[Rarebooks] fs: John Wilkes Booth is dead... well, no... well, maybe...

[Joslin Hall Rare Books, ABAA]

>From our JUST CATALOGUED pages-
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Bates, Finis L. "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..."

Naperville; J.L. Nichols & Company: [1907].

"
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. Written for the Correction of History."

Well!

In 1872 young Finis Bates, teenage lawyer, set up shop in Grandberry, a
rural Texas town. He soon became acquainted with, and was eventually hired
by, a storekeeper named John St. Helen, a man who quoted Shakespeare,
liked to strike theatrical poses, and had an inordinate fear of federal
courts and former Union Army officers. In 1877, believing he was on his
deathbed, St. Helen confessed to Bates that he was actually John Wilkes
Booth, a confession Bates took with more than a grain of salt.
St.Helen/Booth recovered, and over the next several years expanded on his
confession, describing in detail the plot to kidnap Lincoln, the
assassination, and his subsequent escape. Among St. Helen's claims was
that he met with Vice President Johnson the day of the assassination and
that it was Johnson who told him to kill Lincoln, not kidnap him. Bates
continued to be doubtful, and in 1878 he moved to Memphis and lost track
of St. Helen, who left Texas for parts westerly.

In 1897 a newspaper article concerning Booth's escape and death reawakened
Bates' interest in the case, and he wrote to a number of persons connected
with it. In fact, Bates at this point asserts that he became convinced
that St. Helen was in fact, Booth, a conviction partly based on a tintype
he said St. Helen had given him years before. He tried to interest the
government in the matter and got nowhere, and there things stood until
January of 1903, when a man named David E. George took poison and died in
a hotel in Enid, Oklahoma. George took a while to die, and while he was
doing it he confessed to several of his attendants that he was actually
John Wilkes Booth. In his effects there was a letter to Finis Bates, who
was sent for to help clear up the mystery.

Upon arriving in Enid, Bates found his former client, John St. Helen, now
David E. George, pickled and set up in the back room of a furniture store
that doubled as a morgue. It seems that St. Helen wandered widely through
the west after leaving Texas, finally winding up in El Reno, Oklahoma in
1899. He bought a house and said he was a house painter, although he only
ever painted one house. He apparently divulged to more than one person
there that he was John Wilkes Booth, and appears to have attempted suicide
at least once before he succeeded at the hotel in Enid.

Upon recognizing his former client, Bates got custody of the body, had it
properly preserved, and began displaying it and promoting the Booth story.
The body was exhibited at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, and Bates wrote
this book, which became very popular. Bates then began renting out the
mummified corpse to carnival promoters and others with an interest in it.
In 1920, while the body was being shipped to California, the train it was
on was wrecked and the corpse disappeared. Bates eventually recovered it,
and it was sold by his widow after his death. Current whereabouts:
unknown.

Although thousands of copies of this book were printed by several
different printers, it has become scarce, especially in decent condition,
because the quality of the binding and paper were deplorable. The story of
Bates, St. Helen and "The Enid Myth" was popularized nationally through
such magazines as Harper's, Life and the Saturday Evening Post, and the
book itself has been reprinted several times in paperback editions in the
1990s. There continue to be people who are convinced by Bates' book,
although some of St. Helen's/George's story contradicts the facts of the
Booth case. Hardcover. 5.5"x7.75", 309 pages, portrait frontispiece of
Bates, b/w plates and text illustrations; a nice copy with very minor
bumps at the tips, minor spine soil, and text browned and brittle, as is
inevitable. [05476] $375.00

Illustrations-
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