Diagram of Ford’s Theatre and Baptist Alley based on a drawing by John Ford.
Image Source: Restoration of Ford’s Theatre
Diagram of Ford’s and Baptist Alley
The History Behind Lincoln's Assassination
Diagram of Ford’s Theatre and Baptist Alley based on a drawing by John Ford.
Image Source: Restoration of Ford’s Theatre
LincolnConspirators.com 
has anyone transcribed these notes ? I can’t read them and i’ve tried “zoom” and getting a magnifiying glass. Help !!
The remark at upper right reads: “This side cannot be fully relied on altho factual to be comfortably correct. Booth’s stable was standing opposite the angle of the alley leading to E St.”
The remark at lower left reads: “Of the passages H to K.— the former H is the most important as it adjoins the Dressing Rooms and is most used and it must be unobstructed. Peanut John was Booth’s Hostler. He kept the stage door of the theater at night.”
The remark at farthest middle left reads: “4 Story Building for Dressing Rooms etc.” Next to it is: “The scenes occupy about the space from H to B when the Stage is open.” and opposite that is: “The scenes when not displayed, in close lines from A toB fr. E to F.”
The placing of the stage scenery is indicated by the space between the lines on the stage marked “A” and “B” horizontally and “E” to “F” vertically; however on the right side Ford made an error by placing “B” at the “A” line.
also, this seems counter to everything i’ve read. I’ve always believed that Booth ran outside at the place where the pointing finger is drawn.
Renee Lee – I agree with you 100%. I have been trying to decipher this also!
I recently came across this inquiry and perhaps it has already been answered. However, assuming it has not been addressed, the pointing finger on the diagram depicts the stage door leading to the exterior passageway which ran along the south wall of the theater and connected both to the Star Saloon next door as well as opened onto 10th Street.
After entrusting his horse to Spangler at the back door of Ford’s Theater, Booth entered the building and wanted to get across the stage to get to the saloon through that stage door. However, since the play was in progress, he had to travel under the stage using trap doors for ingress and egress to the basement to get to that exit. After he took a drink at the saloon, Booth re-entered the theater through the public entrance on 10th Street and made his way up to the dress circle to assassinate Lincoln. The diagram correctly depicts the escape route he took after the murder across the stage to reach the back door where he had left his horse.
Ford made several other errors with his diagram: he depicted the audience facing side wall of the booths as elegantly curved when in fact they were slanted and he didn’t the staircase in the inter-space hallway between the theater and the tavern that he mislabels a “restaurant” that led up to the second and third story lodgings above the barroom in the tavern AND to the second story sid entrance that led into the dress circle of the theater. THIS would have been MORE likely the entry Booth would have used to get into the theater than the front entrance because he would have avoided getting obstructed and delayed by patrons coming down from the dress circle or going up ahead of him on the theater staircase behind the ticket booth. Timing was CRUCIAL to Booth’s plan of shooting Lincoln because he intended to do it during the expected outburst of audience laughter at the play’s funniest line of dialogue. These pictorial ERRORS, including omitting the rear doorway of what was NOT a side alley but an INTERIOR HALLWAY roofed over by the upper hallways to the second and third story tavern residences, actually INDICATE the Fords brothers COMPLICITY in the assassination conspiracy! By OMITTING these details, Ford shows that Booth HAD to have entered the theater from the FRONT street entrance to get to Lincoln’s booth from the barroom; AS IF there was NO other way from the street side. This scenario creates the absurd situation “attested” by ALL the theater employee witnesses, including Harry Ford, that the last place Booth was situated was in the barroom and he kept coming out and going back in after asking what the time was; AS IF he didn’t have a pocket watch. In probable actuality, he would have exited the barroom ONCE onto the street, walked into the hallway entrance, and then up the hallway staircase to the second level hallway from which he could have entered the theater. A 1930’s photograph made during the demolition of the tavern shows in the exposed interior remains of the tavern the SIDE DOOR THEATER ENTRANCE at SECOND STORY LEVEL!! The ONLY reason the Fords would have wanted to OBSCURE this detail is because according to the 2013 book “Backstage at the Lincoln Assassination: actors and stagehands accounts of Ford’s Theater” by Thomas Bolgar published HERE in DC, the Ford brothers Harry and James RESIDED in lodging rooms of the tavern (though they weren’t within at the time of the assassination). THIS fact would IMPLY that Booth felt SAFER going into the theater by THAT unusual way in case he encountered them as well as it being QUICKER from the tavern-bar to Lincoln’s booth, and so would indicate the Fords were INVOLVED with him in the assassination. Inconsistencies and peculiarities in their testimonies also imply they were LYING and INVOLVED.
An interesting sidelight to this is that, aside from James Ford having the SAME middle name as my first, a distant relative of mine, Scipiano Grillo, was the bartender and co-owner of the tavern and KNEW WELL the main conspirators from Booth himself to David Herold!! Talk about “coincidences” of History.