Finis L. Bates

Finis Langdon Bates (August 22, 1848 – November 29, 1923) was an American lawyer and author of ''The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth'' (1907). In this 309-page book, Bates claimed that John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, was not murdered by Union Army Soldiers on April 26, 1865, but successfully eluded capture altogether, and lived for many years thereafter under a series of assumed names, notably John St. Helen and David E. George.

Personal life

Bates was born on a plantation in Itawamba County, Mississippi, in 1848. He was the ninth of 12 children of planter Henderson Wesley Bates (1807–1869) and Eliza Elvira Jarratt Bourland (1815–1900). Finis Bates studied law in Carrollton, Mississippi, and in the 1870s he and his family moved to Texas, where he met John St. Helen. Bates returned to Mississippi, then moved to Memphis, Tennessee, after the death of his first wife and his subsequent marriage.

Family

In 1869, Bates married Bertie Lee Money (born 1851). They had two daughters, Emma and Olga Bates, and a son, Bertram Money Bates Sr. (1870–1934), who married Anne H. "Annie" Koen. Following Bertie's death, in 1890 Finis married Madge Young Doyle (1869–1944), daughter of Washington Jackson Phepoe Doyle (1838–1907) and Minerva Hasbrook Selden (born 1851). Finis' youngest son by his second wife was Langdon Doyle Bates (1900–1989). Langdon D. Bates married Adrienne Marguerite Boutall in 1928 and they had a daughter named Beverly Anne Bates. That marriage ended in divorce and Langdon married Bertye Kathleen Talbert (1907–1997). They had a daughter named Kathleen Doyle Bates, better known as actress Kathy Bates.Scott's Movie Comments
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"Booth escaped" theory

John St. Helen

According to ''The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth'', in 1873, Bates met John St. Helen, a liquor and tobacco merchant in Granbury, Texas. The man had a particular tendency toward the theatrical and could recite Shakespeare from memory. Bates and St. Helen cultivated a friendship over five years. In 1878, St. Helen became ill, stating:

"I am dying. My name is John Wilkes Booth, and I am the assassin of President Lincoln. Get the picture of myself from under the pillow. I leave it with you for my future identification. Notify my brother Edwin Booth, of New York City."Bates, Finis L., "St. Helen's Illness",
The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth
', J.L. Nichols, Memphis, TN, 1907, p. 23

St. Helen later recovered and explained in greater detail:

* The leader of the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln was Vice-President Andrew Johnson.Bates, Finis L., "The Assassination",
The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth
', J.L. Nichols, Memphis, TN, 1907, p. 42
* The identity of the man mortally wounded in the Garrett tobacco barn by Thomas P. "Boston" Corbett was a plantation overseer by the name of Ruddy. St. Helen/Booth had asked Ruddy to fetch his papers, which had fallen out of his pocket while crossing the Rappahannock River. Ruddy was able to retrieve Booth's papers, and while still in possession of them, Ruddy was mortally wounded in the Garrett barn, thus leading his captors to believe that he was Booth.Bates, Finis L., "The Man Killed at the Garret Home",
The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth
', J.L. Nichols, Memphis, TN, 1907, pp. 63–64

Shortly thereafter, St. Helen moved on to Leadville, Colorado, to pursue mining, and Bates moved to Memphis, losing track of St. Helen.Bates, Finis L., "The Separation",
The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth
', J.L. Nichols, Memphis, TN, 1907, p. 83

Bates claimed not to have believed St. Helen's story at the time, calling it an "unpleasant side of St. Helen's character." Bates described him as "modest, unobtrusive and congenial, ever pleasant in association with me. He was a social favorite with all with whom he came in contact."Bates, Finis L., "The Man Killed at the Garret Home",
The Escape and Suicide of John Wilkes Booth
', J.L. Nichols, Memphis, TN, 1907, p. 81 Despite his claims of disbelief, in 1900, Bates wrote the War Department in an unsuccessful attempt to claim the $100,000 reward advertised following Lincoln's assassination. He also informed the Department of State. Bates also wrote the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the early 1920s about his theory concerning Booth's purported escape.

David E. George

David E. George – possibly David Elihu George – a house painter with an appetite for drink and a knack for quoting Shakespeare, committed suicide by ingesting poison on January 13, 1903, while staying at room number 4 in the Grand Avenue Hotel in Enid, Oklahoma. He had purchased the strychnine from the Watrous Drug Store, telling the clerk, Frank Corry, that he wanted "to poison a dog" who had kept him up the night before.Rockwell, Stella, ed., ''Garfield County, Oklahoma, 1907-1982, Vol. II'', Garfield Historical Society, Josten's Publishing Company, Topeka, Kansas. 1982., pp. 789–792 Shortly thereafter, store owner Eugene Watrous, unaware that his clerk had just sold George strychnine, provided additional strychnine to George "to poison a cat."Campbell, W.P.
The Escape and Wanderings of J. Wilkes Booth until Ending of the Trail by Suicide in Oklahoma
1922, page 100 By 10:30 a.m. that morning, other tenants complained of hearing groans and moans in George's locked room. They managed their way into George's room and found him writhing in pain. Despite the efforts of Dr. Champion, the local doctor, the poison had claimed him by 11 a.m. that morning. Acting Coroner Joe S. Jacobs assembled a coroner's jury, which included Mayor Charles O. Wood, and determined that George had died of alcohol and poison induced heart failure.

Shortly after George's death, Methodist Episcopal minister Rev. Enoch Covert Harper came to view the body, and relayed a story to William H. Ryan, who was embalming the body. In April 1900, while staying in El Reno, Oklahoma, George had reportedly confessed to Mrs. Jessie May Kuhn (who was soon to be Rev. E. C. Harper's second wife - they were married on May 23, 1900) that he was John Wilkes Booth.Quigley, Christine, "John Wilkes Booth (a.k.a. David E. George, John St. Helen, John W. Boyd, J.J. Marr, George D. Ryan, Jesse Smith, The Texas Booth Mummy, The Bates Mummy", ''Modern Mummies: The Preservation of the Human Body in the Twentieth Century'', pp. 77–87James, Marquis, "The Eagle",
The Cherokee Strip: a tale of an Oklahoma boyhood
', University of Oklahoma Press, pp. 251–253 Mrs. Kuhn had then dismissed the confessions as the product of drug-induced delirium. George was also quoted as saying, "I killed the best man that ever lived."

Shortly after George's death, Dr. R.W. Baker examined the body and X-rayed it, but refused to reveal his results on "ethical grounds."

George's "afterlife"

George's body was sent to undertaker William Broadwell Penniman, who hesitated to have him buried until the body could be claimed. On December 31, 1902, George had drawn up a will with local lawyer Niles Houston, and it was filed with Judge Milton C. Garber on January 16, 1903. However, the property listed in the will ultimately proved non-existent, and the body remained unclaimed and unburied at Penniman's. The arsenic embalmed body sat for eight years on display in Enid at Penniman's establishment. Penniman had tied the body to a chair, opened its eyes, and placed a newspaper in its lap, creating a spectacle for passersby in the Enid downtown. As a young boy, writer Marquis James led dime tours into the funeral home to view the mummified body where it lay on a shelf. According to Penniman, 10,000 people viewed George's body during its time in Enid, including a few who clipped hair, buttons, and one even attempted to remove his ear.Grice, Gordon,
The Mummy
", ''Oklahoma Today'', Vol. 54, No. 6, November 2004, pp. 54–57.

Other papers found on George requested Finis Bates to be summoned. On January 23, 1903, Bates identified the body as that of his old acquaintance John St. Helen. Ultimately, with no one else to claim it, the body ended up in Bates's care. Bates stored it in the garage of his home located at 1234 Harbert Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee, and toured the alleged mummy of Booth in circus sideshows until after World War I.Finger, Michael,
Mummy Mystery
, ''Memphis Flyer'', September 20, 2007 The body was shown at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair,Logsdon, Guy,

", Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture but was rejected by the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.Wallis, Michael, "The South's Avenging Angel," ''The Real Wild West, The Creation of the American West'', pp. 35–37 In 1920, Bates tried to interest the automaker Henry Ford in buying it for $1,000, but Ford refused.

William B. Evans (died May 19, 1935) – a charter member of the Showmen's League of America (which is headquartered in Chicago) who was known as the "Carnival King of the Southwest" – rented the mummy in 1920, paying Bates $1,000 every five months.Johnston, Alva,
John Wilkes Booth on Tour
, ''Saturday Evening Post'', February 10, 1938 In 1920, while traveling to San Diego, the mummy came out unscathed from a trainwreck, where eight of Evans' employees and many of his circus animals died. Before Evans could reestablish a tour, the mummy was kidnapped. Evans ran ads in ''The Billboard'' offering a $1,000 reward for its return. Ultimately, the kidnapper himself turned in the mummy for its reward. Evans wanted to return it to Finis Bates, but Bates had died in 1923. Bates' widow sold the mummy to Evans for $1,000. Evans moved to a potato farm in Declo, Idaho

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