The Appeal. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. ;) 1889-19??, 1889-02-23
EDGAR POE'S DEATH,
che Poet Dragged to Death by Baltimore
BallOt-Box Suffers.

Che Poet Dragged to Death by Baltimore
Ballot-Box Suffers.
A former Baltimorean, now living in
San Francisco, gives what he claims to
% a true account of Poe's last days
and death. This is his story: Il was
intimately acquainted with Eds gar Allan
Poe for years. Much that has been
said and written in regard to his death
is false. His habitual resort in Balti-
more was the Widow Meagher's place.
Ehis was al oyster stand and liquor
bar on the city front, corresponding
IN some respects with the coffee houses
OF San Francisco. 1t was freouented
much by printers and ranked as q
respectable place, wEare parties
could enjoy a social game of cards or
engage in social conversation. Foe
was q great favorite with the old
woman. The favorite seat of the poet
was just behind the stand, and he was
about as quiet and sOGiable as an oyster
himself. He we.>t by the name of
Bard, and when parties came into the
shop it was Bard, come up and take
NIP, or Bard, come and take Il ii;7:.;i
in the game Whenever Widow Mea-
CHER met with any incident or idea
that tickled her fancy she would ask
the Bard to versify it. Poe always
complied, writing many a witty coup
let, and at times poems of some length.
These verses, quite as meritorious as
some by which his name was immor-
talized. were thus frittered into OBJ
security. 1t was in this little shop that
Foes attention was called to an adver-
tisement in a Philadelphia paper for
prize for the best story, and it was
there that he wrote his famous Gold
Bug which carried off the 800 prize.
''Poe had been shifting for many
years between Baltimore, Philadelphia
and New York. He had been away
from Baltimore for three or four
months, when he turned up one even
ing at the Widow Meagher's. l was
there when he came in. He privately
told me that he had been to Richmond
and was on his way North to get ready
for his wedding. 1t was drink all
around and repeat until the crowd was
pretty full. It was the night before
election, and four of us, including Poe,
started up. We had not gone half a
dozen squares when we We're nabbed
by gang of men who were on the
lookout for voters to coop it was
the practice in those days to seize
people whether drunk or sober, lock
them up until the polls We're opened,
and then march them around to every
precinct, where they We're made to
vote the ticket of the party that con-
trolled the coop Our coop was in
the rear of an engine-house on Calvert
street. 1t was part of the game to
stupefy the prisoners with drugged
liquor. Well, the next day we were
voted at thirty-one different places,
and over and over, it being as much as
a mans life was worth to rebel Poe
was so badly drugged that, after he
was carried on two or three different
rounds, the gang said it was no use to
vote dead man any longer, so they
showed him into a cab and sent him to
a hospital to get him out of the way.
''The commonly accepted story that
Poe died from the effects Of dissipation
is all.bosh. It was nothing of the kind.
He died from laudanum or some other
poison that was forced upon him in the
coop. He was in a dying conditisn
when he Was being voted around the
city. The story told by Griswold of
Poe's having been on a weeks spree
and being picked up on the street is
false. I saw him showed into the cab
myself, and he told me he had just az
rived in the city,
The above narrative will form an in
teresting chapter in the life and death
OF the poet. whose life was a romance
and whose death was d tragedy. The
account OF Poe's last days agrees in
several respects with the account which
the late Chief Judge Nelson Poe, of
Baltimore, gave to the undersigned. 1t
is painful to think that Il man Of poe's
wonderful genius should, after life
OF intolerable misery, die in the
wretched manner above described. But
it must be admitted that the author OF
'The Raven was cooped and drugged
to death by political toughs, who used
the hapless poet as repeater at t, local
election. Others have vaguely stated
this before; and the detailed account
now given by one who was with Poe at
the time confirms the horrible story
Chicago Tribune.