The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, or the First True Account of Lincoln's Assassination, Containing a Complete Confession by Booth Many Years After the Crime. Giving in Full Detail the Plans, Plot and Intrigue of the Conspirators, and the Treachery of Andrew Johnson, Then Vice-President of the United States
Naperville, Ill.; Atlanta, Ga.; Memphis, Tenn. J. L. Nichols & Company, [1907]. Black and white plates. Cloth over boards. Octavo. [x], 309 pages.
A foundational book for claims that John Wilkes Booth was not killed at the Garrett Farm following his assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865.
Finis Bates, an attorney in Memphis, took a new client by the name of John St. Helen in 1872. Five years later, on what he believed was his deathbed, St. Helen confessed to Bates that he was in fact John Wilkes Booth, and had escaped capture. He gave a startling amount of detail in this "deathbed confession." St. Helen ultimately recovered from this illness, after which he moved away from Memphis and Bates lost touch with him.
In 1903 a man known as David E. George committed suicide in Enid, Oklahoma, whereupon a local clergyman claimed that Mr. George had confessed to him that he was actually John Wilkes Booth. Finis Bates got wind of this eerily familiar confession and went to Oklahoma to view the body. It was the same man Bates had known as John St. Helen in Memphis some 31 years earlier!
Bates now became fully convinced that George/St. Helen had indeed been John Wilkes Booth. He took custody of the body and had it embalmed. He then began the extensive research which resulted in this intriguing book. Bates and his "Mummy of John Wilkes Booth" travelled the carnival and sideshow circuit displaying the body and hawking the book. Some 75,000 copies of the book were reportedly sold this way, mostly in the South (fancy that). Despite that impressive number the book is scarce today, likely due to the poor quality of its manufacturing. This copy, however, remains quite nice.
Ref. MONAGHAN 1519.
Very good. Mild age-toning to textblock, with a few leaves having shallow corner chips. Nicer condition than normally found.
Item #1721
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