Thomas 'Boston' Corbett: Deranged Killer of Lincoln's Assassin

(1832 – 1894?)

Although little heard of today, Boston Corbett's infamous act was something of cause célèbre in his day. He was both famed and reviled by his contemporaries for killing John Wilkes Booth before he could be arrested and tried for the murder of Abraham Lincoln, but even his admirers had to admit upon meeting him that there was something rather peculiar about Boston.

MAD AS A HATTER

Boston's story is an unfortunate one tinged with sadness, madness and religious mania. Born in London, England in 1832, he moved with his family to New York at the age of 7. He was apprenticed as a hat maker, a profession which at the time, often had unfortunate consequences for those who followed it, as the mercury salts used in the manufacturing process often poisoned the minds as well as the bodies of those who worked with them over a period of time in poorly ventilated areas. To make matters worse for his sanity, his young wife died in childbirth in 1858 along with their stillborn daughter.

MATTHEW 19:12

In his grief-stricken and mercurial state, Corbett turned to religion for comfort. Having heard a charismatic preacher preach the word of the God whilst working in Boston, he became born-again. He began to wear his hair long in the style of Jesus Christ himself, and changed his first name from 'Thomas' to 'Boston' in honour of the town in which he found the Lord (or 'The Lord-er' as he would have said, having developed the evangelical preacher's habit of adding 'er' at the end of almost every word that left his mouth).

Still aged just 26 and by all accounts a handsome man, he still found the temptation to fornicate with women sorely trying. Although he was very outward in his religious devotion, he was no hypocrite, and he decided that the best way to avoid giving in to his sinful urges was to take a pair of scissors, slice upon his scrotum and snip off his own testicles.

Despite having literally cut his own testicles off, it could not be said that he lacked balls. As a diminutive preacher, standing at a mere 5'4” tall, he ventured fearlessly into the less salubrious parts of Boston and New York, preaching fire-breathing sermons to crowds of Catholic Irish labourers, who were, unsurprisingly, not particularly receptive to the wild-eyed, born-again rantings of a small-statured English Methodist preacher with long-hair, upbraiding them from a soapbox for their drinking and their swearing. On one occasion, he was roughed up and pushed of his soapbox by an angry Irish longshoreman, who threatened him with dire physical violence if he did not shut up and make himself scarce. Unfazed, Boston told the man:

“You may bring all Ireland with you, and it won’t frighten me in the least.”

Boston's reckless attitude was that of a man arrogantly convinced that he was God's instrument, and that his actions had the backing of the divine, an attitude which, although eccentric, was not particularly unknown in the mid 19th Century, on either side of the Atlantic. Given some of his later actions, there is no reason to doubt that Boston was anything but completely sincere in what he told the Irishman and anyone else who expressed dissatisfaction at what he said and did.

CIVIL WAR

The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 promised to give something of an outlet for Boston's penchant for crusading fearlessly against wrongdoers, in this case, the detestable rebels who had treacherously risen against their own country. He initially joined the 12th New York Militia, but was drummed out of that outfit, having come close to being shot for desertion for having laid down his musket on picket duty and tried to walk away at the stroke of midnight on his last day of enlistment.

He then joined the 16th New York Cavalry regiment. His constant moralising did not make him particularly popular amongst his more worldly fellow soldiers, or for that matter with his commanding officers, who were also astonished on occasion to find themselves on the receiving end of Boston's one-man verbal crusade against cursing and 'immoral' conduct.

Not suprisingly, Boston spent plenty of time in the guardhouse for insubordination. However, his courage in the face of the enemy won him the respect of many in his regiment who otherwise sneered at his self-righteousness 'God-bothering' and his sheer bloody-minded awkwardness with his superiors.

'God have mercy on your souls' he would loftily intone each time he fired in the direction of the enemy, in the manner of a righteous judge imposing a sentence of death upon a wicked miscreant.

In 1864, Corbett was involved in a skirmish with John Mosby's Raiders near Centreville. Cut off and surrounded with 13 other men from Company L, Corbett fought with his characteristic contempt for earthly danger. In spite of hopeless odds, he continued to fire his rifle, and then empty his revolver at the enemy, with an 'Amen! Glory be to God!' ejaculating from his lips every time a bullet found its mark. Having killed 7 raiders, he was only captured because he ran out of ammunition before his enemies were able to kill him in action. Only the personal intervention of the admiring Col Mosby himself prevented the furious Raiders from beating him up and summarily executing him for the bloody nose he had given them.

Boston, along with his fellow prisoners eventually found themselves at the notorious Andersonville POW camp in Georgia. For three months Boston lay surrounded by death in the form of disease, starvation and arbitrary cruelty. He managed to find many converts in that godforsaken place amongst the desperate, dying men who could feel their place on the edge of eternity, and this, in addition to his own survival in the hellish conditions of Andersonville (of the 13 men who were captured alongside him, only 1 survived), were further proof, if it were needed, of Boston's divine favour and calling.

Fortunately for Boston, he was exchanged after 5 months of captivity and following a period of recuperation, rejoined the 16th New York Cavalry, having been promoted to Sergeant.

'LINCOLN'S AVENGER'

The 16th New York Cavalry was stationed in Washington on the night of Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre, and set up a cordon that unsuccessfully attempted to snare John Wilkes Booth before he could escape. Upon hearing the news of the assassination, Sgt Boston Corbett prayed that he might be the hand of the Lord when he administered his divine vengeance upon the late President's treacherous assassin.

And so it proved, as on the 26th of April, 1865 John Wilkes Booth and his fellow conspirator, David Herold were tracked down to a barn in Caroline County, Virginia, by a detachment that included Sgt Corbett . Herold surrendered quickly, but Booth refused to come out. The barn was set ablaze in an attempt force him out, but before the fire had time to do its work, Corbett spotted the crippled assassin through a crack in the wall. Sensing his chance, he aimed through the gap and fired, hitting Booth in the neck. Booth was brought out of the barn mortally wounded, his spine severed by Corbett's bullet. He died two hours later.

FAME COMES AT A PRICE 

The authorities were incensed at Corbett's actions, as they had wanted Booth of all people to be taken alive and put on trial. Corbett was briefly placed under arrest for disobeying orders. However, to many members of the public, Corbett was a hero for bringing the Lord's vengeance upon the man who had committed the ultimate sacrilege of murdering the President of the United States. 'Divine Providence directed my hand' he proclaimed to those questioning him about the incident. He was eventually released and after some petulant foot-dragging by the US Government, was eventually awarded the princely sum of $1,653.84 for his role in bringing Herold and Booth to justice.

Corbett found himself very much in demand for interviews, photographs and autographs, but he eventually grew tired of his newfound fame. Upon being discharged from the army, he re-entered his civilian profession as a hatmaker.
However, the increased exposure to mercury salts, the pressures of fame and the trauma of his wartime experiences did nothing to enhance his already questionable sanity, and he took to carrying at least one pistol with him at all times, even to sleep. According to friends, he imagined that the ghost of Booth and all the other men he had killed where coming to get him, and his sense of paranoia was not helped by the hate mail he would often receive from Confederate sympathisers who swore that Booth's death would be avenged.
When asked for autographs, he would often write long, rambling religious passages instead of his own signature, and when asked to give talks on his role in Booth's death, he would often agree to give the talk, and then promptly refuse to say anything about either himself or the incident, instead taking the opportunity to rant about the perils of fornication, swearing and drinking and call upon the audience to repent their sins and live a good, clean Christian life.

LATER LIFE

By 1878, Boston Corbett was jobless and broke. He decided to move to Kansas and stake a claim to some farmland. Although he made a half-hearted attempt to farm the land, but spent most of his time wandering on the plains, occasionally taking time to preach a fiery sermon or two, whether his audience wanted to hear it or not. For much of the time, he lived in a hole in the ground that he dug for himself on the property, telling one local woman that he wanted it to be his grave. He also constructed a dugout with slits in so that he could fire upon any assailants he might find trying to sneak upon him as he slept.
On one occasion, he was brought before a court accused of threatening some young boys with a pistol for playing baseball on a Sunday. He angrily denied the accusation, screaming 'Thats a lie! Lie! Lie!' However, he rather undermined his own case by waving around the pistol in question at the people in the courtroom whilst trying to make his point.
Despite, the rather open and shut nature of the case, nobody had the heart to pursue criminal charges against poor Boston, and a sympathetic former soldier got him a job as a doorman at the Kansas State legislature. Predictably, given Corbett's increasingly unhinged behaviour, this proved to be a mistake, as Corbett finally snapped one day in 1887 and began threatening everyone in the chamber for a litany of sins, real and imagined, causing legislator's to duck for cover and run for the exits as he waved his pistol at all and sundry.
Corbett was eventually subdued and disarmed, declared insane and dispatched to an insane asylum in Kansas City. However, the following year, Corbett spotted an unattended horse in the yard whilst he and his fellow inmates where out exercising. Seizing his chance, the old cavalryman lept onto the horse and galloped away to freedom, cheered on by his fellow inmates. Having escaped to a safe distance, he left the horse with a livery stable and asked them to get in touch with the Kansas State Asylum in order to return the horse, not wanting to be thought of as a horse thief. From there, he dropped in at the house of an old comrade, where he stayed the night. When he left in the morning, he told his friend he would be traveling on to Mexico. He disappeared after this and was never seen again, although some believe that he began calling himself 'Thomas' again and settled in Hinckley, Minnesota.
In 1894, the Great Hinckley Fire burned the town of Hinckley to the ground, along with many of its inhabitants. One of the victims who disappeared in the conflagration was a certain Mr Thomas P Corbett. Whether this was the man who killed Booth or another Thomas Corbett is not known, but unconfirmed sightings of Corbett continued to be made for several years after this date.