This gallery is devoted to the “Booth” mummy. The mummy is that of an Enid, Oklahoma drifter named David E. George who took his own life in 1903. After his death, a local resident claimed that, three years earlier, George had confessed to being John Wilkes Booth. The local undertaker embalmed the body and it was a local attraction in Enid. When the news of George’s death and mummification spread, Memphis attorney Finis L. Bates eventually came to identify the body. Bates had learned the law from the late Mississippi Senator James Z. George and David E. George was one of his relatives. Bates took possession of George’s body and decided to use it for his own purposes. Years before there was a man named John St. Helen who lived in Granbury, Texas. Bates had met St. Helen when St. Helen thought he was one his deathbed. According to Bates, St. Helen confided on his assumed deathbed that he was actually John Wilkes Booth. St. Helen survived his illness, told his whole tale to Bates, and allegedly skipped town shortly thereafter. After Bates came to Enid took possession of David E. George’s body, he decided to merge his St. Helen story into George’s since the mummy would prove a good visual for his claims that Booth escaped. Bates spent the next several years hawking a book he wrote called the Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth and trying to get reward money from the government for having found the “real” John Wilkes Booth. Bates eventually sold the mummy and it was carted around carnival sideshows for many years to come before it finally drifted into obscurity. It is believed that the mummy is currently owned by a private collector. While not John Wilkes Booth, the David E. George mummy is an interesting piece of pseudo-history all its own.
Click on a picture below to see the larger image and a description
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I hope they washed their hands after touching the mummy.
What is this about the ring in the stomach? You would think it would have passed through after 40+ years.
That can’t really be Booth. He wouldn’t be caught dead looking like that.
Yes, evidently history books failed to document not only John Wilkes Booth’s escape, but that he also suffered from Pica disorder.
If you look closely at the ring it appears to be the match to the one he gave Isabel Sumner.
Rich,
I added a picture of the ring that was removed from the mummy during the “autopsy”. I didn’t put it up the first time because the picture is not complete. It is not like the pearl ring Booth gave to Isabel Sumner, but it does have a giant “B” on it!
The whole Booth Mummy thing is a bunch of bologna
I would have to agree with you. After comparing the pictures of both gentlemen and one of the pictures pointing out the ‘raised’ eyebrow when you look at the mummy the raised eyebrow is not present. I am sorry I would need ore proof other than the grainy photos that are provided here.
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It’s not even remotely possible that David George was John Wilkes Booth for one very simple reason – David George had far too much hair. By the time of David George’s death in 1903, John Wilkes Booth would have been 65 years old. Photos of Booth in his mid-20s reveal that his hairline was already drastically receding. Had Booth lived on into his mid-60s, he would have been bald. David George had more hair in 1903 that John Wilkes Booth had nearly 40 years earlier.
Although the mummy looks real enough, my questions are: number one, how did his corpse mummify? And number two, where did he get the mummy?
According to her entry on the International Movie Data base (IMDb) website, Kathy Bates, who won the Best Actress “Oscar” for her performance in “Misery” base on a Stephen King story, is Finis Bates’ descendant.
Yes she is. Finis is Kathy Bates’ grandfather.
What I would like to know is why has no one done the ” Facial Recognition ” on the two pictures? This should prove the probabilities if nothing else.
It has been done now and was chronicled on the show Mummy’s Unwrapped…. The pictures of JWB, DEG and the mummy were matched up and determined to be the same person to a 99.9% certainty… THIS CONFIRMS IT FOR ANYONE WHO IS LOOKING FOR THE TRUTH…
Eventually the Mummy collector in possession of the JWB mummy will come forward and the DNA will finally be that .1% some want to use doubt with… Fact is… JWB escaped after giving Lincoln that fatal shot.
Just for the sake of others who might read this and become confused, the 2019 Travel Channel show Mummies Unwrapped did NOT confirm that John St. Helen and Booth were the same person. Their method of identification was extremely laughable. They took the picture of John St. Helen, digitally manipulated it, and then put it into a database of 5000 modern day mug shots. They also put in one legitimate picture of John Wilkes Booth into the database. Unsurprisingly the only two antique photos of guys with mustaches came back as being the most similar out of the rest. They then spun this as if they had “confirmed” St. Helen’s was Booth.
John Wilkes Booth was definitively killed on April 26, 1865. The mummy is an interesting piece of pseudo-history, but no one should actually take it seriously.
This alleged Booth mummy story is connected to the American automobile manufacturer Henry Ford.
The story, if it’s mentioned at all, comes up as almost an afterthought in biographies of Ford. It’s put down to his effort in the 1920s to collect American artifacts and memorabilia for what is now an outstanding historical collection in Dearborn Village, Michigan. I don’t think it overstates the case to posit all Americans are lucky Ford did the collecting he did then.
I don’t know if any scholar tracked down the full Ford Booth mummy story and has written the story. There’s no evidence Ford’s research effort as to the alleged Booth corpse can be considered anti-Lincoln. After all, Ford owned a car company named after the murdered President. As to Ford, the whole story remains what can be politely called: weird.
While I can’t vouch for any of it, I offer the following from the internet, which gives a summary of the Ford story with Booth:
“The following story about Harry Houdini is an account by Robert Lund, founder of the American Museum of Magic from his lecture, “Abracadabra: Magic in Michigan”:
‘Houdini’s best friend in Detroit was a man named Fred Black, who was also a friend of mine. I retell the story of his friendship with Houdini as I heard it from Fred. Fred worked for Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company. Ford mistrusted employees who had been to college and Fred Black was one of the few executives of the company who had Mr. Ford’s confidence, despite the handicap of a higher education.
Ford came In Black’s office one day with an unusual assignment. He wanted Black to find out everything he could about the death of John Wilkes Booth. Black spent the next year conducting interviews and collecting material on Booth. He became an authority on Booth.
Ford lost Interest in the project along the way and transferred Black to another assignment. Black asked what he should do with the material he had accumulated on Booth. “Write something for the Independent,” Ford replied. (The Dearborn Independent was Ford’s personal newspaper.)
The day the first article appeared, Black received a phone call. “Are you the Fred Black who wrote the story on John Wilkes Booth?” the caller asked. “I have an interest in Booth and I’d like to talk to you.” The caller identified himself as Houdini the magician. At the time, the name meant nothing to Black.
The men eventually became close friends and exchanged many letters and photographs. Two souvenirs of the friendship survive. One is a two-volume manuscript entitled Henry Ford and the Corpse of John Wilkes Booth by Fred Black. It is in the rare book collection at Oakland University. The second souvenir is a bound volume of the letters and photos Black received from Houdini. Fred gave this to me In March, 1961.’ ”
I’ve never seen this manuscript by Mr. Black. But I’ve also never inquired of Oakland University.
In the 1920s, Ford certainly had the financial means to track down the Booth mummy story, and there seems little doubt he would’ve spent the money if there were any indications the story had a basis in fact. All historians, pro or con Ford, agree he was nearly maniacal in his search for American artifacts and memorabilia. For example, on at least one occasion in New England, Ford bought the entire contents of a single antiques’ store. Wikipedia reports Ford declined to buy the mummy. In any event, there’s no Booth corpse in the Dearborn Museum.
The 1920s had a few bizarre history claims. There was a book published in 1926 that purported to show General Custer’s alleged “Lost Message”, which explained events at Little Big Horn. The book included a photographic image of a document credited to the collection of Owen D. Young. Mr. Young was among those who founded RCA and he was president of GE. He was Time Magazine Man of the Year in 1929. He collected historical documents that are now at the Owen D. Young Library at St. Lawrence University, Canon, NY. Today, no present Custer historian credits the document as real. Then again, no one seems to have found the original document credited to Mr. Owen’s collection in 1926.
Perhaps Ford was drawn into an unhappy historical fraud. By Ford’s inquiry into the matter, he may have lent a remote credibility to nonsense.
Regards.
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