THE LEGEND OF JOHN WILKES BOOTH: Myth, Memory, and a Mummy by C. Wyatt Evans began life as the author's dissertation at Drew University, which shows in the level of its scholarly research (almost 40 pages of detailed notes accompany the text).

Readers unfamiliar with the legend of Booth's mummy will find the story fascinating. The official account is the one history books teach: Booth was shot in a Virginia barn owned by a farmer named Garrett. He died a short time later. His body was brought to the Washington naval yard for an autopsy where three things happened. First, the body was identified as that of John Wilkes Booth. Second, army doctors removed three vertebrae from Booth's neck (the site of his mortal wound) for preservation at the Army medical Museum. Finally, his body was buried and reburied a number of times.

The historical account ends there, just as the legend begins. All that reburial made some people uneasy; they feared that the government might be hiding the truth from them. According to the legend, Booth wasn't the man shot in the barn. Rather, he escaped to Kentucky where he recuperated from his broken leg before moving on to California, where he met up with his mother and his wife. For the next 30 years, he lived the life of a fugitive, not only in the United States, but possibly in Mexico, China, Ceylon, and the South Seas.

Finally, when a man killed himself by swallowing poison in an Oklahoma hotel room in 1903 and then confessed to being John Wilkes Booth in his dying moments, the legend took on new currency. The dead man's body was embalmed, because the local mortician figured that federal authorities would want to claim it. When that didn't happen, the mummified body became a local attraction. By the end of World War I, the Booth mummy was rented out to carnival sideshows. For 20 years or so, the body toured the West and Midwest. Henry Ford even considered buying the mummy. By World War II, the mummy's appearances stopped. It turned up once again, though, for a brief 1976 sideshow in New Hope, Pennsylvania. 

In researching and writing the book, Evans hoped that "readers will come away with a sense of the legend's playfulness, irony, and pathos as well as an understanding of the ideological purposes it has served." In well-organized chapters, Evans discusses how a man named David George became the Booth mummy, traces the popular display of the dead in American culture, outlines the conspiracy theories surrounding Booth's death and/or disappearance, explains the need for some people to believe in the legend of the Booth mummy, and describes the sideshow of people who helped or hindered the legend.

Civil War history buffs and serious mummy buffs will appreciate the depth of detail found here. If the book has any fault, it is the style of writing which occasionally strays into dense, overly academic language and analyses (yes, a few parts do read like a dissertation in need of some editing). In the end, though, that doesn't matter. The story and the facts behind it carry the day. Anyone interested in the history of mummies, especially sideshow mummies, will not be disappointed with this book.

Complete with 15 illustrations and photographs. Recommended! 

 

For more information about the reported mummy of John Wilkes Booth, follow this link.