Years ago, one of my first acts as a new New Yorker was to travel across three boroughs to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. My purpose is to make a pilgrimage to Herman Melville’s grave. To be exact, I didn’t come here to worship heroes, but…Angela O’Donnell, a professor of English at Fordham University, writes:–“To meet friends,” Professor O’Donnell continues. “It may seem presumptuous to be intimate with a famous novelist of the 19th century, but reading a great writer over several decades is a means of having a conversation with him, which inevitably leads to intimacy.” I completely share that sentiment.
I promised to visit Melville regularly, but sadly the joys and hardships of big city life drove me away and I never returned. Another 19th-century American writer’s timeless friend was not alienated by such minor distractions.
“For decades,” he wrote. baltimore sun“Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday was commemorated by a mysterious visitor to his cemetery in Baltimore. Starting in the 1930s, the ‘Poe Toaster’ placed three roses and opened a bottle of cognac on his grave every January 19th, only to disappear into the night.” Original Identity “po toaster” — who succeeded his son — remains an intriguing mystery. edgar allan poe Died.
Most people have probably heard some version of this story. October 3, 1849 baltimore sunJoseph Walker found Poe lying in the gutter. According to the Poe Museum, the poet left Richmond, Virginia, on September 27th for Philadelphia “to compile a volume of poems for Mrs. St. Leon Loud.” Instead, he ended up in Baltimore, but was “sluggish and wearing cheap, ill-fitting clothes that differed from Poe’s usual attire, leading many to believe that Poe’s own clothes had been stolen.” He never became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what had happened to him. “The father of detective fiction left us with real-life mysteries that Poe scholars, medical experts, and others have been trying to solve for more than 150 years.”
Most people think that Poe drank until he died. This rumor spread in part after Poe’s friend and editor, Joseph Snodgrass, asked him about it in a semi-lucid state. Snodgrass was a “determined teetotaler” who had reason to posthumously invite the writer to join the temperance movement, even though he had stopped drinking six months before Poe’s death and refused to drink at the time of his death. Poe’s doctor, John Moran, rejected the theory of binge drinking, but this did not help solve the mystery. Biography.com writes that Moran’s “testimony is so varied that it is not generally considered reliable.”
So what happened? Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center theorize that Poe may have contracted rabies from his own pet, possibly a cat. The diagnosis explains the delirium and other symptoms reported, but “no one can say definitively because a post-mortem has not been performed,” admitted Dr. Michael Benitez of the center. As with other mysteries, the frustrating lack of evidence has led to endless speculation. The Poe Museum provides the following list of possible causes of death, including dates and sources, including rabies and alcohol (both overdose and withdrawal) theories.
- Beaten (1857) American Magazine Vol.II (1857): 268.
- Epilepsy (1875) Scribner’s Monthly Vol. 10 (1875): 691.
- Dipsomania (1921) Robertson, John W. Edgar A. Poe Studies. Bluff, 1921: 134, 379.
- Heart (1926) Alan, Harvey. Israel. Doubleday, 1926: Chapter 3 XXVII, 670.
- Addictive Disorder (1970) Studia Philo 1 Logica Vol. 16 (1970): 41–42.
- Hypoglycemia (1979) Artes Literatus (1979) Vol. 5:7-19.
- Diabetes (1977) Sinclair, David. Edgar Allan Poe. Roman and Ritfield, 1977: 151–152.
- Alcohol dehydrogenase (1984) Arno Karlen. Napoleon’s gland. Little Brown, 1984:92.
- Porphyria (1989) JAMA February 10, 1989: 863–864.
- Delerium Tremens (1992) Myers, Jeffrey. Edgar A1 Lang Po. Charles Scribner, 1992: 255.
- Rabies (1996) Maryland Medical Journal, September 1996: 765–769.
- Heart (1997) Scientific Sleuthing Review Summer 1997: 1–4.
- Murder Case (1998) Walsh, John E., Midnight Melancholy. Rutgers University Press, 1998: 119–120.
- Epilepsy (1999) Archives of Neurology June 1999: 646, 740.
- Carbon monoxide poisoning (1999) albert donay
smithsonian museum add to this list Possible causes of brain tumors, heavy metal poisoning, and influenza. They also briefly discuss the most common theory that Poe died as a result of an act called “couping.”
The site The Medical Bag expands on the coping theory favored by “most of Poe’s biographies.” The term refers to “a practice that took place in the United States in the 19th century in which innocent people were forced to vote for a particular candidate over and over again in an election.” Often, these people were snatched off the street without their knowledge, “locked in rooms called huts,” and “given alcohol or drugs to comply with orders. If they refused to cooperate, they were sometimes beaten or killed.” One darkly comic detail is that victims were often forced to change their clothes and even “wear wigs, false beards, and mustaches as disguises to avoid being recognized by poll workers at polling places.”
This theory is very plausible. As it turns out, Poe was found “on the street on Election Day,” and “the location where he was found, Ryan’s 4th Ward polling place, was both a bar and a polling place.” Add to this the notoriously violent and corrupt nature of the Baltimore elections at the time, and you have a very likely scenario that the author was kidnapped, drugged, and bludgeoned to death in a voter fraud scheme. But ultimately, we will probably never know exactly what killed Edgar Allan Poe. Perhaps “Poe’s Toaster” had been trying for years to get the story out of its sources, talking annually with a friend who died in the 19th century. But even if the mysterious stranger knows the truth, he isn’t saying anything.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2015.
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josh jones I’m a writer and musician based in Durham, North Carolina.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
