October 7, 2023 • 31 mins
This 2012 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina covers the unusual circumstances surrounding Edgar Allan Poe's disappearance, reappearance, and death.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday. Edgar Allan Poe died one hundred and seventy
four years ago today, so we are bringing out past
hosts episode on the death of Poe as today's Saturday classic.
This originally came out June thirteenth, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to blinga chuckerboarding.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
And I'm Sarah Dowdy.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And we usually save our spookier subjects for the fall
in Halloween, of course, but summer is also a great
time to curl up with a good mystery, and today's subject,
Edgar Allan Poe definitely offers that. A famous nineteenth century writer, poet, critic,
and editor known for dabbling in moody and macabre topics,
(00:55):
Poe almost really needs no introduction, but of course we're
going to give you one anyway.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Can just skip this whole part, now, that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So chances are you've at least heard of Poe, and
if you've taken any sort of post grade school level
literature class, you've probably read his work too, or at
least The Eerie The Raven, which is his most famous piece.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Or even grade school. I think I memorized the Raven
sometime in elementary school.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Well you're very advanced, Sarah, so I don't know about that.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
I did it dramatically, That's why I chose it. But
Poe is also often credited with creating the first modern
detective story with his Murders of the Room Morgue, and ironically,
some of the aspects of his own life, particularly the
end of his life, are really worthy of the type
of fiction he wrote.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, Basically, in the fall of eighteen forty nine, Poe
disappeared for a few days, and when he reappeared, he
was in really bad shape. He was delirious, and he
appeared to a lot of people to be severely intoxicated,
and he died just a few days later that Initially,
many people assumed alcoholism is what ultimately killed Poe, but
(02:05):
it really didn't take long for others to start stepping
up with alternate theories, some of which seemed just as
if not more plausible, than the alcoholism one. And these
theories are still debated today. And I mean I should
go back and say I mean that, you know, I
mentioned that it didn't take long for people come up
with theories. It took a few years. I mean, it
really wasn't investigated at the time. Alcoholism was really the
(02:28):
prevailing thought.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So today, though, we're going to take a look a
closer look at Poe's mysterious disappearance and his death and
discuss some of those theories about what ultimately led to
his demise. But before we can really talk about Poe's death,
you know, we said we had to do this introduction,
We've got to do more than that. Really, we really
need to tell you at least a little bit about
(02:51):
his life, because it's pretty interesting too, it is.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
He was born Edgar Poe January nineteenth, eighteen oh nine,
in Boston, Massachusetts, to ruggling actor parents, David and Elizabeth
Arnold Poe. Edgar was actually the second of their children.
His older brother, William Henry Leonard, ended up living with
their grandparents because of their parents' constant financial struggles, and
(03:13):
Poe also had a sister, Rosalie, who was a year
younger than him, and Poe had to face hardship and
a lot of sadness really early on. His father abandoned
the family around the time of or even before his
sister's birth, at which point Poe, his sister, and his
mom all moved to Virginia, and his mom got ill
and died the year after his sister was born. So
(03:34):
that happened when Poe was only about two years old.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
So Poe and Rosalie, now basically orphans, were taken in
by family friends in Richmond, and Poe ended up living
with the merchant John Allen and his wife Francis, who
didn't have any kids, while Rosalie went on to live
with a neighboring family called the Mackenzies, and the Allen's
basically treated Poe as their own child. They never legally
(03:58):
adopted him, but they educated him and treated him like
their son. He started his education in Richmond, and then
at age six, he was taken abroad for a bit
and continued studying in England and Scotland for about five
years before he returned to Virginia with the Allens, where
he continued his schooling. And lets you start thinking of
(04:19):
a little adolescent strange Poe. He seemed like a pretty
normal kid. He made friends, was doing all right in
school and everything.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
However, by his mid teens or so, Poe discovered that
his foster father wasn't exactly being faithful to his foster mother,
and this really upset Poe and it kicked off a
very strained relationship between Poe and John Allen and they
argued a lot about that topic. And around this time,
Poe also fell in love with a local girl named
(04:47):
Sarah Elmira Royster, and she was in love with him too.
But in eighteen twenty six, Poe went off to the
University of Virginia.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
So Poe was only at the University of Virginia for
about eleven months though, and according to a bag trophy
of Edgar Allan Poe by Veronica Loveday, Alan wouldn't give
Poe the money he needed to buy school basics like books,
so Poe started gambling, ended up racking up a lot
of debt, and he also started drinking while he was there,
(05:14):
and unfortunately for him, he had a very low tolerance
for alcohol. So Alan ultimately refused to let Poe continue
spending time at the university.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
In the meantime, realizing that Poe's future was really uncertain
because of this contentious relationship with his foster father, Royster's
parents decided to put a stop to her relationship with Poe.
They made sure, for example, that she never received Poe's
letters from school, and by the time Poe returned to Richmond,
his beloved Sarah was engaged to someone else.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So Poe was understandably devastated by this turn of events,
and he decided to go to Boston in the spring
of eighteen twenty seven, where he tried his hand at
making a living as a writer, and he did publish
some stuff. He published his first volume of poetry, Tamberlaine
and Other Poems, and this was fairly well received, but
(06:06):
he could only print a few copies and at the
end of the day he was still destitute. So he's published,
but it didn't bring in the money he was hoping.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
So to solve his money issues, he joined the army,
and he really actually thrived in the military, doing a
desk job for a couple of years. He was even
promoted from private to the rank of sergeant major and
Poe decided that he wanted to attend West Point, and
after a while Alan agreed to help him fund this.
He saw, Okay, my foster son is actually doing well
(06:36):
with me. Yes, maybe I should support this, So Poe
was released from the army, and he applied to the
military academy, and while he was waiting to be accepted
to West Point, he spent a little time in Baltimore
getting to know his Poe family again, his grandmother, his brother,
and his father's sister, who is his aunt, Mariah Clem.
Mariah Clem also had a very young daughter, Virginia, and
(06:58):
Poe also published another cluct of poems during this time.
Soon he was accepted to West Point, though in eighteen thirty,
so he had to put down the pen for a
little while. But he didn't stay at West Point long either. Again,
according to Loveday's article, he learned that John Allen had
had a pair of twins as a result of one
of his affairs, and even though his foster mother was
(07:19):
dead by this time, Poe pretty much realized there was
no future between him and his foster father, and in fact,
just as an aside, Alan did ultimately leave everything, the
whole inheritance to these twins that he had.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
That might have been a good intuition he had there
so set on pursuing a writing career, you know, deciding
that this was going to have to be how he'd
make his future in his career, Poe took measures to
get himself expelled from West Point. He wasn't just going
to drop.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Out, yeah, and you couldn't just walk away.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
No, no, So according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he just didn't
show up at any classes or any drills for a
week and he even tried to spread a rumor that
he was the grandson of Benedict Arnold. Probably not something
that's going to make you too popular at your military school.
And in the end he did finally get his wish
and he was dismissed, so he was freed up to
(08:10):
pursue this writing career that he was hoping.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
To So Poe moved to New York in February of
eighteen thirty one, and he published a third collection called
Poems from there. He moved around between New York City, Baltimore, Richmond,
and Philadelphia for the next few years in pursuit of
his writing career, and four Purposes Here were just going
to cover some of the highlights of what he did
during that time. By March of eighteen thirty one, Poe
(08:36):
returned to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mariah Clem
and his little cousin Virginia, and while there he still
struggled to earn a living, but he started to write
stories as well pros.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Yeah, and things did start to look up a little
bit in eighteen thirty three when his story manuscript Found
in a Bottle won a fifty dollars prize from a
Baltimore weekly newspaper, and that finally started to get him noticed.
He also started writing reviews and stories for the Southern
Literary Messenger, and by eighteen thirty five he even took
(09:06):
a position as an editor there and made even more
of a name for himself.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
In the meantime, his brother and his foster father died,
so a little more tragedy in his life, and his
foster father, as we mentioned, left him nothing, so he
realized that he was really going to have to make
a living on his own. And on September twenty second,
eighteen thirty five, another life milestone, he married his first
cousin Virginia, clem And as you'll remember, we mentioned, she
(09:33):
was very young well. At the time of their marriage,
she was only thirteen and the marriage certificate listed her
as twenty one, but that was incorrect. According to Loveday's article,
Poe did wait for more than two years before consummating
their marriage, so.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Yeah, Poe would have been in his late twenties by then.
It's always one of those facts that sticks with you
about Edgar Allan Poe.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, big age difference.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
But moving on to his career again, it's unclear whether
it was voluntary or not, but Poe left his job
at the Southern Literary Messenger, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
he was fired probably because of his drinking. Drinking really
seemed to become sort of a means of escape for him,
but as we mentioned, he also had a very low
(10:26):
tolerance for alcohol his entire life, so it didn't really
take that much to make him appear very intoxicated. And
even though he wasn't very intoxicated that often, again according
to Encyclopedia Britannica, he was unfortunately usually somewhere in public
when he was drunk, so he got this reputation as
(10:47):
being a public drunk. But after this, after leaving the
Southern Literary Messenger or being fired, he and Virginia moved
to New York City, where he reviewed articles for the
New York Review while still pursuing his own projects too.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
By eighteen thirty nine, the couple had moved to Philadelphia,
where he published Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque
Short Story Collection. He also started working as an editor
for Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and by the fall of eighteen
forty one he started working for kind of a successor
to that magazine, Graham's Ladies and Gentlemen's Magazine, and this
afforded him steady income finally, and it's where he published
(11:26):
The Murders in the Room Morgue. So at this point
Poe's notoriety is really starting to grow, but like most
of his jobs, the Grahams gig was short lived. He
quit by the middle of eighteen forty two to work
as a freelance writer and to also try to start
his own publication, which was something that he would try
to do here and there throughout the rest of his life,
but he was never really successful with that part of it.
(11:48):
With starting his own publication.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Couldn't follow the Dickens model.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
In eighteen forty four, he returned to New York, where
he continued writing, and it was while there in eighteen
forty five that his poem The Raven was published, and
it was instantly successful, making Poe very famous.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
But despite his successes in the literary world that were
happening around this time, this was still a very rough
period for a Poe. For one thing, Virginia became very ill.
She'd contracted tuberculosis at some point in the early eighteen
forties and her health never really got better after that.
And for his part, Poe wasn't doing so great either.
(12:25):
His drinking continued to get worse and this exacerbated his
own health issues, and according to Loveday's article, he almost
died in eighteen forty four from heart failure. So not
so great for mister and missus Poe at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
With the fame the Raven brought him, Poe started doing
lecture tours in the northeastern United States, and though he
still struggled financially, he had quite a lot of social
attention paid to him during this time. In eighteen forty five,
for example, he received the attentions of the poet Francis
Sargent Locke Osgoode, and they had an affair, which was
scandalous because she wrote poems about him, and so everybody
(13:04):
knew what was going on between them because it was
out there in print.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Kind of like writing about him on her blog or
something these days.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, kind of. Actually that's a pretty good comparison, I think.
But according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Poe's wife, for whatever reason,
did not object to this relationship with Ozgood. So people
were scandalized by it, but she was kind of okay
with it, and her health continued to deteriorate, and she
finally died in January of eighteen forty seven at the
(13:31):
age of twenty four.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
So after his wife's death, Poe did publish a few things,
including a lecture called Eureka, some poems, including The Bells
and Annabelle Lee. He also tried to start a magazine again,
but once again that didn't work. He did not succeed
at running a magazine, but his final years are also
marked by some serious relationships that he had with a
(13:53):
couple of women. First, there was the Providence, Rhode Island
based poet named Sarah Helen Whitman. They actually him engaged
in eighteen forty eight, but she only agreed to marry
him on the condition that he quit drinking. According to
Loveday's article, Poe just couldn't control his feelings for her,
and he tried to commit suicide by taking laudanum in
(14:14):
November of eighteen forty eight. After that he relapsed, he
started drinking again, and so Whitman broke off the engagement.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
In eighteen forty nine, continuing his lectures, he returned to
Richmond for a while, and while he was there he
ran into his old flame from his teenage years, Elmira Royster,
who just happened to be a widow by this point
by the name of missus A. B. Shelton, and they
rekindled their old romance.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Well.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Almira was a teetotaler too, and much like Sarah Whitman,
she would not have approved of Poe drinking. Luckily, though,
Poe decided to completely give up alcohol and may have
been successful at this for several months. According to an
article by Robert Hopkins in Southern Quarterly, Poe even took
a public oath on August twenty seventh, eighteen forty nine,
(15:02):
at a Son's of Temperance meeting, in which he swore
that he'd never touch another drop of liquor, and he
signed a document to that effect as well.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
So I guess old Elmira was convinced by this display,
and so they became engaged and set their wedding date
for October seventeenth. This is where things start to get
a little weird in the story, though, Before the marriage
who was supposed to take place, post set off on
a business trip to Philadelphia and New York. And while
he was in New York, it's possible he was going
(15:33):
to pick up his aunt Mariah clem too and bring
her down to Richmond for the wedding. Well, I guess
his former mother in law as well. He probably set
off for this trip from Richmond around September twenty seventh,
eighteen forty nine, And what happened after that is what's
really uncertain.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah, some say that he went straight to Baltimore and
called on a friend, doctor Nathan C. Brooks, but Brooks
wasn't at home, And if Baltimore is the only stop
that Poe made, then that still leaves several days unaccounted for,
because there doesn't seem to be any information on what
he was up to in town after that for the
following days after that, however, according to the Edgar Allan
(16:13):
Poe Society of Baltimore. A Philadelphia friend of Poe's, Thomas H. Lane,
who had worked for the Broadway Journal, later said that
he believed Poe had come to Philadelphia and seen mutual
friends of theirs while he was in town. Lane said
that Poe also fell ill while he was in Philadelphia,
but instead he still insisted on getting on a train
(16:34):
to New York after his brief visit. He had business
to do there. He was going to see Aunt Mariah,
so he was going to head out. So Lane's theory
is that Poe must have gotten on the wrong train
and ended up back in Baltimore. But even if this
Philadelphia visit did happen, and it's not clear whether it
did or not, the exact dates aren't known, so there's
(16:54):
a lot that's still very sketchy about this possibility. In
the story, a letter Poe to Aunt Mariah Clumb also
confirms that he at least had intentions of heading to
Philadelphia to meet another poet and edit her poems there,
and he'd also told Aunt Mariah to write him directly
in Philadelphia, as if he'd be there to receive it,
(17:14):
but he did tell her to address her correspondence instead
of just addressing it to Edgar Allan Poe address it
to est Gray Esquire. So kind of a shady vy
aspect to the story.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
Yeah, for sure. So what is known though, What is
known for sure is that on October third, eighteen forty nine,
Poe was found in a very very bad way, lying
outside of Ryan's Fourth Ward Polls, Baltimore, which was basically
a saloon, but voting also would take place there too,
and an election was going on in the city at
(17:47):
the same time. It's hard to imagine bars doubling is
his polling stations today, But a man named J. W.
Walker found Poe outside of this bar slash polling station,
nearly unconscious and delirious, and strangely wearing somebody else's cheap, dirty,
ill fitting clothes. And according to Hopkins article, Walker immediately
(18:10):
sent a note to a doctor J. E. Snodgrass, who
was an acquaintance of Poe's, at Poe's own request, and
this is what the note said. Dear Sir, there is
a gentleman rather worse for wear at Ryan's Fourth Ward
Polls who goes under the name of Edgar A. Poe,
and who appears in great distress. And he says he's
acquainted with you, and I assure you he is in
(18:32):
need of immediate assistance.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Snodgrass and Henry Herring at that point, and Henry Herring
was someone who had married one of Poe's aunts, showed
up and took Poe to Washington College Hospital at about
five pm that day, and while there he was attended
to by a resident named doctor John Joseph Moran. So
Poe was pretty much unconscious until the next day, but
even when he was a little more coherent, he wasn't
able to exactly tell the doctor how he came to
(18:57):
be in his present state. After that, he became delirious
on and off for a few days, and according to
the Poe Society of Baltimore, at one point cried out
the name Reynolds. But no one's been able to figure
out who he was referring to by that. It's just
an interesting little detail we wanted to throw in.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Interesting indeed, But on Sunday, October seventh, four days after
he was found outside of the saloon, Poe finally passed away,
and that morning his last words were God, bless my
poor soul. He was only forty years old. So this
brings us to our big question what happened to Poe
before he died and what really caused his death.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Of course, most people at the time, as we already indicated,
and even many people today, have believed that drinking was
what ultimately killed him. This theory was actually sort of
promoted at the time, even by Poe's acquaintance who helped
him out, doctor Snodgrass. According to Hopkins, though we should
take Snodgrass's perspective with a little grain of salt. He
(19:57):
was apparently super religious and kind of used Poe's fate
to illustrate what could happen to you if you indulged
in the sin of drinking, almost as a cautionary tale
of sorts, as Hopkins put it, Snodgrass went to quote
great lengths to support his temperance cause at Poe's expense, and.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
A lot of the other people who spread the alcohol
abuse theory were either coming from similar perspective as the
Snodgrass or getting their information secondhand. But Hopkins and some
other sources say that it's unlikely that alcohol abuse is
ultimately what killed Edgar Allan Poe. So doctor Moran, for instance,
who attended to Poe in his final days, actually published
(20:46):
a book thirty years after the death called A Defense
of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he said quote, I
have stated to you the fact that Edgar Allen Poe
did not die under the effect of an intoxicant, nor
was the smell of liquor upon his breath or person.
Although we have to say too, a lot of people
discount Moran's opinions here because apparently he changed his story
(21:09):
quite significantly from what he said right after Poe's death,
and Hopkins even points out that Miran changed his opinion
only after certain key temperance promoters who were very closely
involved in the situation passed away, So there might have
been some sort of conspiracy involved there too.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, it makes you wonder was he just telling the
truth later in life.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Waiting for certain people to no longer be there, or
whether he just changed his story for something a new
interesting angle.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Right There are, however, some other more straightforward signs that
alcohol may not have been the cause of death. For example,
while in the hospital, Poe got better before he then
again got worse and died, which, according to the University
of Maryland Medical Center, isn't consistent with alcohol withdrawal, So
I think.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
That's some medical background to.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Interesting little science background.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
So still, though, if drinking too much didn't kill Poe,
what might have killed him? You don't usually just wind
up dead outside of a saloon, So some people believe
that he was the victim of a type of political
sabotage known as cooping. And as we mentioned, there was
an election going on at the time, and the saloon
did double as a place to go vote. So cooping
(22:24):
supposedly involved political gangs kidnapping bystanders and then holding them
for a while in a room called a coop, and
then forcing them, after they had gotten them kind of
liquored up or drugged up, to illegally vote in multiple
polling locations. And sometimes these gangs would even have their
victims change clothing so that they wouldn't be recognized when
(22:45):
they were voting multiple times in the same area. This
whole thing sounds kind of terrifying to me, the idea
of cooping. Some people, though, discount this theory for a
few different reasons. For one, Poe is a celebrity of
his day almost he was pretty well known, and he
probably would have been recognized even if he were wearing
these different ratty sort of clothes.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Also, some say that there is a lack of evidence
that the practice of cooping really existed in the first vow.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I don't need to be too worried. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I'm not sure. I mean, there definitely was a lot
of plying with alcohol going on in general, I mean,
having polling places and bars, which was often the case,
kind of encouraged that. But there were accounts in contemporary
publications that were citizens were warned about the very real
possibility of cooping in the days right before leading up
(23:36):
to the election. So people at the time at least
believe that cooping was going on and was a real possibility.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
So go vote with your friends, vote in a group.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, be careful. So go ahead and be scared, Sarah
could have happened.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
All right, next time I go vote. But also Hopkins
points out a cryptic statement that was made by J. H.
Morrison after Poe's death, and in a letter to John Ingram,
Morrison suggests pos't cousin and Nelson might have known something
about the circumstances surrounding Poe's death, and he said, quote,
the story of Poe's death has never been told. Nelson
(24:10):
Poe has all the facts, but I am afraid may
not be willing to tell them. I do not see
why Poe came to the city in the midst of
an election, and that election was the cause of his death.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
So one interesting point to make here about the involvement
of cousin Nelson is that Nelson was in fact elected
a judge in that eighteen forty nine election. Also, Nelson
and Poe did not get along well at all. Some
say that Nelson had had his own designs on marrying
Virginia Clem, but of course she ended up with Poe.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
So those are some of the political type conspiracy theories.
But several diseases have also been suggested as the causes
of Poe's death, and some of the possibilities that folks
have thrown out over the years include brained humors, heart disease,
call stroke, and diabetes. And then in nineteen eighty four,
(25:03):
a biohistorian named arno'carlin came out with the theory that
Poe had this rare type of enzyme disorder called alcohol
dehydrogenase deficiency syndrome, and he had that perhaps in combination
with a brain tumor. So Hopkins says that the syndrome
is an interesting theory because it could perhaps explain Poe's
(25:24):
lifelong low tolerance of alcohol, as well as some of
his mental issues and of course his death too.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
One of the more recent and popular medical malady theories, though,
is rabies. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center,
doctor R. Michael Benitez reviewed Poe's case and in nineteen
ninety six he proposed that Poe's symptoms in the final
days of his life were in fact consistent with the
progression of rabies. This could be possible even though there
(25:52):
weren't any apparent animal bites on Poe at the time.
Poe was known to be an animal lover. He loved
cats in particular, and he did keep pets, and people
can sometimes, according to the source, can have rabies up
to a year without showing symptoms, which I actually didn't
know before.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Another disturbing fact of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
One of the symptoms Beneathas was including in his assessment, though,
was hydrophobia, a fear of water that Poe supposedly exhibited
when he had trouble drinking in the hospital. However, that
account of Poe not drinking came from one of our
friend doctor Moran's many accounts of the situation, and he
contradicted it in another later account, So some discount this
(26:33):
Rabi theory because of that too.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
It does make a good headline, though, you've got to
give it that. But finally, a lot of people think
Poe died as the result of some kind of conspiracy.
And of course it already sounds like we've discussed these
conspiracy theories because there's a touch of conspiracy mixed in
with some of the earlier theories like the alcohol line,
conspiracy by temperance movement folks to get their agenda across,
(26:57):
and the cooping, you know, the possible the involving Poe's
cousin who was running for office. But some think Poe's
romantic entanglements might have led to a plot against him
as well, and for instance, Elmira Royster Shelton's brothers might
not have been too happy about that impending marriage to
their sister, and some authors have tossed that out there
(27:20):
as a possibility.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Hopkins actually points to an account of Joseph Sartrein's as
potential evidence that something like this was in fact going on.
Joseph Sartrain had worked with Poe at Graham's magazine, and
after Poe's death, he had come out with kind of
a shocking account of his last encounter with Poe. According
to Sartren's account, he saw Poe in Philadelphia in eighteen
(27:42):
forty nine, and Poe was afraid for his life at
this time, asking for Sartrain's protection and saying that he
had overheard some men on the train plotting to kill him.
When Sartren asked, why would someone want to kill you,
Poe said, quote, it was for revenge for quote a
woman trouble.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
So another intriguing possibility. But many people, though, believe that
the most likely conspirator against Poe was Rufus w Griswold.
And Griswold had aspired to be a fiction writer but
didn't really have the talent ended up becoming an editor instead,
and he and Poe brushed paths professionally on many occasions,
and the two men just didn't really like each other,
(28:25):
and Hopkins suggests that Griswold may have been perhaps jealous
of Poe's talent, though Griswold apparently claimed upon Poe's death
that Poe had made a promise that he wanted Griswold
to be his literary executor, but according to Hopkins, no
legal proof of this agreement exists. Still, though Griswold did
(28:45):
become Poe's executor and his first biographer and likely got
the opportunity to print some inaccuracies about Poe and profit
at the same time.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah, he also printed this note after Poe's death in
a New York paper, and it was kind of scathing
about Poe. It just wasn't very flattering at all. So
he got a couple of opportunities after Poe's death to
kind of get inteople.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Hits in there.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Yeah. So there are a number of theories and sub
theories out there, as you can see, about why and
how Poe really died, But unfortunately no one knows for
sure what the real story is. And as you can
tell by what we've recounted so far, there are just
too many personalities and possible hidden agendas involved to really
get to the heart of what happened. It's just a
(29:33):
bunch of possibilities that we can sort of all over
for a while and debate about, but we can't really
get a definitive answer but in the end, despite his fame,
Poe was buried hurriedly in Westminster Presbyterian Churchyard in Baltimore,
with only a handful of people present. In two thousand
and nine, though, which was about one hundred and sixty
(29:55):
years after his death, Baltimore's Poe House and Museum through
Poe another large funeral too. In fact, I think that
had something like seven hundred people in attendance.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
So yeah, people do continue, of course to celebrate the author,
to look into his life and his death. I mean,
I have to say one of my favorite po things
is the Simpsons Treehouse supports. It's a classic. But you know,
on whatever level, whether it's a cartoon like that or
whether it's a serious study of his work, people still
(30:25):
clearly appreciate his writing today and it still resonates with people.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar
over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at missed
in History, and you can subscribe to our show on
(30:58):
Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else
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visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday. Edgar Allan Poe died one hundred and seventy
four years ago today, so we are bringing out past
hosts episode on the death of Poe as today's Saturday classic.
This originally came out June thirteenth, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm to blinga chuckerboarding.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
And I'm Sarah Dowdy.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
And we usually save our spookier subjects for the fall
in Halloween, of course, but summer is also a great
time to curl up with a good mystery, and today's subject,
Edgar Allan Poe definitely offers that. A famous nineteenth century writer, poet, critic,
and editor known for dabbling in moody and macabre topics,
(00:55):
Poe almost really needs no introduction, but of course we're
going to give you one anyway.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Can just skip this whole part, now, that's what we do.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
So chances are you've at least heard of Poe, and
if you've taken any sort of post grade school level
literature class, you've probably read his work too, or at
least The Eerie The Raven, which is his most famous piece.
Speaker 4 (01:15):
Or even grade school. I think I memorized the Raven
sometime in elementary school.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
Well you're very advanced, Sarah, so I don't know about that.
Speaker 4 (01:23):
I did it dramatically, That's why I chose it. But
Poe is also often credited with creating the first modern
detective story with his Murders of the Room Morgue, and ironically,
some of the aspects of his own life, particularly the
end of his life, are really worthy of the type
of fiction he wrote.
Speaker 3 (01:44):
Yeah, Basically, in the fall of eighteen forty nine, Poe
disappeared for a few days, and when he reappeared, he
was in really bad shape. He was delirious, and he
appeared to a lot of people to be severely intoxicated,
and he died just a few days later that Initially,
many people assumed alcoholism is what ultimately killed Poe, but
(02:05):
it really didn't take long for others to start stepping
up with alternate theories, some of which seemed just as
if not more plausible, than the alcoholism one. And these
theories are still debated today. And I mean I should
go back and say I mean that, you know, I
mentioned that it didn't take long for people come up
with theories. It took a few years. I mean, it
really wasn't investigated at the time. Alcoholism was really the
(02:28):
prevailing thought.
Speaker 4 (02:29):
So today, though, we're going to take a look a
closer look at Poe's mysterious disappearance and his death and
discuss some of those theories about what ultimately led to
his demise. But before we can really talk about Poe's death,
you know, we said we had to do this introduction,
We've got to do more than that. Really, we really
need to tell you at least a little bit about
(02:51):
his life, because it's pretty interesting too, it is.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
He was born Edgar Poe January nineteenth, eighteen oh nine,
in Boston, Massachusetts, to ruggling actor parents, David and Elizabeth
Arnold Poe. Edgar was actually the second of their children.
His older brother, William Henry Leonard, ended up living with
their grandparents because of their parents' constant financial struggles, and
(03:13):
Poe also had a sister, Rosalie, who was a year
younger than him, and Poe had to face hardship and
a lot of sadness really early on. His father abandoned
the family around the time of or even before his
sister's birth, at which point Poe, his sister, and his
mom all moved to Virginia, and his mom got ill
and died the year after his sister was born. So
(03:34):
that happened when Poe was only about two years old.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
So Poe and Rosalie, now basically orphans, were taken in
by family friends in Richmond, and Poe ended up living
with the merchant John Allen and his wife Francis, who
didn't have any kids, while Rosalie went on to live
with a neighboring family called the Mackenzies, and the Allen's
basically treated Poe as their own child. They never legally
(03:58):
adopted him, but they educated him and treated him like
their son. He started his education in Richmond, and then
at age six, he was taken abroad for a bit
and continued studying in England and Scotland for about five
years before he returned to Virginia with the Allens, where
he continued his schooling. And lets you start thinking of
(04:19):
a little adolescent strange Poe. He seemed like a pretty
normal kid. He made friends, was doing all right in
school and everything.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
However, by his mid teens or so, Poe discovered that
his foster father wasn't exactly being faithful to his foster mother,
and this really upset Poe and it kicked off a
very strained relationship between Poe and John Allen and they
argued a lot about that topic. And around this time,
Poe also fell in love with a local girl named
(04:47):
Sarah Elmira Royster, and she was in love with him too.
But in eighteen twenty six, Poe went off to the
University of Virginia.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
So Poe was only at the University of Virginia for
about eleven months though, and according to a bag trophy
of Edgar Allan Poe by Veronica Loveday, Alan wouldn't give
Poe the money he needed to buy school basics like books,
so Poe started gambling, ended up racking up a lot
of debt, and he also started drinking while he was there,
(05:14):
and unfortunately for him, he had a very low tolerance
for alcohol. So Alan ultimately refused to let Poe continue
spending time at the university.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
In the meantime, realizing that Poe's future was really uncertain
because of this contentious relationship with his foster father, Royster's
parents decided to put a stop to her relationship with Poe.
They made sure, for example, that she never received Poe's
letters from school, and by the time Poe returned to Richmond,
his beloved Sarah was engaged to someone else.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So Poe was understandably devastated by this turn of events,
and he decided to go to Boston in the spring
of eighteen twenty seven, where he tried his hand at
making a living as a writer, and he did publish
some stuff. He published his first volume of poetry, Tamberlaine
and Other Poems, and this was fairly well received, but
(06:06):
he could only print a few copies and at the
end of the day he was still destitute. So he's published,
but it didn't bring in the money he was hoping.
Speaker 3 (06:14):
So to solve his money issues, he joined the army,
and he really actually thrived in the military, doing a
desk job for a couple of years. He was even
promoted from private to the rank of sergeant major and
Poe decided that he wanted to attend West Point, and
after a while Alan agreed to help him fund this.
He saw, Okay, my foster son is actually doing well
(06:36):
with me. Yes, maybe I should support this, So Poe
was released from the army, and he applied to the
military academy, and while he was waiting to be accepted
to West Point, he spent a little time in Baltimore
getting to know his Poe family again, his grandmother, his brother,
and his father's sister, who is his aunt, Mariah Clem.
Mariah Clem also had a very young daughter, Virginia, and
(06:58):
Poe also published another cluct of poems during this time.
Soon he was accepted to West Point, though in eighteen thirty,
so he had to put down the pen for a
little while. But he didn't stay at West Point long either. Again,
according to Loveday's article, he learned that John Allen had
had a pair of twins as a result of one
of his affairs, and even though his foster mother was
(07:19):
dead by this time, Poe pretty much realized there was
no future between him and his foster father, and in fact,
just as an aside, Alan did ultimately leave everything, the
whole inheritance to these twins that he had.
Speaker 4 (07:31):
That might have been a good intuition he had there
so set on pursuing a writing career, you know, deciding
that this was going to have to be how he'd
make his future in his career, Poe took measures to
get himself expelled from West Point. He wasn't just going
to drop.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
Out, yeah, and you couldn't just walk away.
Speaker 4 (07:48):
No, no, So according to Encyclopedia Britannica, he just didn't
show up at any classes or any drills for a
week and he even tried to spread a rumor that
he was the grandson of Benedict Arnold. Probably not something
that's going to make you too popular at your military school.
And in the end he did finally get his wish
and he was dismissed, so he was freed up to
(08:10):
pursue this writing career that he was hoping.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
To So Poe moved to New York in February of
eighteen thirty one, and he published a third collection called
Poems from there. He moved around between New York City, Baltimore, Richmond,
and Philadelphia for the next few years in pursuit of
his writing career, and four Purposes Here were just going
to cover some of the highlights of what he did
during that time. By March of eighteen thirty one, Poe
(08:36):
returned to Baltimore to live with his aunt, Mariah Clem
and his little cousin Virginia, and while there he still
struggled to earn a living, but he started to write
stories as well pros.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
Yeah, and things did start to look up a little
bit in eighteen thirty three when his story manuscript Found
in a Bottle won a fifty dollars prize from a
Baltimore weekly newspaper, and that finally started to get him noticed.
He also started writing reviews and stories for the Southern
Literary Messenger, and by eighteen thirty five he even took
(09:06):
a position as an editor there and made even more
of a name for himself.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
In the meantime, his brother and his foster father died,
so a little more tragedy in his life, and his
foster father, as we mentioned, left him nothing, so he
realized that he was really going to have to make
a living on his own. And on September twenty second,
eighteen thirty five, another life milestone, he married his first
cousin Virginia, clem And as you'll remember, we mentioned, she
(09:33):
was very young well. At the time of their marriage,
she was only thirteen and the marriage certificate listed her
as twenty one, but that was incorrect. According to Loveday's article,
Poe did wait for more than two years before consummating
their marriage, so.
Speaker 4 (09:48):
Yeah, Poe would have been in his late twenties by then.
It's always one of those facts that sticks with you
about Edgar Allan Poe.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Yeah, big age difference.
Speaker 4 (10:06):
But moving on to his career again, it's unclear whether
it was voluntary or not, but Poe left his job
at the Southern Literary Messenger, and according to Encyclopedia Britannica,
he was fired probably because of his drinking. Drinking really
seemed to become sort of a means of escape for him,
but as we mentioned, he also had a very low
(10:26):
tolerance for alcohol his entire life, so it didn't really
take that much to make him appear very intoxicated. And
even though he wasn't very intoxicated that often, again according
to Encyclopedia Britannica, he was unfortunately usually somewhere in public
when he was drunk, so he got this reputation as
(10:47):
being a public drunk. But after this, after leaving the
Southern Literary Messenger or being fired, he and Virginia moved
to New York City, where he reviewed articles for the
New York Review while still pursuing his own projects too.
Speaker 3 (11:02):
By eighteen thirty nine, the couple had moved to Philadelphia,
where he published Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque
Short Story Collection. He also started working as an editor
for Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, and by the fall of eighteen
forty one he started working for kind of a successor
to that magazine, Graham's Ladies and Gentlemen's Magazine, and this
afforded him steady income finally, and it's where he published
(11:26):
The Murders in the Room Morgue. So at this point
Poe's notoriety is really starting to grow, but like most
of his jobs, the Grahams gig was short lived. He
quit by the middle of eighteen forty two to work
as a freelance writer and to also try to start
his own publication, which was something that he would try
to do here and there throughout the rest of his life,
but he was never really successful with that part of it.
(11:48):
With starting his own publication.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Couldn't follow the Dickens model.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
No.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
In eighteen forty four, he returned to New York, where
he continued writing, and it was while there in eighteen
forty five that his poem The Raven was published, and
it was instantly successful, making Poe very famous.
Speaker 4 (12:04):
But despite his successes in the literary world that were
happening around this time, this was still a very rough
period for a Poe. For one thing, Virginia became very ill.
She'd contracted tuberculosis at some point in the early eighteen
forties and her health never really got better after that.
And for his part, Poe wasn't doing so great either.
(12:25):
His drinking continued to get worse and this exacerbated his
own health issues, and according to Loveday's article, he almost
died in eighteen forty four from heart failure. So not
so great for mister and missus Poe at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
With the fame the Raven brought him, Poe started doing
lecture tours in the northeastern United States, and though he
still struggled financially, he had quite a lot of social
attention paid to him during this time. In eighteen forty five,
for example, he received the attentions of the poet Francis
Sargent Locke Osgoode, and they had an affair, which was
scandalous because she wrote poems about him, and so everybody
(13:04):
knew what was going on between them because it was
out there in print.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
Kind of like writing about him on her blog or
something these days.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, kind of. Actually that's a pretty good comparison, I think.
But according to Encyclopedia Britannica, Poe's wife, for whatever reason,
did not object to this relationship with Ozgood. So people
were scandalized by it, but she was kind of okay
with it, and her health continued to deteriorate, and she
finally died in January of eighteen forty seven at the
(13:31):
age of twenty four.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
So after his wife's death, Poe did publish a few things,
including a lecture called Eureka, some poems, including The Bells
and Annabelle Lee. He also tried to start a magazine again,
but once again that didn't work. He did not succeed
at running a magazine, but his final years are also
marked by some serious relationships that he had with a
(13:53):
couple of women. First, there was the Providence, Rhode Island
based poet named Sarah Helen Whitman. They actually him engaged
in eighteen forty eight, but she only agreed to marry
him on the condition that he quit drinking. According to
Loveday's article, Poe just couldn't control his feelings for her,
and he tried to commit suicide by taking laudanum in
(14:14):
November of eighteen forty eight. After that he relapsed, he
started drinking again, and so Whitman broke off the engagement.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
In eighteen forty nine, continuing his lectures, he returned to
Richmond for a while, and while he was there he
ran into his old flame from his teenage years, Elmira Royster,
who just happened to be a widow by this point
by the name of missus A. B. Shelton, and they
rekindled their old romance.
Speaker 4 (14:42):
Well.
Speaker 3 (14:42):
Almira was a teetotaler too, and much like Sarah Whitman,
she would not have approved of Poe drinking. Luckily, though,
Poe decided to completely give up alcohol and may have
been successful at this for several months. According to an
article by Robert Hopkins in Southern Quarterly, Poe even took
a public oath on August twenty seventh, eighteen forty nine,
(15:02):
at a Son's of Temperance meeting, in which he swore
that he'd never touch another drop of liquor, and he
signed a document to that effect as well.
Speaker 4 (15:10):
So I guess old Elmira was convinced by this display,
and so they became engaged and set their wedding date
for October seventeenth. This is where things start to get
a little weird in the story, though, Before the marriage
who was supposed to take place, post set off on
a business trip to Philadelphia and New York. And while
he was in New York, it's possible he was going
(15:33):
to pick up his aunt Mariah clem too and bring
her down to Richmond for the wedding. Well, I guess
his former mother in law as well. He probably set
off for this trip from Richmond around September twenty seventh,
eighteen forty nine, And what happened after that is what's
really uncertain.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Yeah, some say that he went straight to Baltimore and
called on a friend, doctor Nathan C. Brooks, but Brooks
wasn't at home, And if Baltimore is the only stop
that Poe made, then that still leaves several days unaccounted for,
because there doesn't seem to be any information on what
he was up to in town after that for the
following days after that, however, according to the Edgar Allan
(16:13):
Poe Society of Baltimore. A Philadelphia friend of Poe's, Thomas H. Lane,
who had worked for the Broadway Journal, later said that
he believed Poe had come to Philadelphia and seen mutual
friends of theirs while he was in town. Lane said
that Poe also fell ill while he was in Philadelphia,
but instead he still insisted on getting on a train
(16:34):
to New York after his brief visit. He had business
to do there. He was going to see Aunt Mariah,
so he was going to head out. So Lane's theory
is that Poe must have gotten on the wrong train
and ended up back in Baltimore. But even if this
Philadelphia visit did happen, and it's not clear whether it
did or not, the exact dates aren't known, so there's
(16:54):
a lot that's still very sketchy about this possibility. In
the story, a letter Poe to Aunt Mariah Clumb also
confirms that he at least had intentions of heading to
Philadelphia to meet another poet and edit her poems there,
and he'd also told Aunt Mariah to write him directly
in Philadelphia, as if he'd be there to receive it,
(17:14):
but he did tell her to address her correspondence instead
of just addressing it to Edgar Allan Poe address it
to est Gray Esquire. So kind of a shady vy
aspect to the story.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
Yeah, for sure. So what is known though, What is
known for sure is that on October third, eighteen forty nine,
Poe was found in a very very bad way, lying
outside of Ryan's Fourth Ward Polls, Baltimore, which was basically
a saloon, but voting also would take place there too,
and an election was going on in the city at
(17:47):
the same time. It's hard to imagine bars doubling is
his polling stations today, But a man named J. W.
Walker found Poe outside of this bar slash polling station,
nearly unconscious and delirious, and strangely wearing somebody else's cheap, dirty,
ill fitting clothes. And according to Hopkins article, Walker immediately
(18:10):
sent a note to a doctor J. E. Snodgrass, who
was an acquaintance of Poe's, at Poe's own request, and
this is what the note said. Dear Sir, there is
a gentleman rather worse for wear at Ryan's Fourth Ward
Polls who goes under the name of Edgar A. Poe,
and who appears in great distress. And he says he's
acquainted with you, and I assure you he is in
(18:32):
need of immediate assistance.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Snodgrass and Henry Herring at that point, and Henry Herring
was someone who had married one of Poe's aunts, showed
up and took Poe to Washington College Hospital at about
five pm that day, and while there he was attended
to by a resident named doctor John Joseph Moran. So
Poe was pretty much unconscious until the next day, but
even when he was a little more coherent, he wasn't
able to exactly tell the doctor how he came to
(18:57):
be in his present state. After that, he became delirious
on and off for a few days, and according to
the Poe Society of Baltimore, at one point cried out
the name Reynolds. But no one's been able to figure
out who he was referring to by that. It's just
an interesting little detail we wanted to throw in.
Speaker 4 (19:13):
Interesting indeed, But on Sunday, October seventh, four days after
he was found outside of the saloon, Poe finally passed away,
and that morning his last words were God, bless my
poor soul. He was only forty years old. So this
brings us to our big question what happened to Poe
before he died and what really caused his death.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Of course, most people at the time, as we already indicated,
and even many people today, have believed that drinking was
what ultimately killed him. This theory was actually sort of
promoted at the time, even by Poe's acquaintance who helped
him out, doctor Snodgrass. According to Hopkins, though we should
take Snodgrass's perspective with a little grain of salt. He
(19:57):
was apparently super religious and kind of used Poe's fate
to illustrate what could happen to you if you indulged
in the sin of drinking, almost as a cautionary tale
of sorts, as Hopkins put it, Snodgrass went to quote
great lengths to support his temperance cause at Poe's expense, and.
Speaker 4 (20:24):
A lot of the other people who spread the alcohol
abuse theory were either coming from similar perspective as the
Snodgrass or getting their information secondhand. But Hopkins and some
other sources say that it's unlikely that alcohol abuse is
ultimately what killed Edgar Allan Poe. So doctor Moran, for instance,
who attended to Poe in his final days, actually published
(20:46):
a book thirty years after the death called A Defense
of Edgar Allan Poe, in which he said quote, I
have stated to you the fact that Edgar Allen Poe
did not die under the effect of an intoxicant, nor
was the smell of liquor upon his breath or person.
Although we have to say too, a lot of people
discount Moran's opinions here because apparently he changed his story
(21:09):
quite significantly from what he said right after Poe's death,
and Hopkins even points out that Miran changed his opinion
only after certain key temperance promoters who were very closely
involved in the situation passed away, So there might have
been some sort of conspiracy involved there too.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Yeah, it makes you wonder was he just telling the
truth later in life.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Waiting for certain people to no longer be there, or
whether he just changed his story for something a new
interesting angle.
Speaker 3 (21:39):
Right There are, however, some other more straightforward signs that
alcohol may not have been the cause of death. For example,
while in the hospital, Poe got better before he then
again got worse and died, which, according to the University
of Maryland Medical Center, isn't consistent with alcohol withdrawal, So
I think.
Speaker 4 (21:59):
That's some medical background to.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Interesting little science background.
Speaker 4 (22:03):
So still, though, if drinking too much didn't kill Poe,
what might have killed him? You don't usually just wind
up dead outside of a saloon, So some people believe
that he was the victim of a type of political
sabotage known as cooping. And as we mentioned, there was
an election going on at the time, and the saloon
did double as a place to go vote. So cooping
(22:24):
supposedly involved political gangs kidnapping bystanders and then holding them
for a while in a room called a coop, and
then forcing them, after they had gotten them kind of
liquored up or drugged up, to illegally vote in multiple
polling locations. And sometimes these gangs would even have their
victims change clothing so that they wouldn't be recognized when
(22:45):
they were voting multiple times in the same area. This
whole thing sounds kind of terrifying to me, the idea
of cooping. Some people, though, discount this theory for a
few different reasons. For one, Poe is a celebrity of
his day almost he was pretty well known, and he
probably would have been recognized even if he were wearing
these different ratty sort of clothes.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
Also, some say that there is a lack of evidence
that the practice of cooping really existed in the first vow.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I don't need to be too worried. Maybe maybe not.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I'm not sure. I mean, there definitely was a lot
of plying with alcohol going on in general, I mean,
having polling places and bars, which was often the case,
kind of encouraged that. But there were accounts in contemporary
publications that were citizens were warned about the very real
possibility of cooping in the days right before leading up
(23:36):
to the election. So people at the time at least
believe that cooping was going on and was a real possibility.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
So go vote with your friends, vote in a group.
Speaker 3 (23:44):
Yeah, be careful. So go ahead and be scared, Sarah
could have happened.
Speaker 4 (23:47):
All right, next time I go vote. But also Hopkins
points out a cryptic statement that was made by J. H.
Morrison after Poe's death, and in a letter to John Ingram,
Morrison suggests pos't cousin and Nelson might have known something
about the circumstances surrounding Poe's death, and he said, quote,
the story of Poe's death has never been told. Nelson
(24:10):
Poe has all the facts, but I am afraid may
not be willing to tell them. I do not see
why Poe came to the city in the midst of
an election, and that election was the cause of his death.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
So one interesting point to make here about the involvement
of cousin Nelson is that Nelson was in fact elected
a judge in that eighteen forty nine election. Also, Nelson
and Poe did not get along well at all. Some
say that Nelson had had his own designs on marrying
Virginia Clem, but of course she ended up with Poe.
Speaker 4 (24:42):
So those are some of the political type conspiracy theories.
But several diseases have also been suggested as the causes
of Poe's death, and some of the possibilities that folks
have thrown out over the years include brained humors, heart disease,
call stroke, and diabetes. And then in nineteen eighty four,
(25:03):
a biohistorian named arno'carlin came out with the theory that
Poe had this rare type of enzyme disorder called alcohol
dehydrogenase deficiency syndrome, and he had that perhaps in combination
with a brain tumor. So Hopkins says that the syndrome
is an interesting theory because it could perhaps explain Poe's
(25:24):
lifelong low tolerance of alcohol, as well as some of
his mental issues and of course his death too.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
One of the more recent and popular medical malady theories, though,
is rabies. According to the University of Maryland Medical Center,
doctor R. Michael Benitez reviewed Poe's case and in nineteen
ninety six he proposed that Poe's symptoms in the final
days of his life were in fact consistent with the
progression of rabies. This could be possible even though there
(25:52):
weren't any apparent animal bites on Poe at the time.
Poe was known to be an animal lover. He loved
cats in particular, and he did keep pets, and people
can sometimes, according to the source, can have rabies up
to a year without showing symptoms, which I actually didn't
know before.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Another disturbing fact of the podcast.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
One of the symptoms Beneathas was including in his assessment, though,
was hydrophobia, a fear of water that Poe supposedly exhibited
when he had trouble drinking in the hospital. However, that
account of Poe not drinking came from one of our
friend doctor Moran's many accounts of the situation, and he
contradicted it in another later account, So some discount this
(26:33):
Rabi theory because of that too.
Speaker 4 (26:35):
It does make a good headline, though, you've got to
give it that. But finally, a lot of people think
Poe died as the result of some kind of conspiracy.
And of course it already sounds like we've discussed these
conspiracy theories because there's a touch of conspiracy mixed in
with some of the earlier theories like the alcohol line,
conspiracy by temperance movement folks to get their agenda across,
(26:57):
and the cooping, you know, the possible the involving Poe's
cousin who was running for office. But some think Poe's
romantic entanglements might have led to a plot against him
as well, and for instance, Elmira Royster Shelton's brothers might
not have been too happy about that impending marriage to
their sister, and some authors have tossed that out there
(27:20):
as a possibility.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
Hopkins actually points to an account of Joseph Sartrein's as
potential evidence that something like this was in fact going on.
Joseph Sartrain had worked with Poe at Graham's magazine, and
after Poe's death, he had come out with kind of
a shocking account of his last encounter with Poe. According
to Sartren's account, he saw Poe in Philadelphia in eighteen
(27:42):
forty nine, and Poe was afraid for his life at
this time, asking for Sartrain's protection and saying that he
had overheard some men on the train plotting to kill him.
When Sartren asked, why would someone want to kill you,
Poe said, quote, it was for revenge for quote a
woman trouble.
Speaker 4 (28:02):
So another intriguing possibility. But many people, though, believe that
the most likely conspirator against Poe was Rufus w Griswold.
And Griswold had aspired to be a fiction writer but
didn't really have the talent ended up becoming an editor instead,
and he and Poe brushed paths professionally on many occasions,
and the two men just didn't really like each other,
(28:25):
and Hopkins suggests that Griswold may have been perhaps jealous
of Poe's talent, though Griswold apparently claimed upon Poe's death
that Poe had made a promise that he wanted Griswold
to be his literary executor, but according to Hopkins, no
legal proof of this agreement exists. Still, though Griswold did
(28:45):
become Poe's executor and his first biographer and likely got
the opportunity to print some inaccuracies about Poe and profit
at the same time.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Yeah, he also printed this note after Poe's death in
a New York paper, and it was kind of scathing
about Poe. It just wasn't very flattering at all. So
he got a couple of opportunities after Poe's death to
kind of get inteople.
Speaker 4 (29:10):
Hits in there.
Speaker 3 (29:11):
Yeah. So there are a number of theories and sub
theories out there, as you can see, about why and
how Poe really died, But unfortunately no one knows for
sure what the real story is. And as you can
tell by what we've recounted so far, there are just
too many personalities and possible hidden agendas involved to really
get to the heart of what happened. It's just a
(29:33):
bunch of possibilities that we can sort of all over
for a while and debate about, but we can't really
get a definitive answer but in the end, despite his fame,
Poe was buried hurriedly in Westminster Presbyterian Churchyard in Baltimore,
with only a handful of people present. In two thousand
and nine, though, which was about one hundred and sixty
(29:55):
years after his death, Baltimore's Poe House and Museum through
Poe another large funeral too. In fact, I think that
had something like seven hundred people in attendance.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
So yeah, people do continue, of course to celebrate the author,
to look into his life and his death. I mean,
I have to say one of my favorite po things
is the Simpsons Treehouse supports. It's a classic. But you know,
on whatever level, whether it's a cartoon like that or
whether it's a serious study of his work, people still
(30:25):
clearly appreciate his writing today and it still resonates with people.
Speaker 1 (30:35):
Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday. Since
this episode is out of the archive, if you heard
an email address or a Facebook RL or something similar
over the course of the show, that could be obsolete now.
Our current email address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can find us all over social media at missed
in History, and you can subscribe to our show on
(30:58):
Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, and wherever else
you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class
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visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
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