13 Theories Of Poe's Death

Edgar Allan Poe Death Theories Mysterious Death — Like his life's work, Edgar Allan Poe's death remains shrouded in mystery. © Bettmann/CORBIS

Information technology was raining in Baltimore on Oct 3, 1849, merely that didn't stop Joseph W. Walker, a compositor for the Baltimore Sunday, from heading out to Gunner'south Hall, a public firm bustling with activity. It was Election Day, and Gunner's Hall served as a pop-up polling location for the 4th Ward polls. When Walker arrived at Gunner's Hall, he found a man, delirious and dressed in shabby 2d-hand clothes, lying in the gutter. The man was semi-conscious, and unable to motility, only every bit Walker approached the him, he discovered something unexpected: the man was Edgar Allan Poe. Worried almost the health of the addled poet, Walker stopped and asked Poe if he had any acquaintances in Baltimore that might exist able to help him. Poe gave Walker the name of Joseph East. Snodgrass, a mag editor with some medical training. Immediately, Walker penned Snodgrass a letter of the alphabet asking for help:

Baltimore City, Oct. 3, 1849
Dear Sir,

There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan'southward fourth ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, he is in need of firsthand assist.

Yours, in haste,
JOS. W. WALKER
To Dr. J.East. Snodgrass.

On September 27—almost a week earlier—Poe had left Richmond, Virginia jump for Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems for Mrs. St. Leon Loud, a small figure in American poetry at the time. When Walker found Poe in delirious disarray outside of the polling place, it was the first anyone had heard or seen of the poet since his departure from Richmond. Poe never made it to Philadelphia to attend to his editing business. Nor did he ever make it dorsum to New York, where he had been living, to escort his aunt dorsum to Richmond for his impending wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore, where he launched his career in the early 19th- century, once again—and in the four days between Walker finding Poe outside the public house and Poe's death on October 7, he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he had come to be found, in soiled clothes not his own, incoherent on the streets. Instead, Poe spent his final days wavering between fits of delirium, gripped by visual hallucinations. The night before his decease, according to his attending md Dr. John J. Moran, Poe repeatedly called out for "Reynolds"—a effigy who, to this day, remains a mystery.

Poe's expiry—shrouded in mystery—seems ripped straight from the pages of ane of his own works. He had spent years crafting a careful prototype of a human inspired by chance and fascinated with enigmas—a poet, a detective, an author, a earth traveler who fought in the Greek War of Independence and was held prisoner in Russia. Merely though his expiry certificate listed the crusade of death as phrenitis, or swelling of the brain, the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death have led many to speculate about the true cause of Poe's demise. "Peradventure it's plumbing equipment that since he invented the detective story," says Chris Semtner, curator of the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, "he left united states of america with a existent-life mystery."

1. Beating

In 1867, 1 of the first theories to deviate from either phrenitis or booze was published past biographer E. Oakes Smith in her article "Autobiographic Notes: Edgar Allan Poe." "At the instigation of a woman, " Smith writes, "who considered herself injured past him, he was cruelly beaten, blow upon blow, by a ruffian who knew of no meliorate mode of avenging supposed injuries. It is well known that a encephalon fever followed. . . ." Other accounts also mention "ruffians" who had beaten Poe senseless before his death. Equally Eugene Didier wrote in his 1872 article, "The Grave of Poe," that while in Baltimore, Poe ran into some friends from West Point, who prevailed upon him to join them for drinks. Poe, unable to handle liquor, became madly drunk after a single glass of champagne, later which he left his friends to wander the streets. In his drunken country, he "was robbed and beaten by ruffians, and left insensible in the street all night."

two. Cooping

Others believe that Poe roughshod victim to a do known every bit cooping, a method of voter fraud practiced by gangs in the 19th century where an unsuspecting victim would be kidnapped, disguised and forced to vote for a specific candidate multiple times nether multiple bearded identities. Voter fraud was extremely common in Baltimore around the mid 1800s, and the polling site where Walker institute the disheveled Poe was a known place that coopers brought their victims. The fact that Poe was establish delirious on election day, then, is no coincidence.

Over the years, the cooping theory has come to be one of the more widely accustomed explanations for Poe's strange demeanor before his death. Before Prohibition, voters were given alcohol subsequently voting equally a sort of advantage; had Poe been forced to vote multiple times in a cooping scheme, that might explain his semi-witting, ragged state.

Around the late 1870s, Poe'due south biographer J.H. Ingram received several letters that blamed Poe'south decease on a cooping scheme. A letter from William Manus Browne, a fellow member of the kinesthesia at Johns Hopkins, explains that "the general belief hither is, that Poe was seized by one of these gangs, (his decease happening just at election-time; an ballot for sheriff took place on Oct. quaternary), 'cooped,' stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted, and and so turned adrift to die."

3. Booze

"A lot of the ideas that have come up over the years take centered effectually the fact that Poe couldn't handle booze," says Semtner. "It has been documented that after a glass of vino he was staggering drunk. His sister had the same problem; it seems to be something hereditary."

Months earlier his death, Poe became a song member of the temperance movement, eschewing alcohol, which he'd struggled with all his life. Biographer Susan Archer Talley Weiss recalls, in her biography "The Last Days of Edgar A. Poe," an event, toward the end of Poe's fourth dimension in Richmond, that might be relevant to theorists that adopt a "death past drinking" demise for Poe. Poe had fallen sick in Richmond, and after making a somewhat miraculous recovery, was told past his attending doc that "another such attack would prove fatal." According to Weiss, Poe replied that "if people would not tempt him, he would not autumn," suggesting that the get-go illness was brought on by a bout of drinking.

Those effectually Poe during his finals days seem convinced that the author did, indeed, fall into that temptation, drinking himself to death. As his close friend J. P. Kennedy wrote on October 10, 1849: "On Tuesday final Edgar A. Poe died in town hither at the hospital from the effects of a debauch. . . . He fell in with some companion here who seduced him to the canteen, which it was said he had renounced some time ago. The consequence was fever, delirium, and madness, and in a few days a termination of his sad career in the hospital. Poor Poe! . . . A vivid but unsteady light has been awfully quenched."

Though the theory that Poe'due south drinking lead to his decease fails to explain his 5-day disappearance, or his second-hand clothes on Oct 3, it was nonetheless a pop theory propagated past Snodgrass later on Poe's decease. Snodgrass, a fellow member of the temperance movement, gave lectures across the country, blaming Poe'south death on binge drinking. Modern science, however, has thrown a wrench into Snodgrasses talking points: samples of Poe'due south pilus from after his death show low levels of lead, explains Semtner, which is an indication that Poe remained faithful to his vow of sobriety up until his demise.

iv. Carbon Monoxide Poisoning

In 1999, public wellness researcher Albert Donnay argued that Poe'southward decease was a outcome of carbon monoxide poisoning from coal gas that was used for indoor lighting during the 19th century. Donnay took clippings of Poe'south pilus and tested them for certain heavy metals that would be able to reveal the presence of coal gas. The exam was inconclusive, leading biographers and historians to largely discredit Donnay's theory.

five. Heavy Metallic Poisoning

While Donnay'due south exam didn't reveal levels of heavy metal consequent with carbon monoxide poisoning, the tests did reveal elevated levels of mercury in Poe's arrangement months before his death. Co-ordinate to Semtner, Poe's mercury levels were almost likely elevated as a result of a cholera epidemic he'd been exposed to in July of 1849, while in Philadelphia. Poe's dr. prescribed calomel, or mercury chloride. Mercury poisoning, Semtner says, could aid explain some of Poe'southward hallucinations and delirium before his death. Nonetheless, the levels of mercury plant in Poe'southward pilus, even at their highest, are still thirty times below the level consequent with mercury poisoning.

6. Rabies

In 1996, Dr. R. Michael Benitez was participating in a clinical pathologic conference where doctors are given patients, forth with a listing of symptoms, and instructed to diagnose and compare with other doctors also equally the written record. The symptoms of the bearding patient E.P., "a writer from Richmond" were clear: Eastward.P. had succumbed to rabies. According to E.P.'southward supervising md, Dr. J.J. Moran, E.P. had been admitted to a hospital due to "lethargy and defoliation." Once admitted, Eastward.P.'s condition began a rapid downward spiral: shortly, the patient was exhibiting delirium, visual hallucinations, wide variations in pulse rate and rapid, shallow breathing. Within four days—the median length of survival after the onset of serious rabies symptoms—Eastward.P. was dead.

East.P., Benitez soon found out, wasn't just any author from Richmond. Information technology was Poe whose death the Maryland cardiologist had diagnosed as a articulate case of rabies, a fairly common virus in the 19th century. Running counter to any prevailing theories at the time, Benitez's diagnosis ran in the September 1996 consequence of the Maryland Medical Journal. Equally Benitez pointed out in his commodity, without DNA testify, it's impossible to say with 100 pct certainty that Poe succumbed to the rabies virus. There are a few kinks in the theory, including no evidence of hydrophobia (those afflicted with rabies develop a fright of water, Poe was reported to have been drinking water at the hospital until his death) nor whatsoever evidence of an beast bite (though some with rabies don't remember being bitten by an animal). All the same, at the time of the article'south publication, Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe Firm Museum in Baltimore, agreed with Benitez's diagnosis. "This is the first time since Poe died that a medical person looked at Poe's death without any preconceived notions," Jerome told the Chicago Tribune in October of 1996. "If he knew it was Edgar Allan Poe, he'd think, 'Oh yep, drugs, alcohol,' and that would influence his conclusion. Dr. Benitez had no agenda."

seven. Brain Tumor

I of the virtually recent theories about Poe's death suggests that the writer succumbed to a brain tumor, which influenced his behavior earlier his expiry. When Poe died, he was buried, rather unceremoniously, in an unmarked grave in a Baltimore graveyard. Twenty-six years later, a statue was erected, honoring Poe, near the graveyard's entrance. Poe'due south bury was dug upwards, and his remains exhumed, in lodge to be moved to the new place of honor. But more than than two decades of cached decay had non been kind to Poe'southward coffin—or the corpse within it—and the apparatus fell apart every bit workers tried to move it from one part of the graveyard to another. Fiddling remained of Poe's body, but one worker did remark on a strange feature of Poe's skull: a mass rolling around inside. Newspapers of the day claimed that the clump was Poe'south brain, shriveled notwithstanding intact after almost iii decades in the basis.

We know, today, that the mass could not be Poe'due south encephalon, which is one of the first parts of the body to rot after expiry. But Matthew Pearl, an American author who wrote a novel about Poe's death, was nonetheless intrigued by this dodder. He contacted a forensic pathologist, who told him that while the clump couldn't be a encephalon, it could be a brain tumor, which tin lapidify after death into hard masses.

Co-ordinate to Semtner, Pearl isn't the only person to believe Poe suffered from a brain tumor: a New York md one time told Poe that he had a lesion on his encephalon that caused his adverse reactions to alcohol.

viii. Flu

A far less sinister theory suggests that Poe merely succumbed to the flu—which might take turned into deadly pneumonia—on this deathbed. As Semtner explains, in the days leading up to Poe'due south departure from Richmond, the writer visited a physician, complaining of illness. "His last night in town, he was very sick, and his [before long-to-be] wife noted that he had a weak pulse, a fever, and she didn't think he should take the journey to Philadelphia," says Semtner. "He visited a medico, and the doctor also told him non to travel, that he was too sick." Co-ordinate to newspaper reports from the time, it was raining in Baltimore when Poe was there—which Semtner thinks could explain why Poe was found in clothes not his own. "The cold and the rain exasperated the flu he already had," says Semtner, "and maybe that eventually lead to pneumonia. The high fever might account for his hallucinations and his defoliation."

9. Murder

In his 2000 book Midnight Dreary: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe, author John Evangelist Walsh presents nonetheless another theory virtually Poe's death: that Poe was murdered by the brothers of his wealthy fiancée, Elmira Shelton. Using evidence from newspapers, letters and memoirs, Walsh argues that Poe really made information technology to Philadelphia, where he was ambushed past Shelton'due south three brothers, who warned Poe against marrying their sister. Frightened by the experience, Poe bearded himself in new clothes (accounting for, in Walsh's listen, his second-hand clothing) and hid in Philadelphia for most a week, before heading back to Richmond to marry Shelton. Shelton's brothers intercepted Poe in Baltimore, Walsh postulates, beat him, and forced him to drink whiskey, which they knew would send Poe into a deathly sickness. Walsh's theory has gained lilliputian traction among Poe historians—or book reviewers; Edwin J. Barton, in a review for the journal American Literature, called Walsh's story "only plausible, not wholly persuasive." "Midnight Dreary is interesting and entertaining," he concluded, "but its value to literary scholars is limited and oblique."

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For Semtner, however, none of the theories fully explain Poe's curious cease. "I've never been completely convinced of any one theory, and I believe Poe'southward cause of death resulted from a combination of factors," he says. "His attention doctor is our best source of evidence. If he recorded on the mortality schedule that Poe died of phrenitis, Poe was nearly probable suffering from encephalitis or meningitis, either of which might explain his symptoms."