a blanket and tied to the side of an old farm wagon for the trip back to Belle Plain. There, his corpse was taken aboard the ironclad USS Montauk and brought to the Washington Navy Yard for identification and an autopsy. The body was identified there as Booth's by more than ten people who knew him. Among the identifying features used to make sure that the man that was killed was Booth was a tattoo on his left hand with his initials J.W.B., and a distinct scar on the back of his neck. The third, fourth, and fifth vertebrae were removed during the autopsy to allow access to the bullet. These bones are still on display at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C.

There have been other escape claims, such as that he took the name John St. Helen and died in exile in 1905. DNA testing has not been permitted, so far.
posted by beagle at 1:12 PM on July 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks to all for answering! I guess this wasn't the grand hunt I was hoping it would be. :)
posted by figment of my conation at 4:13 PM on July 25, 2017