School of Humans.
Wow, this episode is almost timely because we're talking about assassins, and as we've seen this month, not all assassinations.
Go to plan.
But perhaps the most famous assassination in our country was the assassination of Abraham Frickin' Lincoln, killed by none other than John Wilkes Booth on April fourteenth, eighteen sixty five, at Ford's Theater. Booth momentarily grappled with one of the other theater guests, then stabbed.
Him and escaped. And wu wee was.
There a hubbub After that, there was a one hundred thousand dollars reward for him, and army regiments were instructed to go on the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. One soldier in one of those army regiments was named Boston Corbett, and he ended up being the one who assassinated the assassin. That's right, Boston Corbett. He killed John Wilkes Booth after a dramatic standoff around a fiery barn and Corbett he
became an American hero. But the problem with being an American hero is that all that attention can make a guy go a bit crazy. But luckily for Boston, he was already pretty mentally ill. How mentally ill you might ask, well, before he joined the Union Army, he chopped his balls off. Cue the theme song, This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts.
Every week I tell you.
A filthy story from American history. This week's episode the Guy who Assassinated the Assassin slash junk lists. Now you might be thinking, why would a dude want to castrate himself? Was it because Boston Corbett didn't like the aesthetic?
Was it because he was a bit crazy?
Well, here are some of the benefits of castration, fellas if you ever think about it for yourself.
One you won't go bald.
Two you'll no longer want to have sex with toxic women or toxic men, or really anyone in general.
And three, if you do it early enough, you can have.
A beautiful singing voice. Anyway, that's about the extent of the benefits of castration. But here's a couple of the reasons why Corbett might have castrated himself. One he loved God and two he made hats. And yes, loving God and making hats are not mutually exclusive activities. It was the power of those two things in tandem. That said about his castration. But let's go back to the beginning,
shall we. Boston Corbett was born in England in eighteen thirty two, and his parents didn't name him Boston.
Oh.
No, his given Christian name was Thomas. He changed it later, but his family gave the finger to mother England and boted over to America when he was about seven years old. See Corbett's dad, Bartholomew, was a naturalist and taxidermist, and he wanted a better life. He wanted better work, he wanted more money, and he thought where might they have plenty of dead animals lying around?
Why?
America? Many things are unknown about the Corbetts. When did Mummy Corbett pass away? There aren't any records of her being on the boat they took over to America. So did she die on the boat over or had she died before they had even departed? Either way, by the time the Corbetts reached America's shores, there was the dad, Thomas, and his two older siblings, a brother and a sister. It's also unclear how Bartholomew made a living.
Most likely what he did was prepared.
Dead animals for display at museums or for hunters, but Bartholome, you never got that prosperity he was looking for, and he returned to England. A couple decades later, Thomas Corbett stayed in America and when he grew up, he decided to become a milliner. That's someone who makes hats. But the problem with making hats is it ca make it crazy. Hence the term Matt, Hatter and Alice in Wonderland because in hat making at the time, they were using this
chemical called mercury nitrate. And then the thing is a lot of the process of making hats requires heat and water, which would then create a mercury infused mist. And most meliners were working in cramped, unventilated conditions, so if you were making hats, you were just sucking down mercury air all day. And here's some of the things that can
result from inhaling mercury all day. Slurred speech, tremors also known as hatter's shakes, irritability, shyness, depression, emotional instability, hallucinations, psychosis, excitability, paranoia. Based on these symptoms, it seems that at some point in my life I also made hats. Some people call it adhd. In general, moral weakness, but I'm calling it. I used to make hats, so yeah, Thomas Corbett was making hats being exposed to chemicals and stuff.
He met a woman named Susan.
Rebecca, there's no record of her last name, and they got married.
Susan was thirteen years older than Thomas.
Corbett a bit of a coup out there, and together they moved to Troy, New York. There, Thomas was able to get American citizenship in eighteen fifty five. It seemed like they were happy. Corbett apparently told a friend that he had a great Christian wife and what a pleasant home he had, But unfortunately he couldn't get enough work. So they didn't stay in Troy for long and moved down to Richmond, Virginia. But down there it seemed Corbett
got even less work. And part of the reason why is because he was very much against slavery, and he was always run in his mouth about how much he hated it. And I'm sure the Virginians were like, but we love slavery.
This guy's annoying. Don't give him jobs.
So he and Susan Rebecca were like, I guess we should go back to New York City, where we started. But on the boat ride from Virginia to New York, Susan Rebecca fell ill and died. Another cougar fallen rip, pretty kitty cat. This was in August eighteen fifty six, when Corbett was about twenty four, and when he made it back to New York City, he fell into a deep depression and started drinking a lot. He was wandering the streets another nefarious self pitying drunk. I mean he
had reasons to self pity. His hot cougar wife had just died. He had to keep moving in search of work and never found enough of it, so he had to toil away in poverty. It wasn't a good time. But as Corbett stumbled down the street, that's when the light of God began to shine upon him. Be right back after these soothing advertisements. One day in eighteen fifty six, Thomas Corbett was drunk as a skunk wandering the streets of New York City. He had just lost his cougar wife.
He was sad as heck. And sometime along his drunken stumble he encountered some evangelical Christians who were really into temperance and what they liked to do was go on the hunt for sinners who they could convert. And who is better to convince to be a devout Christian than a desperate man who has hit rock bottom. That's how you know religion is great because it lures people into.
It when they are at their lowest.
Apparently, this group of even angelicals scooped him up, essentially detaining him as he sobered up. Sure maybe they saw it as helping a guy out, but whatever happened during his confinement, Corbett allegedly had a religious epiphany. But I asked myself, was he seeing God? Or maybe it was the mercury. After these teetotaling Christians let him go, Thomas Corbett was a changed man. He was like, yes, I'm
into God. God is the best. Corbett joined many downtrodden folks at the tail end of the Second Great Awakening, people who are being bamboozled by traveling Christian preachers having hoot nanniesque revivals. Even in New York City, preachers descended upon the streets and had lunchtime prayer meetings, which Corbett very likely started attending. Can you tell that I'm skeptical of organized religion? But Corbett needed more work again, so this time he moved up to Boston, and there he
found a religious community that embraced him. But unfortunately for Corbett, he was a human person with normal human impulses, and those impulses were telling him that he wanted to fuck. But you guys know, God, he hates it when you do that kind of stuff. God hates it when you bang other people. He hates it when you bang yourself. He hates it when you even think about banging. God hates that stuff, and so does Mercury and Corbett. He wanted to be a good Christian boy, but he couldn't
find a solution to this problem of horniness. I mean, he could have tried meditation, maybe diving into a cold lake, maybe conjuring up pictures of sad children and grandmas.
But he didn't know what to do. He was really struggling.
And then he read in the Bible this one part that said, and if thy right, I offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee, and there'd be eunuchs which have made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. So Corbett was like, huh, that seems like a good solution to my problem. I must become a eunuch akaa chop my balls off.
So on July.
Sixteenth, eighteen fifty eight, what he did, and yes, this is very graphic, so sorry, not my fault, this is just American history. What he did is he took a pair of scissors, sliced open his scrotum, yanked his balls down, and snip snipped them off.
Awi awi awi awi.
I hope they were sharp scissors. Can you imagine doing this with a doll blade?
Yikes.
After Corbett self castrated, he decided to just act normally, just go on with his day. According to the records for the Massachusetts General Hospital, he quote went to a prayer meeting, walked around, and had a hearty dinner.
But the wound was heavily clotted.
The blood and fluids had backed up in the scrotum, which swelled enormously and were black end quote. So a doctor came to see him in his room, and they ended up taking him to the hospital because apparently, castrating yourself with no medical experience isn't like a casual, easy DIY sort of thing, and it's not a walk in the park. No it's more of a marathon through hell.
At the hospital, the doctors treated him for his castration wounds, but because of the injury and infection from it, Corbett also started having intestinal problems, so they also gave him an enema to unclog him, and then he was discharged a few days later. And I suppose because of God's love, Corbett healed relatively quickly, and he did not regret his decision. Oh no, because indeed he no longer had any sexual desire.
Finally he could please God. He was like, I am free from those passions and can study the Bible without being distracted. I'm always so confused about the Bible. It's just one book. Certainly there are other things to read. But I digress. And Corbett wasn't done with his makeover. You know, he did the castration. He also started wearing his hair like Jesus, growing it long and parting it down the middle. Now, some interpretations say Jesus had a
side part. But remember Corbett had lots of time to read the Bible now that he had no sexual desire, so we should trust him about the middle part scenario. Another thing that happened in Boston was that Corbett officially got saved there, I guess, with the water and the shit and baptism or whatever. He decided to change his name to the city where he had changed his life,
and he became Boston Corbet. Good thing he didn't get baptized in a nearby town to where I live called coming, Otherwise he'd be coming Corbet, and coming was a whole reason he didn't want to have balls anymore.
So Corbett. He had a trade hat making, but.
Now he had a purpose, a mission, you might say, to convert everyone else. Boston Corbett moved back to New York City and he continued working as a hatter, but apparently people weren't too eager to hire him because he would spend a lot of time proselytizing to the customers, being like, Hey, I know you like hats, but have.
You heard of Jesus.
Also, if he ever heard a coworker say some cuss words, Corbett would fall to his knees and be like, please, God, give this man some redemption.
Despite his filthy tongue.
Corbett would also come to work wearing rags because at this time he was no longer just the convert. He was also a preacher, and he was using all of his money to convert others. He'd basically hold down a job long enough to get enough money to walk the streets and find low lifes to convert, just like what
happened to him. He would round up the drunks, give them some food, give them some clothes, a place to stay the night, and then once they sobered it up, he'd be likerv let me tell you about Jesus.
But then all of a sudden, it was the Civil War.
There was a call for soldiers, and Corbett was like, what would Jesus do? Jesus would obviously fight and kill people, so he decided to join the Union Army. He was accepted into a regiment in New York City and they sailed down to Washington, DC to train and get.
Ready to fight.
Even though being a soldier meant he had to chop off his Jesus hair, fighting a war was no excuse for Corbett to stop his godly work. Oh No, this just meant he was around even more people who he could try to seduce. With the Lord, Corbett was able to find some believers in his regiment, but most of the soldiers made fun of him. He often got on people's nerves because he would complain about how much cussing all of the officers would do. He also hated how they were boozin and horn God.
Doesn't like that.
But they were boys at war. Of course they're going to do some cuss and boozin and horring. That's the whole point of war. But Corbett wasn't just criticizing people in his same rank. One time, the general of his regiment, General Butterfield, had gathered up the troops because he'd gotten a complaint about their disorderly behavior. Apparently some of the soldiers had stolen goods from the town they were occupying. Butterfield said, I will have no damned thieves in this regiment.
And then Corbett stepped forward and was like, I call the colonel to order for swearing.
Yeah. He was basically telling his general, you shouldn't say bad words.
But instead of cust and less, Corbett got arrested for disorderly conduct. He was thrown in a temporary garrison, and he protested his imprisonment with a hunger fast. And he also wouldn't stop singing hymns. And despite his devotion to Christianity, Boston Corbett didn't seem to have that many qualms about killing people, even the dudes on his own team, the Union. And this is when the mercury poisoning really started showing. One day, Corbett was assigned to work on a Sunday,
but that's the Sabbath. One is not supposed to work. Then his fellow soldiers did what they were told, but then two of them were approached by Corbett. He held up a Bible and his rifle, thrusting both in their direction. The two soldiers were picking blackberries, and Corbett cocked his gun and was like, if you take another step further, you're a dead man.
Don't worry.
He didn't kill these soldiers, but this was just another incident where Corbett got in trouble for his very aggressive religious fervor. Over the course of the war, Corbett fought in several battles, worked with different regiments, and then in June eighteen sixty four, he got captured by the Confederates, and being a prisoner of war, it wasn't great, especially on the side of the Confederacy. They were losing, running low on provisions for their own troops, so feeding captured
Union soldiers wasn't high on their list of priorities. Corbett was imprisoned at Andersonville, a huge, disgusting prison. This is how he described his stay there. The stench was so great that I remember the first time I went down there, I wondered that every man in the place did not die from the effects. It was a living mass of putrification and filth. There were maggots there, and I had to take the food to the stream and wash the maggots from it. Ew Corbett got sick like most people there.
There was hardly any edible food, clean water.
There's a lot of disease.
He also had to sleep out in the elements, exposed to the scorching sun all day. He ended up having scars on his body from all the burns. But you know, despite all of that, in prison, Corbett was like, Wow, this is a great time to convert people. He began preaching with another prisoner and they would preside over funerals and have other services. Some people in the prison were like, goddamn it, please stop, this isn't the time. But then other soldiers were so desperate they were like, yeah, this
is a good idea. Jesus, save us from these Mangy Confederates. The months grew colder, and more and more soldiers died. One Union prisoner said many of the men froze to death, and instead of burial, the hogs disposed.
Of their remains.
Corbett, though he wasn't going to be eaten by no hog. He was released in late eighteen sixty four. He had survived, but he would continue to suffer from the diseases he contracted there for the rest of his life. The Civil War ended a few months later, and then you'll know what happened. John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln Bang Bang. Booth ran the fuck out of there, which started a dramatic man.
Hunt for him.
At this point, Corbett had mostly recovered from his time at the prison, and he was part of a regiment that was given orders to hunt down Booth. Specifically, the order was to capture him, not to kill him. Corbett's regiment found Booth. Booth was hiding out in a barn that belonged to a Virginia tobacco farmer. Booth was there with his accomplice. His accomplice surrendered immediately. He was like, please, I'm sorry, don't shoot me. But Booth was like, hell, no,
I'm not going out. He said, I will not be taken alive. So the Union's soldiers were like, Okay, he's not coming out, so I guess we should figure out something to do to get him out. So what they did is they set the barn on fire. They're like, surely this will get John Wilkes Booth out of there,
but Booth he was like, no, I'm still not coming out. Corbett, like the rest of the soldiers, was stationed around the barn and where he was was a crack in the barn wall and he could actually see John Wilkes Booth. So he talked to his lieutenant. He was like, hey, I can see his ass. Can I go in and try to get him? But his lieutenant was like, no, you can't do that. But it seemed that Corbett was a little eager to kill this guy because.
What happened next was a little suss.
But allegedly, when Corbett looked through the crack another time, he saw Booth loading up his gun. So Corbett got his own gun and shot him through the crack and bang bang, Corbett.
Got him right in the head.
The wound was almost in the same spot as the one Lincoln had received from Booth. I imagine the lieutenant wasn't pleased though, because he was like Corbett, I literally just told you don't shoot him. But Boston was like, oh, he was loading his gun. I was just saving everyone. After John Willikes Booth was shot, he was apprehended and dragged to the porch of the farmhouse.
He was wailing in agony. He was completely.
Paralyzed, in an extreme pain and just kept yelling out, please kill me. Honestly relatable, and he died a few moments later due to the bullet wound. And Corbett was about to become a celebrity be back after these soothing advertisements. So it's a bit awkward when you were given speci orders not to kill someone and then you do. After Boston Corbett shot John Wilkes Booth, Corbett was sent to Washington, d c. For questioning, but he wasn't punished. Instead, he
was released and hailed as a hero. People wanted him to regale them with a tale of what happened when he shot Booth.
They wanted to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.
People wanted to buy his gun, and Corbett was like, actually, this isn't my gun. This is the governments. But government, will you let me keep the pony? I want to keep my pony, please. And the problem with being a hero is that it's a lot of pressure, don't I know it? And also a lot of people loved him, but a lot of people also hated him, like people
from the South who were still like the Confederacy. He started getting letters from Southerners threatening to kill him, so he kept a gun on him at all time.
He was jumpy, paranoid, and.
Corbett, well, we've seen that he's not the most mentally stable of guys, so this pressure was not good for him. While still in the army, Corbett and his regiment were sent outside Washington, d c.
For a patrol.
Corbett was walking around looking for a dry place to sleep in a stable.
The only places he.
Could find asleep were damp, but he was still suffering with the illnesses from being a prisoner of war, and he was like, this damp hay is going to be my undoing. He finally found a dry spot to sleep and a part of the stable he was not allowed to go in. A sergeant accosted him and was like, hey, you can't sleep there, and then Corbett pulled out his
gun and pointed it at the sergeant. He didn't shoot, but he left, and then he was court martialed, but then he got off because of his rising celebrity, and also his health was just getting worse and worse. The war was over, so his doctor's recommend did he leave DC with its terrible summers and returned to New York City. So that's what he did, and he went back to making hats and preaching. But now Corbett had another source of income. People paid him to lecture on what happened
and bought autographs from him. He was being elevated from street preacher to booked and busy preacher, even though God wasn't really why people wanted to talk to him. Meanwhile, Corbett's former regiment was trying to get the reward money for capturing Booth. Corbett had also submitted to get some reward money, and he eventually got a whopping one hundred dollars. And while he was in New York, he was still getting death threats and there were all these conspiracies popping
up that Booth was actually still alive. Corbett moved again because he needed more work first somewhere in Connecticut and then to Camden, where he was given a job at a Methodist mission and then started his own. But unfortunately, despite his fervor for God and his fame, his mission wasn't very popular. He only had eighteen members and he still had to make hats to make ends meet.
In eighteen seventy four, he moved to Cleveland, Ohio.
He moved into a boarding house and continued working as a hatter and was still asked to do an occasional speech. He still traveled with two guns on him at all times because he was convinced a lot of people were out there trying to kill him. He was more and more paranoid. One of the borders in the house he was living at remember talking to Corbett about the day
he killed Booth. Corbett then went on to pace around the room and he would quote frequently clasp his hands and exclaim, the Lord have mercy on my soul end quote. That night, the Border made some sort of noise in his sleep that made Corbett wake up. Corbett sat up, drew out his pistol, and shoved it into the boarder's chest.
He eventually calmed down and went back to sleep. Corbett moves back to Camden, and in a desperate attempt in eighteen seventy eight, he wrote a letter to President Rutherford B.
Hayes asking for a job. For one of his.
References, Corbett told the president to look at to quote the words of Solomon in the ninth.
Chapter of Ecclesiastes.
Unfortunately, it seems that Ecclesiastes didn't give him a good recommendation, because President Hayes didn't end up giving.
Corbett a job.
Later that year, Corbett moved to Kansas, got some land and started homesteading, despite having no experience farming and also being sickly. He lived out on the prairie, and he didn't really live in a house. Technically it was a dugout, but most people just describe it as a whole. Wasn't a good farmer, wasn't making enough money, so he wrote to the US Bureau of Pensions being like, hey, and
I have some money. I was a prisoner of war and because of that I have constant diarrhea, scurvy, fever, rheumatism. He eventually got his pension, but he went through the money fast. Corbett was living near Concordia, Kansas, and around the town. He was pretty notorious. He was well known. People knew of his celebrity. People would come up to him and ask him what happened on the day that he killed Booth. But still he was a paranoid guy.
Some of his favorite.
Activities while he was living in Kansas were killing birds with his gun, or threatening locals with his gun when he thought they weren't obeying the lord, or if they were making jokes about him. But living in a hole and threatening people wasn't going to last forever, especially if your paranoia was out of control and you're constantly convinced everyone is trying to kill you. Eventually, Corbett went too far.
A friend of his from the war got him a job as the assistant doorkeeper of the House of Representatives in Kansas. Mostly he maintained the building with the staff, but one day he heard two fellow workers cracking jokes with each other, and he was convinced they were laughing at him. He pulled out a gun and started chasing them.
Once they were out of sight, Corbett resumed his job of sweeping up the hallway until the sergeant at arms came up to him and was like, hey, I heard you pulled a gun out on some folks.
You're not supposed to do that.
And what Corbett did was then he pulled his gun out on that guy. The sergeant backed away and Corbett went to go sit down. A journalist happened to be in the building sat down next to him, probably wanted to ask him some questions about Booth, and then.
Again Corbett pulled his gun out.
The journalists scurried away. Some other officials approached him and they were like, hey, Corbett, we need you to stop pulling your gun out on people.
So you know what he did. He pulled out his gun and he was like, you get out of here.
Anyway, they went and got the police, and the police jumped him, pinned him to the floor before he could get his gun, and they took him to jail. At the trial, Corbett was so paranoid, explaining that there was a huge conspiracy to kill him by John Wilkes Booth sympathizers, that he was taken to an insane asylum. There, he continued to think everyone was out to get him, and also started writing his own death threats, saying the Kansas
governor and other Kansas officials better watch their backs. Seven months later, a judge ruled that he was permanently insane and that it was unlikely he'd ever leave the asylum. But when God is on your side and you've inhiled mercury for most of your life, never say never. One day in eighteen eighty eight, about a year into his asylum sentence, Corbett was outside walking the grounds with some other patients. No one considered him a flight risk, so he wasn't under that much supervision.
But that day a little boy rode.
Up to the asylum on a pony, and then the boy tied the pony to a fence. Corbett saw that pony and was like, I'm gonna get the heck addy here. So he broke away from the other inmates, untied the pony, and galloped away, chasing the horizon, which was gray from all the mercury.
Corbett rode hard.
Alerts were put out for his arrest, because remember he was making all those death threats and he was also a wee bit crazy. He rode to one of his friend's houses, Richard Thatcher, who was on his side, He.
Was like, hell, yes, brother, you escape, that's awesome.
Corbett wouldn't accept a bed to sleep in, so he slept outside. He didn't stay long about a day, because he knew he had to high tail it out of there. He might be arrested, and of course he might get attacked by booth conspirators and the mercury and God.
Corbett told his friend.
That he was going to Mexico, and Thatcher saw Corbett jump on a train headed south and then no one knows exactly what happened to him. Some people have suggested that Corbett died in this Big Fire Minnesota in eighteen ninety four. Another record showed a man claiming to be Boston Corbett have been arrested for pension fraud in nineteen oh five.
Who knows, but hopefully he found some.
Peace, but judging on how much he was losing his mind, he probably did end. Isn't that a fun way to end this episode? Life is a nightmare and it only gets worse. As always, we learn a lesson from American filth, and in this episode we learned.
That even if you're a part of a huge historical.
Moment where you assassinate the guy who assassinated the president, you're still going to have to live paycheck to paycheck, hardly making any money, and be a poor Christian. That's the American dream. Just so you guys know, this is the end of season one of American Filth. Over the next few weeks we will do some reruns, but we will be back with new episodes starting in September.
Que the credits.
American Filth is a production of School of Humans and iHeart Podcast. As episod was written by me Gabby Watts. I also sound designed it and hosted it. Our theme song is by me and Jesse Niswanger, and our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley, and Brandon Barr.
You can follow.
Along with a show on Instagram at American Filth pod and if you haven't already, please like, subscribe, review, do whatever it takes to get the algorithm going. Make sure all of your friends and enemies listen to the show and talk at you next time.
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