The Macabre Death Of Edgar Allan Poe

**"The Macabre Death Of Edgar Allan Poe"** is a video made by Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, uploaded onto YouTube on March 13, 2020. It was the first episode of the sixth season of *BuzzFeed Unsolved: True Crime*, and the ninty-ninth episode overall. You can find it here.

## Description

How much do we really know about the death of one of the most famous poets in the world?

## Background

Edgar Allan Poe was born on January 19th, 1809 in Boston to a pair of actors, Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe Jr. Within the first three years of his life, both his parents were dead, and the wee Poe was brought to Richmond to live with his presumed godfather, John Allan.

In 1826, Poe enrolled at the University of Virginia where he was an excellent student. Though John Allan was a wealthy tobacco merchant, he was also a tightwad who sent Poe to school with less than a third of the money needed. To try to make up for the shortfall, Poe started gambling. As you might expect, this strategy didn't quite pay off, and by the end of his first term, Poe was so poor he was burning his furniture to stay warm.

At this time, Allan was actually angry at the young student for gambling, while Poe was likewise upset at his godfather for refusing to contribute more to his education. With no other options, Poe was forced to drop out of school. Thus began a tumultuous time in Poe's life. Upon returning to Richmond, Poe discovered his fiancee, Elmira Shelton, had become engaged to another man. Despairing, Poe moved to Boston and enlisted in the U.S. Army to support himself so he could write. His godfather, however, then bought Poe's way out of the military, which was apparently something you could do. Poe then enrolled in West Point, only to be expelled eight months later after making himself absent from all drills and classes for a week. With nowhere to go, Poe attempted to seek out his father's relatives in Baltimore, where he was promptly robbed by one of his cousins.

Finally, Poe fell into the care of his aunt, Maria Clemm, and established some semblance of stability. Poe started to publish poems. Around the time when he moved in with his aunt, Poe also began publishing short stories, one of which won a contest that grew his notoriety and led to an editorial position at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond.

Poe's luck was finally turning around. In addition to his newfound career traction, Poe had fallen in love with a girl named Virginia. Grossly, Virginia was his cousin. Even grossly-er, Virginia was half his age. Despite these circumstances, Poe and Virginia married in Richmond in 1835 when Poe was 27 and Virginia was 13. While their marriage was said to have been a happy one, it was also largely marked by money troubles.

Poe continued moving about the eastern seaboard, piecing together different writing jobs, but finding it nearly impossible to make an adequate living. When his first collection of short stories, Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque, which contained his famous story, "The Fall of the House of Usher", was first published in 1840, Poe's pay wasn't even in money, but instead, 25 copies of his own book. Five years later, in 1845, the New York Mirror published Poe's poem, "The Raven", which catapulted him to national acclaim.

For a brief period, Poe was finally living relatively comfortably. In the life of Edgar Allan Poe, however, tragedy was never far off. In the winter of 1847, Virginia died of tuberculosis at age 24. Poe was devastated, and literary critics assumed that Poe himself would be dead before long. In two years' time, they'd be proven right. By 1849, Poe was said to have embarked on a wild spree, presumably relating to alcohol abuse. By the summer, however, he'd made his way back to sobriety, back to Richmond, and back to his first fiancee, Elmira Shelton.

They were soon and once again engaged, with plans to marry after Poe returned from some business in Philadelphia. On September 27th, Poe left Richmond by steamer, stopping the next day in Baltimore. For the next 5 days, Poe's whereabouts are unknown.

On October 3rd, Poe was found by an employee of the Baltimore Sun, Joseph W. Walker, delirious, immobile, and dressed in shabby clothing. Poe was discovered in a gutter outside of a public house that was being used as a polling place.

Rapping at death's chamber door, Poe was taken to Washington College hospital that afternoon. Assumed to be drunk, the weak and weary Poe was brought to a special room reserved for patients ill from intoxication. Poe never fully regained consciousness to be able to detail what had happened to him. Dr. John J. Moran wrote to Poe's aunt/mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, that Poe's last days were filled with, "vacant converse with spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. His face was pale and his whole person drenched in perspiration". On October 7th, five hours past midnight dreary, at the age of 40, Edgar Allan Poe died, some reports claiming he used his last breath to calmly say, "Lord, help my poor soul". The official cause of death was phrenitis, or brain swelling. Poe was buried in a Baltimore graveyard two days later in an unmarked grave, with little ceremony and nothing more.

## Theories

* **Edgar Allan Poe died of some alcohol-related syndrome, such as dipsomania, alcohol dehydrogenase, or delirium tremens.** Poe had a problem with alcohol. Not only did he possibly struggle with alcoholism, but it appears he was genetically predisposed to not be able to handle booze. According to Chris Semtner, curator of the Poe Museum, "it has been documented that after a glass of wine, he was staggering drunk. His sister had the same problem; it seems to be something hereditary".
	+ Some say phrenitis may have been a common euphemism to politely attribute a death to alcohol. A few months before his death, Poe had a traumatic experience after becoming ill from drinking in Richmond. According to biographer Susan Archer Talley Weiss, Poe's doctor apparently warned him that, "another such attack would prove fatal". This may have contributed to him becoming an active and vocal member of the Temperance movement for the months leading up to his demise.
	+ If Poe had fallen off the wagon during his five-day disappearance, that could've explained the disheveled and terminal state when he was found.
* **Poe was fatally beaten, perhaps after drinking.** Since Poe would become inebriated after only one drink, he would've been an easy target for ruffians. Indeed, if Poe was beaten and robbed, that would explain his shabby state of dress, as Poe hadn't been known to wear ragged, cheap, ill-fitting clothes.
	+ There are even a couple theories that a potential beating would've been because of a woman. Biographer E. Oakes Smith wrote in an 1867 article, "at the instigation of a woman, who considered herself injured by him, Poe was cruelly beaten, blow upon blow, by a ruffian who knew of no better mode of avenging supposed injuries. It is well known that a brain fever followed".
	+ In author John Evangelist Walsh's book from 2000, he posited that the brothers of Poe's again-fiancee, Elmira Shelton, drugged Poe with alcohol and beat him to death. According to Walsh, Shelton's three brothers had warned Poe against marrying their sister. Walsh suggests that Poe had made it to Philadelphia, where he was ambushed by Shelton's brothers. Poe would have then disguised himself in shabby clothing and gone into hiding. Walsh contends that when Poe tried to sneak back to Richmond, Shelton's brothers would have found him in Baltimore, beaten him, and drugged him with alcohol, knowing it would have made him deathly ill.
* **Edgar Allan Poe was the victim of "cooping," a violent form of voter fraud that was extremely common in Baltimore at the time.** "Cooping" was when gangs would kidnap a victim and force him to vote multiple times in a variety of disguises.
	+ This theory makes a lot of sense, as it explains why Poe was not in his normal clothes and why he was found outside of a polling place. During this time, voters were often given some alcohol after voting as a celebration. Because of Poe's genetic sensitivity to alcohol, if he had been forced to vote several times, thus having to drink multiple drinks, it could have explained the drunken stupor he was discovered in.
	+ Biographer J. H. Ingram during the late 1870s received several letters that caused him to believe this was how Poe met his demise. A member of the faculty at Johns Hopkins, William Hand Brown, wrote Ingram, saying, "the general belief here is, that Poe was seized by one of these gangs, 'cooped, stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted, and then turned adrift to die."
* **Edgar Allan Poe died as the result of a brain tumor, which could have explained his odd behavior in the days leading up to his death.** Though Poe was buried in an unmarked grave two days after he died, 26 years later, a statue was erected to honor his grave site, during which his coffin was dug up so his remains could be exhumed. The term "honor" is used loosely, as the marker lists his birthday as January 20th - the day after Poe was actually born.
	+ Workers noted that there was a mass rolling around inside the poet's skull. At the time, news articles reported it was Poe's brain, "dried and hardened in the skull", claiming, "the cerebral mass evidenced no sign of disintegration or decay, though, of course, it is somewhat diminished."
	+ However, if there truly was a mass remaining in Poe's skull, it is unlikely to have been his brain. Soft brain tissue would have been some of the first to decay after Poe's death. It is much more likely any mass would have been a tumor, which could have calcified and hardened after the death. Expert testimony also suggests Poe had been told earlier in his life by a doctor, that he believed Poe had a lesion on his brain that explained his adverse reaction to alcohol.