Famous writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was the first American writer to fully support himself by his writing. He single-handedly started the detective genre, as well as the science fiction genre. He is famous for his mysteries and Gothic horror stories. When we think of him, we remember The Raven (Nevermore), The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, The Tell-Tale Heart, and others. He was best known in his day as a piercing literary critic.
The most enduring of all of Poe’s mysteries is his death. He was on a speaking tour, on his way from Richmond to Baltimore and then home to New York. Before he left Richmond he saw a doctor for a fever. His fiancé later wrote that he was feverish, had a weak pulse, and she felt he should not make the trip to Baltimore. We know he arrived in Baltimore two days later, and did not go on to New York as planned. We know nothing else until five days later when strangers found him, rain-soaked in a gutter outside a tavern in Baltimore, wearing clothes that were not his own, semi-conscious, raving, and near-death. Someone recognized him (He was famous, of course.). Poe was alert enough to ask for Dr. Snodgrass, someone he knew in Baltimore. The doctor was summoned to the tavern. He was shocked at Poe’s appearance and condition and took him to a local hospital. There, he had tremors. He roused, and briefly complained of a terrible headache. He was confused and kept calling for “Reynolds”. He begged the doctors to do away with him. He was never fully coherent and never able to explain what had happened.
Three days later he died. Phrenitis (brain swelling- also a polite euphemism for alcoholism) was listed as the cause of death. Dr Snodgrass believed he had been drinking heavily, however Dr. Moran, the doctor who cared for him in the hospital, did not. There was no autopsy. No death certificate exists. Why was he still in Baltimore? Why was he wearing someone else’s clothes? What was he ill from? Who was Reynolds? Despite over one hundred years of investigation there are no good answers to these questions.
Any information that did exist has been muddied by events after his death. Dr Snodgrass, who came to his rescue, gave lectures on the temperance circuit and used Poe’s death as a cautionary example of the evils of alcohol. Griswald, Poe’s estate executor, was a real frenemy. He was a jealous fellow writer (think Mozart and Salieri) and wrote a damning biography of Poe, with lots of unfounded stories of alcoholism and opium addiction, to try to improve his own reputation. Moran, the doctor who cared for him in the hospital, later tried to help Poe’s reputation and described him as intermittently lucid and reciting poetry. But all hospital records are gone now.
So, what are the possibilities?
In the years before his death, he had increasingly erratic behavior and had a reputation as a drunk. Poe was known to drink (alcohol as well as laudanum, a combination of alcohol and opium) heavily on occasion. He especially drank while his wife was dying. In truth, he could not tolerate even small amounts of liquor and became quite drunk after only one glass of wine. His sister Rosalie was the same, and friends often remarked on this unusual family trait. Edgar Poe had recently joined a temperance union and given popular lectures. The hospital doctor noted he seemed to recover slightly in the hospital and then worsen, which didn’t fit with alcohol withdrawal. So, alcohol poisoning seems less likely.
Why ill-fitting clothes that were obviously not his own? A dapper dresser, Poe was usually dressed in a black suit. When found at the tavern he was wearing ill-fitting, torn clothes and an out-of-season straw hat. Poe, a widower, was planning to marry his childhood sweetheart, and her family was unhappy about it. An unsubstantiated rumor circulated that her brothers had gotten Poe drunk, planning to ruin his reputation, beat him and run him out of town. One theory postulates he had hidden for a few days and disguised himself in shabby clothes to try to get away from them.
The tavern he was in may hold a clue. It happened to be election night in Baltimore, and the tavern was also a polling place. Voting fraud was prevalent in Baltimore, and there was a practice called “cooping”. Party loyals would kidnap an unsuspecting person, get them knee-walking drunk, cart them to a polling place and have them vote for their candidate of choice. The same person would be dressed in different clothes, given different identification, and led to vote many times. They were often beaten if they resisted. Years after Poe’s death, his admirer William Hand Browne of Baltimore said that “the general belief here, is that Poe was seized by one of these gangs…’cooped,’ stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted, and then turned adrift to die.”
What led him to be incoherent and semi-comatose? Maybe his cooping misadventure concluded with a beating, and he was suffering from the effects of a closed head injury such as an epidural hematoma. That would fit with his intermittent altered consciousness and his strange behavior. There was no autopsy so we will never know.
Poe’s hospital records noted that he had difficulty drinking water. This symptom as well as the pattern of improving and then worsening could be consistent with late-stage Rabies. Fever the week before, then unusual behavior, then raving and refusing water, followed by coma- all this fits Rabies. He loved cats, and often took in stray cats. In the mid-1800s there was no Rabies vaccine, and infected animals were not rare. Intriguing.
Poe seemed increasingly erratic in the last few years of his life (Mental illness? Depression? Heavy metal poisoning?). Years later, his hair was evaluated for heavy metals with unexciting results.
His body was exhumed several times after his death, in the process of creating a grand monument for him, and re-burying family members together. One witness at the first exhuming (26 years after his death) stated there was a hard mass rattling around in the skull of his long-decomposed body. Perhaps a calcified brain tumor? That could explain some of his more unstable behavior in the few years preceding his death, as well as his illness in his final week of life.
What a story! I had never heard that. Hopefully your title will pop up when people ask, “How did Poe die?” I appreciate you delving into the details. If only you had been there to diagnose his illness I’m sure your diagnosis would have been something totally different from all the other speculations. Well done my friend. Well done.
Thanks!