The Bizarre Death of Edgar Allan Poe

The Bizarre Death of Edgar Allan Poe

By The Ghost Scribes

It should come as no surprise that the Ghost Scribes are big fans of Edgar Allan Poe. So it is with great reverence for the Master of All Things Creepy that we kick off our inaugural issue with one of the most tantalizing mysteries in literature.

“There are some secrets that do not permit themselves to be told.”

–Edgar Allan Poe, “The Man of the Crowd,” 1840

Prologue

Elmira Royster Shelton was at last going to marry her childhood sweetheart, Edgar Allan Poe. During her early years, her parents had objected to their relationship and kept them apart. Now the widowed 39-year-old Elmira would finally have her chance at happiness. The wedding date was set for October 14, 1849.

On September 26, Elmira and Poe spent the evening together. Painfully early the next morning, Poe left Richmond on a steamboat bound for Baltimore. His final destination was his home in New York. He intended to be back in Richmond in two weeks for the wedding.

In Baltimore, Edgar had plans to board the train for Philadelphia for a quick editing job that would provide a much-need payment of $100. He planned on being in Philadelphia no more than a day or two, which would have him home in New York by October 1. The trip home was necessary so he could retrieve his mother-in-law/aunt, for whom he was the sole support, and bring her back to Richmond for the wedding.

The agreed-upon plan was for Edgar to write to Elmira as soon as he reached New York. In Richmond, Elmira waited and waited for the expected letter. It never showed. On October 9, a few days before the scheduled wedding date, Elmira glanced at the Richmond Daily Whig. A headline caught her eye: “Death of Edgar A. Poe.” The short announcement was a reprint from the Baltimore Sun from a few days earlier which read, “We regret to learn that Edgar A. Poe, Esq., the distinguished American poet, died in this city yesterday morning after an illness of four or five days.”

Shocked and heartbroken, Elmira tried to discover what had happened to her beloved. But the only real fact she learned was the cause of Edgar’s death. He had succumbed to a “congestion of the brain.” Yet, even this cause of death was later disputed.

171 Years Later

Poe’s death and the odd circumstances surrounding his death have the makings of a fine Poe-inspired tale. One hundred seventy-one years after his death, questions still remain about the cause of his death, speculation abounds regarding his movements between September 27 when he left Richmond and October 3 when he was found in a gutter, and head-scratching theories exist about his state and manner when found.

At the time of his death, Poe was the country’s top celebrity poet (back in the days when there was such a thing). As such, one would think his would be an open and shut case. And yet, it is not. On the next few pages, we seek to give the poet and short story writer more due by laying before you, dear readers, the facts and theories of Poe’s death. At the end, we ask for your help in writing the closing chapter of the dark, mysterious death of Edgar A. Poe.

Theories

Theories regarding the cause of death include cholera, meningitis, carbon monoxide poisoning, mercury poisoning, and syphilis. One interesting modern theory is rabies. Another is a brain tumor. Mercury poisoning is plausible; at the time, it was used to treat cholera. In the summer of 1849, a cholera epidemic was raging through Philadelphia when Poe passed through on his way south. Even a brain tumor isn’t too far of a stretch. But surely the fact that he was found in the gutter by a tavern must mean that what finally got him in the end was his Achilles’ Heel: alcohol.

Poe was notorious for being unable to hold his liquor. In his defense, modern research has raised the possibility that he suffered from a rare genetic condition that prevents alcohol from being metabolized normally. All it took was a single drink to get our friend—apologies for the descent into crudeness, dear readers—snot-slingin’ drunk.

But did he really drink himself to death? That seems to be the popular theory, then as it is now. But consider: Poe had more than his share of enemies. Take for example one Rufus Griswold, a bitter professional rival. Not to put too fine a point on it, Griswold hated Poe.

Griswold wrote a scathing obituary, then went on to write the first Poe biography. He, possibly more than anyone else, was responsible for cementing the image of Poe as a drunken, drug-addled madman in the popular imagination for all time. Other early champions of the death by drink theory may have had less nefarious but equally regrettable motives. An old Baltimore acquaintance, Joseph Snodgrass, who came to Poe’s aid when he was found in Gunner’s Tavern, was a staunch temperance advocate. He had no qualms about using Poe as an example in his efforts to further his own cause.

His chronic condition notwithstanding, it is accepted that Poe did indeed have an alcohol problem. In fact, on his way to Richmond in July of 1849 he managed to get himself thrown in the slammer in Philadelphia on a drunk and disorderly. (Although possibly even more interestingly, Poe himself would claim it was because he was suspected of passing a counterfeit $50 bill.) And yet, while in Richmond, and at Elmira’s insistence, he famously joined the Sons of Temperance, a fact that was reported far and wide in the Richmond newspapers. Then there’s the testimony of Dr. Joseph Moran, who attended Poe as he breathed his last. Dr. Moran specifically stated that there was no smell of liquor about him and that he had refused alcohol even on his deathbed. Modern hair sample testing backs this up. Your humble editors maintain that a fatal drinking spree may actually be the least likely scenario.

Could it be something more mundane? The flu, perhaps? A Passion for Poe

On their last night together, Poe mentioned to Elmira that he wasn’t feeling well. She would later assert that he had a fever and claimed she tried to talk him into staying in Richmond for a few more days. Alas, he had no room in his schedule because of the editing job in Philadelphia. He went forward with his plan. A week later he was admitted to Washington College Hospital and was not only talking to objects on the walls but also calling out repeatedly for someone named Reynolds.

Unfortunately, after more than 171 years we will probably never know what killed our Master of the Macabre.

What Happened in Baltimore?

Why was Poe still in Baltimore a week after leaving Richmond? And where was he between September 27, when he was known to have left Richmond by steamship, and October 4, when he was discovered in the gutter outside Gunner’s Tavern? One oft-touted theory involves “cooping.”

There was an election in progress in Baltimore, and it was claimed that persons were kidnapped and drugged, forced to don disguises, and ushered from polling place to polling place to cast multiple votes. Such is said to have happened to Poe. Could he have been accosted by thugs while he waited for his train and forced to coop? He would have arrived in Baltimore by 6:00 the morning after his departure from Richmond. He would not need to board the train for Philadelphia until 9:00, plenty of time for all manner of mischief to take place. This theory would explain the odd clothes, but evidence that cooping was going on in Baltimore at the time is thin.

Clues that something more sinister may have been afoot emerged in the years and decades to follow. In 1875, 26 years after Poe’s death, a Philadelphia publisher named John Sartain went public with an intriguing tale. In interviews for various publications, including Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine and The PhiladelphiaPress, Sartain claims that Poe suddenly barged into his engraving room one evening in 1849, “looking pale and haggard and with a wild expression in his eyes.” Poe had left Philadelphia and was homeward bound on the train to New York, Sartain claims, when Poe overheard two men plotting to kill him and throw him from the train. Giving them the slip at Bordentown, Poe returned to Philadelphia on the next train where he approached Sartain for protection. In the ensuing conversation, Poe revealed to Sartain that he was embroiled in “woman trouble.”

In an effort to disguise himself, Poe asked his friend to loan him a razor, so that he might shave off his mustache. The apparently hirsute Sartain replied that he had no razor, but proceeded to divest the poet of his famous mustache with scissors and offered him a place to stay for a couple of nights. After a few days, Poe conceded that he must surely have been imagining things and went on his way. It is not too much of a stretch to imagine that Poe might have bought some secondhand clothes in Philadelphia to complete his disguise, then headed back from whence he came in an ultimately futile effort to confound his attackers.

Modern theorists have suggested that Poe’s symptoms suggest he may have been suffering from a severe head injury. However, Dr. Joseph Moran, the attending physician at Washington College Hospital in Baltimore, specifically stated that there was no evidence of any kind of a beating about his person. Dr. Moran would spend the rest of his life writing and lecturing about the last days of his famous patient, and over the years gained some measure of fame as something of an expert on Poe’s final hours. Although Moran embellished his story as the years went by, and over time added odd new bits of information into the mix, he provides some of the most vital clues to this mystery.

Dr. Moran claims that decades after Poe’s demise, he was approached by one George Rollins, who in 1849 had been the conductor of the train between Baltimore and Philadelphia. Rollins told Moran that he saw Poe on the train twice: on the Baltimore-to-Philadelphia train, then “very soon after” on the Philadelphia-to-Baltimore train. Rollins added that he saw two men, whom he described as “sharks,” follow Poe when he got off the train in Baltimore.

Then in 1902, almost 60 years after the fact, a Richmond physician named Dr. John Carter reported an extremely odd incident in an article in Lippincott’s. Dr. Carter revealed that Poe appeared at his office unexpectedly and rather late on the night of September 26, 1849. Poe had said his goodbyes to Elmira and was passing the time before he had to board the steamship bright and early the next morning. Carter’s office was roughly halfway between Elmira’s house and Poe’s lodgings at the Swan Tavern. Walking sticks or canes were at the time the fashion accessory no well-dressed man would be seen in public without, and Dr. Carter had recently acquired one that concealed a sword. Poe seems to have been quite taken with Dr. Carter’s cane-sword, and when he left, somehow managed to leave with the doctor’s cane-sword instead of his own walking stick. Puzzled but unperturbed, the doctor expected that he would see Poe again soon. As it happened, the cane-sword was discovered in Poe’s room at the Swan Tavern after he left town.

Putting these pieces together, one can reasonably surmise that Poe must have suspected, or at least imagined, he was being followed. The sword, cleverly concealed in the walking stick as it was, may have seemed like the perfect weapon to defend himself against any potential attackers. He must surely have been most distressed to discover he’d left it behind, for if we take the story from Rollins the conductor at face value, it might have come in handy over the next few hours.

One authority on the subject is John Evangelist Walsh, who theorizes in his delightful little book Midnight Dreary that Poe was attacked and left for dead by Elmira’s brothers. There were three of them, and they were vocally and adamantly opposed to a marriage between their sister and Poe, as indeed were Elmira’s teenage children. In the eyes of Elmira’s family, Poe was nothing but a lecherous gold-digger who would certainly besmirch the family’s good

Who Was Reynolds?

“ ‘Reynolds!’ he called, ‘Reynolds!, Oh, Reynolds!’ The room rang with it. It echoed down the corridors hour after hour all that Saturday night.”

Israfel , Allen. The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe. Farrar & Rinehart (1934)

Spoiler alert: Nobody knows. It’s possible that the mysterious Reynolds may have been one Jeremiah Reynolds, who was the author of an article about exploration in the Pacific and South seas that appeared in the Southern Literary Messenger in January 1837. The article was edited by Poe and is thought to have been Poe’s inspiration for his novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Poe owed Reynolds $10—about $277 in today’s money.

Other theories name one Henry R. Reynolds, one of the presiding judges in the Fourth Ward, where Gunner’s Tavern was located. If true, it could lend credence to the “cooping” theory, although this seems a stretch. There are gaping holes in both theories, however, and modern critics have pointed to numerous inconsistencies in Dr. Moran’s own telling of Poe’s last hours to posit that the whole Reynolds story is but a myth.

Poe was a celebrity, and it would have been widely known that Elmira wasn’t the only woman upon whom Poe had recently turned his attentions. It is understandable that the recently widowed Poe would be in the market for a new relationship. But he was also penniless and seeking financial backing for a new magazine called the Stylus that he hoped to launch. Elmira was conveniently quite wealthy. But since the death of his wife two years previously, Poe’s name had already been linked to seven or eight different ladies, one of whom he had come very close to marrying only a few months before his scheduled wedding to Elmira. Sara Helen Whitman, like Elmira, was a wealthy widow and a poet of some renown. Upon discovering that his intended had arranged to have her fortune put legally “beyond the reach of a husband,” Poe deliberately violated their engagement by getting rip-roaring drunk one evening and barging into her home.

Walsh theorizes that Poe made it as far as Philadelphia on his northbound journey that October of 1849 and checked in to his hotel. At some point he was confronted by his followers but managed to somehow escape and make his way to Sartain’s. Apparently believing that he had thrown his pursuers off his trail, he was headed back to the safety of Elmira’s loving embrace. However, he only made it as far as Baltimore before being pounced upon by rapscallions and kidnapped, drugged, and perhaps beaten.

Not The End

Poe was but 40 at the time of his passing. We can only imagine what delightful tales of darkness might have come from his fertile imagination had he lived longer. As many have remarked before, Poe’s demise is a tale much like one he himself might have written. Surely, the Darling of Darkness is pretty darned pleased with the closing chapter of his life. But we’re interested in your opinions, your thoughts. What do you think happened to Edgar Allan Poe? Email us at GhostScribesDallas@gmail.com and let us know.