Edgar Allan Poe’s connection to Rhode Island was a romantic one, when he entered into a relationship with Sarah Helen Whitman, a wealthy widow, spiritualist, and poet, from Providence.
It all began in early1848, when Whitman wrote a poem to Poe, referencing his most famous work, “The Raven,” which she intended to be read to him at a literary gathering in New York, on Valentine’s Day. The only problem was Poe had not been invited to the affair. Regardless, the two poets continued to correspond with one another, and in September 1848, Poe came to Providence to visit Whitman. After several more get-togethers, Poe proposed to Whitman, in a local cemetery. Family and friends promptly tried to talk her out of marrying Poe because of his poor reputation and troubles with alcohol. Poe managed to convince his betrothed to marry him, following a series of impassioned love letters, and promises of sobriety. On December 23, 1848, two days before their planned Christmas Day wedding, Whitman learned that Poe had broken his promise of sobriety, and immediately called off the wedding. Less than a year later, Poe was engaged to someone else, when his life was cut short, leading to much speculation as to the exact cause.
It’s now been 175 years since Edgar Allan Poe’s death on October 7, 1849, but the circumstances surrounding the famed author’s final days, and the precise mode of his death, remain unknown, though there are a shocking number of possible reasons and contributing factors, behind his premature death.
In late summer 1849, Poe was in Richmond, exploring a possible magazine venture. When he left on September 27, he had made a decision to relocate there for an editor job and to marry an old sweetheart, Sarah Elmira (Royster) Shelton, who was now widowed. The details of his actions and whereabouts over the next week are completely unknown. He had been bound for Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems for a client, but never made it there. Then, on October 3rd, he was found slumped in a gutter outside a tavern in Baltimore. He was semi-conscious in what appeared to be drunken stupor, wearing cheap, ill-fitting clothes that did not belong to him. Poe was transported to nearby Washington Medical College, where he lingered for four days, slipping in and out of consciousness, before passing away on October 7th.
Poe’s much mulled-over death certificate sites phrenitis as the cause of death, which is an abnormal swelling of the brain. Alcohol has long been a suspected culprit, as Poe was known to frequently imbibe. However, much about Poe’s drinking habits may have been intentionally exaggerated by his rivals.
One alternative mode of death theory blames carbon monoxide poisoning, resulting from inhaling too much coal gas, which was used for indoor lighting during the 19th century. In 1999, a Baltimore cardiologist hypothesized that Poe lost his life due to the rabies virus, a fairly common disease in the 19th century, which would account for various symptoms Poe was suffering in his final days. The medical community has also suggested possible mercury poisoning from being prescribed calomel, a mercury chloride mineral used for treatment of cholera, which Poe had been suspected of contracting that summer.
Still others have claimed that Poe succumbed to a brain tumor, which certainly would account for his strange behavior, or a far less dramatic means to his end, with a simple case of the flu that may have turned into deadly pneumonia.
There is also the prospect that Poe being was murdered by the brothers of his wealthy fiancée, who also did not want Poe marrying their sister, taking their distaste for him to the limit.
Other theories as to what cased Poe’s death include encephalitis, meningitis, heart disease, hypoglycemia, syphilis, diabetes, apoplexy. epilepsy, and even suicide. But one of the most widely accepted explanations for Poe’s ruin suggests that he was the victim of cooping, a common voter fraud practice that was extremely common at that time in Baltimore, where notoriously corrupt politicians paid ‘election gang’ thugs to kidnap down-and-out men. These victims were then used as pawns to vote for a political party multiple times. The victims were imprisoned in a small room, beaten, drugged, or plied with alcohol to get them to comply, then they would be given disguises, including different clothes, wigs, and fake beards or mustaches, to fool voting officials and vote over and over at different polling places for the chosen candidates. Afterward, they would be left for dead.
Poe had been found on election day, outside an Irish pub that served as a pop-up polling site for the 4th Ward, which was a known place where ‘coopers’ brought their victims.
In the end, Poe’s death seems ripped directly from the pages of his own works. What really happened in those few days before his death, we will likely never know.
