The “inmates” at Ella Starr’s brothel1 were having a late breakfast the morning of Saturday, April 15, 1865, when someone breathlessly dashed into their house with the news John Wilkes Booth had murdered President Lincoln.
They all knew John. He was a regular “visitor.” And they all knew Ella was in love with him. After they got over their momentary shock, they looked around for Ella. It was almost 11:00 a.m. Ella wasn’t up yet. They had to tell her the startling news.
Ella already knew what had happened. The night of the shooting, Ella may conceivably have been in Vice President Andrew Johnson’s hotel suite at John’s bidding. Listening at the bedroom door, Ella would have overheard Leonard Farwell telling Johnson that Lincoln had been shot.
Later that night or sometime in the early morning, Ella was shocked to learn that John had been identified as the assassin and that Secretary of State Seward had been attacked. John’s sending her to Johnson that night would have been an act of betrayal and made her unwittingly party to murder.
Ella was heartbroken. John had been the one bright spot in her tawdry life. Now that was over. All she wanted to do was die.
Locking her door, she put a picture of John under her pillow, poured chloroform into a cloth, and breathed deep, intending to kill herself. (Chloroform was used by insomniacs to help them sleep.)
The next morning, guessing Ella was still asleep, the other girls dashed upstairs and pounded on her door. After pounding several times and yelling her name and getting no response, they barged in.
Ella was on her bed. They nudged her and called her name, but she didn’t move. Panicked, they sent for several doctors. The doctors smelled the lingering chloroform and immediately realized what had happened. Fortunately, they were able to revive her. When she regained consciousness, Ella told them she wished they hadn’t saved her.
“The Mistress of Booth Attempts Suicide,” was the Washington Evening Star’s page two headline.2 Two days later, detectives raided her house. They arrested Ella and all the “inmates, from the mistress to the cook, eight in all” and hauled them off to police headquarters as possible accomplices.3
By then Ella had gotten over John’s duplicity and was smart enough to distance herself from being implicated in John’s treachery. During her interrogation, she said her name was Nellie Starr. She was a prostitute, nineteen or twenty—she didn’t know which—unmarried, and had known John Wilkes Booth as a customer for several years at the house where she worked.
She hadn’t seen him, she claimed, for two weeks—although it is likely John had spent the night of the thirteenth with her. She said she didn’t recollect how he was dressed the last time she saw him. She seemed to remember he had on dark clothes and a slouch hat. She said she hadn’t been on good terms with him for some time (also a lie). No, she had never heard him say anything unfavorable about President Lincoln. No, she didn’t know any of the people associated with him. She signed the statement with two of her aliases, Nellie Starr and Ella Starr. Fannie Harrison, one of the other girls at the brothel, signed her statement as a witness.4
The authorities suspected she was lying. She likely would not have tried to kill herself had she not been on good terms with the assassin. They also had the note she’d written him in February calling him “my darling boy” and pleading with him to see her.5
William Doster, Lewis Powell, and George Atzerodt’s lawyer had her held in the witness room for two days6 but never asked her to testify. Her “sort of evidence,” he later said, “was not very much to the point.”7
Ella’s whereabouts aren’t known after the conspiracy trial. She is listed in tax rolls for 1867 and 1868 as the owner of property adjacent to the brothel.8 Most likely she remained in Washington until her mother sold the bawdy house on Ohio Street in 1868. After that there is no trace of her until 1883 when her name came up in news items about her sister, Molly, who was contesting her half-brother John W. Starr’s will.9 In reporting the fight over inheritance, a Chicago newspaper said Molly had a sister, once “the wife of John Wilkes Booth,” who was “now living elegantly and respectably in New York.”10
Ella’s name cropped up again in 1901 in an interview with actor Harry Hawk. Hawk was recalling the night of the assassination when John ran toward him brandishing his knife, just after shooting Lincoln. Hawk said he’d taken off like anyone in his place seeing a man coming at him with a knife. Now, fifty years later, Hawk said he’d had another reason to run—he thought John was after him for introducing a friend of his named Wilson to Ella Starr. Wilson had become infatuated with Ella, and she was taking advantage of him. Hawk said he couldn’t stand Ella’s making a dupe out of his friend. To wean him off of Ella, he told him about her relationship with John. Hawk said Ella didn’t take kindly to losing a generous customer and made up a story about Hawk. When John came at him waving his knife just after assassinating Lincoln, Hawk thought he had “taken some cranky notion to avenge her publicly.”11
Ella’s name came up one more time in an article in the Richmond Dispatch about the rumor that someone other than John had died in the Garrett barn. His mistress, Ella Starr, it said, was still alive, “the wife of an honest mechanic.”12