Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1882-03-15
Is Alas, Poor Yorick."
(From the Louisville Courier-Journal. ]


The following is an extract from Mrs.
Asia Booth Clark's biography of her
father, Junius Brutus Booth, and Edwin
Booth, her brother:
"Many stories have been told about
Edwin Booths handling the skull of a
friend In the grave scene in Hamlet. ,
The facts appear to be that during q
visit to the Louisville jail the horse thief
Fountaino, alias Lovett, was pointed out
to the elder Booth. 1t was remarked
that he had no means of obtaining coun-
sci, and Mr.. Booth, although assured
that his case was hopeless, sent him a
lawyer and betrayed the expenses of his
trial, for which kindness, when Lovett
heard of it, he bequeathed him his skull,
desiring that it should be given, after
his execution to the actor Booth, with
the request that he should use on the
stage in Hamlet and think, when he
held it in his hands, of the gratitude his
kindness had awakened. The skull was
accordingly sent to his residence while
he was absent from the city, but Mrs.
Booth, finding what horrible thing had
been left in her house, Immediately re-
turned it to the doctor to whom it had
been entrusted for preparation and de-
livery. In 1857 the doctor, who had re-
tanned the skull, sent it to Edwin Booth,
who used it in the graveyard scene in
Hamlet on several occasions, and after
ward had it buried"
A Courier-J ournal reporter obtained
an entirely different, and probably cor
rect, account of the disposition of
Lovett's skull after he was hanged in
this city, together with Mike Jones, in
1887 or 1888, from well known officer
The subject was brought up in CONVEX
sation, and the officer said.
"The statement OF Mrs. Clark that
her brother, Edwin Booth, obtained pos
session of Geo. Lovett's skull is entire
ly incorrect. At the time Lovett was
condemned to be hanged for murder, his
accomplice Jones was also condemned,
and they occupied the same cell in the
jail. At that time DR.. Dunn, whom
most of the old citizens remember, was
living and practicing in this city, and
was present during the trial of Lovett
and Jones, and took considerable inter
est in them. After they were condemned
and sentenced to jail he visited them
daily, and fed them during their con-
OhO UCIOIS eASCu-
ton he presented each of them with a
suit of clothes to wear on the scaffold.
The next day they were hanged at what
is now the corner of Eighteenth and
Broadway. After they we're cut down
both of the bodies were given to DR..
Dunn, who conveyed them to house
on the ''Point," and few nights after
ward dissected both bodies in an old
frame building that stood on the corner
of Second and Walnut. Both of the
skeletons he preserved, and several
years afterward he went down to Mem
phis, Tenn, on a steamboat, accompanied
by his wife, and carried Lovett's skele-
ton with him. went down on the same
boat, and the doctor showed me Lovett's
skeleton, and the head was with it, never
having been severed from the spinal
column. He kept the skeleton until
after the war, and it is still in the pos
session of some member of his family.
Lovett was not professional horse
thief, but professional gambler, and
one of the bravest and most daredevil
fellows [ ever saw"