'The Conspiracy' Episodes

Bat Masterson is currently being shown on the THIS Channel. Two episodes are played from 9-10 AM most weekdays.

This morning, they showed the two parter, "The Conspiracy." In it, Bat tries to help the niece of John Surratt, Jr., stop a crooked newspaper from printing phony articles about her uncle. The niece was played by Diane Brewster.

John Surratt, Jr, was one of the conspirators who first tried to kidnap, and then murder, Araham Lincoln. Surratt escaped, but his mother was tried and hanged for the murder, along with three other conspirators. Surratt was eventually arrested and tried twice, but both trials ended in a hung jury, and he was then freed and lived out his life working as a shipping clerk in Baltimore.

These episodes were first broadcast in 1959 and I find it interesting that there is no detailed explanation in the script about how John Surratt was an important character in American History. Back in 1959, average people learned this stuff in school and it could be safely assumed that everyone watching the program would know enough about the Lincoln Assassination to understand who John Surratt was and why people in the 1870s would be interested in reading articles about him.

These episodes could never be filmed like this today, about virtually any aspect of American History. People today do not learn this stuff in school and most have virtually no knowledge about anything that happened in this country before the day that they were born. That is a really sad comment about Americans today. JMO.