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