Death Stories: The George Mummy, Part 4
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Accounts of John Wilkes Booth's activities after his hypothetical escape from Garrett's tobacco shed are staggering in their variety. Newspapers reported Booth sightings for decades after 1865, sometimes in the tongue-in-cheek spirit familiar to followers of current Elvis encounters. Booth continued his acting career in Brazil under the name Unos; or he escaped to Europe on a steamer. His latter-day job descriptions included schoolteacher, house painter, and buffalo wagon driver. He lived in New Orleans or Atlanta, died in California or Indiana, England or India. "There's a whole slew of them in Mississippi," says author and filmmaker Michael W. Kauffman, who is assembling a documentary on Booth. Kauffman has recorded more than forty claimants to the title of "the real Booth."
In one of Booth's several Tennessee incarnations, a man named John W. Burks sought shelter at the Brigham farm near Erin after the war. He soon won the love of the young lady of the house, a Miss Georgia Brigham, but told her he could not marry because circumstances forced him to live under an assumed name. His wardrobe of velvet suits and silk hats impressed neighbors, as did his apparently ample supply of gold. Burks confessed to being Booth on at least two occasions, and his neighbors believed him to be the legitimate article. He died of typhoid in 1871. Journalist T. H. Alexander, who reported the Burks case in 1932, attributed the credulity of the "romance-starved countryside" to the hard life of Southerners during Reconstruction. Alexander also noted dryly that Burks misspelled "Wilkes" when he autographed a photo for Georgia Brigham.
Granbury, Texas, has its own Booth (and, incidentally, its own Jesse James). John St. Helen came to the Granbury area in the early 1870s. St. Helen was a flamboyant bartender and rogue known for his dapper dress, his courtly manners, and his barroom conversation, which was studded with orations from Shakespeare. When a minor legal matter involving a liquor license required a court appearance, St. Helen, averse to contact with the law, hired an attorney named Finis L. Bates to help him pay his way out of the scrape. In 1872, St. Helen, sick and fearing for his life, allegedly confessed to Bates that he was Booth. St. Helen recovered his health and eventually left the area. In 1898, Bates, having apparently spent years researching the Lincoln assassination, was ready to present his theory of Booth's continued survival to the government. He tried to claim the bounty on Booth by turning in his former client. The soldiers who shot the man in Garrett's tobacco shed had already collected the reward, and Bates was informed the government had "no interest" in the matter. Bates's next gambit was to propose a book exposing St. Helen. No publisher was interested.
Whether St. Helen actually made a confession is a debatable point. Some of his contemporaries said the confession was exactly the sort of thing he might have said to young Bates as a joke. Years earlier, St. Helen had confessed to being a son of Marshall Michel Ney. Ney, a battlefield commander under Napoleon, was the subject of escape legends like those surrounding Booth. Officially executed as a traitor after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Ney was said to have used his Masonic connections to escape to America, where he lived as a schoolteacher.
When the story of David E. George hit the newspapers in 1903, lawyer Finis Bates appeared in Enid, claiming George was really St. Helen and both were Booth. Despite his earlier efforts to cash in, Bates wept at the sight of George's corpse and called it "my old friend St. Helen." His renewed claims on the bounty were fruitless. His second attempt at a book found a publisher. The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, published in 1907, presents an intricate biography of Booth after Garrett's farm, much of it based on statements St. Helen supposedly made to Bates in Texas.
From the time of David E. George's death, Bates had company--and competition--in his quest to turn George into cash. A woman wrote to Enid claiming to be Booth's daughter by a post-war marriage and inquiring after her legacy. A traveling salesman named in one of George's wills showed up to claim the estate. The trouble was that George seemed to make a will whenever he went on a bender and then forget about it when he sobered up. He also had a habit of willing away property he'd never owned.
At his death, George had precisely two cents in his pocket. Inquiries revealed a further estate worth twelve dollars. The various heirs vanished.
Accounts of John Wilkes Booth's activities after his hypothetical escape from Garrett's tobacco shed are staggering in their variety. Newspapers reported Booth sightings for decades after 1865, sometimes in the tongue-in-cheek spirit familiar to followers of current Elvis encounters. Booth continued his acting career in Brazil under the name Unos; or he escaped to Europe on a steamer. His latter-day job descriptions included schoolteacher, house painter, and buffalo wagon driver. He lived in New Orleans or Atlanta, died in California or Indiana, England or India. "There's a whole slew of them in Mississippi," says author and filmmaker Michael W. Kauffman, who is assembling a documentary on Booth. Kauffman has recorded more than forty claimants to the title of "the real Booth."
In one of Booth's several Tennessee incarnations, a man named John W. Burks sought shelter at the Brigham farm near Erin after the war. He soon won the love of the young lady of the house, a Miss Georgia Brigham, but told her he could not marry because circumstances forced him to live under an assumed name. His wardrobe of velvet suits and silk hats impressed neighbors, as did his apparently ample supply of gold. Burks confessed to being Booth on at least two occasions, and his neighbors believed him to be the legitimate article. He died of typhoid in 1871. Journalist T. H. Alexander, who reported the Burks case in 1932, attributed the credulity of the "romance-starved countryside" to the hard life of Southerners during Reconstruction. Alexander also noted dryly that Burks misspelled "Wilkes" when he autographed a photo for Georgia Brigham.
Men have died from time to --William Shakespeare
Granbury, Texas, has its own Booth (and, incidentally, its own Jesse James). John St. Helen came to the Granbury area in the early 1870s. St. Helen was a flamboyant bartender and rogue known for his dapper dress, his courtly manners, and his barroom conversation, which was studded with orations from Shakespeare. When a minor legal matter involving a liquor license required a court appearance, St. Helen, averse to contact with the law, hired an attorney named Finis L. Bates to help him pay his way out of the scrape. In 1872, St. Helen, sick and fearing for his life, allegedly confessed to Bates that he was Booth. St. Helen recovered his health and eventually left the area. In 1898, Bates, having apparently spent years researching the Lincoln assassination, was ready to present his theory of Booth's continued survival to the government. He tried to claim the bounty on Booth by turning in his former client. The soldiers who shot the man in Garrett's tobacco shed had already collected the reward, and Bates was informed the government had "no interest" in the matter. Bates's next gambit was to propose a book exposing St. Helen. No publisher was interested.
Whether St. Helen actually made a confession is a debatable point. Some of his contemporaries said the confession was exactly the sort of thing he might have said to young Bates as a joke. Years earlier, St. Helen had confessed to being a son of Marshall Michel Ney. Ney, a battlefield commander under Napoleon, was the subject of escape legends like those surrounding Booth. Officially executed as a traitor after Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, Ney was said to have used his Masonic connections to escape to America, where he lived as a schoolteacher.
When the story of David E. George hit the newspapers in 1903, lawyer Finis Bates appeared in Enid, claiming George was really St. Helen and both were Booth. Despite his earlier efforts to cash in, Bates wept at the sight of George's corpse and called it "my old friend St. Helen." His renewed claims on the bounty were fruitless. His second attempt at a book found a publisher. The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth, published in 1907, presents an intricate biography of Booth after Garrett's farm, much of it based on statements St. Helen supposedly made to Bates in Texas.
From the time of David E. George's death, Bates had company--and competition--in his quest to turn George into cash. A woman wrote to Enid claiming to be Booth's daughter by a post-war marriage and inquiring after her legacy. A traveling salesman named in one of George's wills showed up to claim the estate. The trouble was that George seemed to make a will whenever he went on a bender and then forget about it when he sobered up. He also had a habit of willing away property he'd never owned.
At his death, George had precisely two cents in his pocket. Inquiries revealed a further estate worth twelve dollars. The various heirs vanished.
Voice from the Underworld
from Gilgamesh
Have you seen a man who died in foreign land,
from accident or age?
I have. He sits alone and screams
and tears his fingernails out.
Have you seen a man who died in the wild,
his corpse despoiled by jackals?
I have. He wanders half-clothed
and cannot rest.
Have you seen a man with no kinsmen left
alive to love him?
I have. In the underworld
he eats the cauldron's scrapings,
the food the maggots will not eat.
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