Loch Ness Monsters and Raining Frogs The Worlds Most Puzzling Mysteries Solved (21 page)
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Authors: Albert Jack
Edgar Allan Poe had not been so attired when he left Richmond, so this is the first real evidence of foul play. Snodgrass wondered if Poe had not fallen off the wagon with a vengeance and sold or exchanged his own clothes for more liquor. A week-long drinking binge could well have had fatal consequences, but as Snodgrass didn't know at the time, Poe had been in possession of a considerable sum of money when he arrived in Baltimore, which was now missing, and even he would have had trouble drinking through $1,500 worth of whiskey in a week. This theory of the demon drink reclaiming Poe has often been repeated over the years, but it is worth remembering that the main architect of such an idea is Dr. Snodgrass himself, who later became famous during the 1850s for his temperance lectures and often used the famous writer as an example of what can happen should a person succumb to the evils of alcohol. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to look back at the now collected evidence and see that Snodgrass was not averse to a little exaggeration. For example, in his written account, “The Facts of Poe's Death and Burial,” published in May 1867 in
Beadle's Monthly
, he transcribed the note he had first received from Joseph Walker. Where Walker describes Poe as “rather worse for wear,” Snodgrass changed the wording to “in a state of beastly intoxication.”
Dr. Moran also made a career out of his deceased patient by lecturing and writing about Poe for many years. He flamboyantly claimed in his
Defense of Poe
, published in 1885, that Edgar Allan Poe's final words to him had been: “He who arched the heavens and upholds the universe has His decrees legibly written upon the frontlet of every human being and upon demons incarnate.” While they certainly sound like the words of a delirious man, I am unable to decide who was the more so—Poe or the good Dr. Moran. And this is completely undercut by Moran's letter to Maria Clemm on November 15, 1849, in which he reports that the writer's final offering was “Lord, help my poor soul,” which would mean the only reliable information from Dr. Moran was his initial description of Poe when he was brought to the hospital.
In his first letter to Maria Clemm, Dr. Moran refers to Poe's trunk, which was discovered at a hotel a few days later. But Moran fails to mention Poe still had the key in his pocket, despite having apparently had his clothing stolen, or that he still had Dr. Carter's malacca cane, which Moran sent to Maria to be returned to the doctor in Richmond. And why would the thief hand Poe back the key to his trunk having presumably forced him to change clothes?
Even more suspiciously, there has been no mention of the large sum of money Poe was known to have had in his possession on his arrival in Baltimore. Some are puzzled by the revelation that Poe's trunk was booked in to a hotel, when the writer was only supposed to be passing through on his way to Philadelphia, but September 28, 1849, was a Friday, and in his letter to Mrs. Clemm, Poe informed her he was traveling on Tuesday, October 2, so it is quite conceivable Poe had checked in to a hotel with the intention of meeting somebody in Baltimore for the weekend, although as yet nobody has been able to ascertain who that was.
Four days after Poe's death, on October 11, 1849, his cousin Neilson Poe wrote to Mrs. Clemm, claiming to have carried out an exhaustive inquiry as to Poe's movements during that final week, but with no success: “Where he spent the time he was here, or under what circumstances, I have been unable to ascertain.” However, within a few weeks, Neilson had written to Poe's first biographer suggesting he had acquired some information about Poe's death, which was “known only unto me.”
This curious remark needs investigating. Because if Poe died at the hands of another, as the evidence tends to suggest, then how could Neilson be the only one who knew anything about it, unless he himself was involved? At the time, Neilson promised to write it all down in a “deliberate communication,” but nothing was ever sent to Poe's biographer and Neilson is not known to have ever written anything about the death of his famous cousin.
It is interesting to note that this was the same cousin who raced to the bedside of Poe when he was taken ill, only to be refused entrance by Dr. Moran, claiming Poe was too delirious to receive visitors; and yet Neilson claimed only a week later to Maria Clemm that he had no knowledge of Edgar's presence in Baltimore. The question is, was he lying, and was it Neilson whom Edgar had planned to meet over that weekend in Baltimore? Moreover, did Dr. Moran suspect Neilson had something to do with Poe's condition and is that why he refused him access?
Election Day, the day Poe was discovered, was a dangerous time during the mid-nineteenth century, as a practice known as “cooping” was widely employed by unscrupulous politicians and their supporters in many American cities. William Baird explained these goings-on in a paper published in Baltimore during the mid-1870s:
At that time, and for years before and after, there was an infamous custom in this and other cities, at election time, of “cooping” voters. That is, gangs of men picked up, or even carried off by force, men whom they found in the streets and transported them to cellars in various slums of the city, where they were kept under guard, threatened, maltreated if they attempted to escape, often robbed, and always compelled to drink whiskey, sometimes mixed with other drugs, until they were stupefied and helpless.
At the election these miserable wretches were brought up to the polls in carts or omnibuses, under guard, and made to vote the tickets in their hands, repeatedly at different voting places. Death from the ill treatment was not uncommon. The general belief here is that Poe was seized by one of these gangs then “cooped,” stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted again and again, then turned adrift to die.
The cooping theory is one suggested by most Edgar Allan Poe biographies and accounts of his death. In those days, Baltimore elections were notorious for corruption and violence, with political parties willing to resort to extreme measures to ensure the success of their favorite candidates. Poe was discovered on Election Day after he had been missing for five days, and he was found lying in an apparently drunken stupor in a bar where the votes were actually being cast.
But as with all the other theories about Poe's death, the cooping hypothesis has an obvious flaw. Edgar was well known in Baltimore and therefore likely to be recognized by many people. Cooping being a dangerous and highly illegal activity, it is unlikely “coopers” would risk holding Edgar Allan Poe with others who would be able to identify him. The Whigs were the major political party, headed by Zachary Taylor, who had been elected president in 1848, and it turns out that a delegate of the Eighteenth Ward had been none other than Poe's cousin, Neilson Poe.
Could Neilson have been involved in cooping his famous cousin? This would certainly explain why Poe had checked in to the hotel for the weekend, on the assumption that he would be spending an exciting few days with his politically active cousin in the run-up to an important election. Could Poe have been drugged by Neilson, who had then stolen his money? This would account for Poe's incoherent state at the time he was found. But perhaps Neilson had no intention of killing Edgar. Maybe he assumed instead that Poe would regain normal consciousness in the bar, unaware of what had happened to him. Which would explain Neilson's panicked dash to the hospital when he found out that Poe had been admitted, despite claiming later he could find no trace of Edgar in Baltimore all week. Or perhaps it had been slightly more innocent and Neilson might have rescued Poe from the coopers for his own political party but, wishing to keep the matter a secret from the electoral authorities, simply left him to recover and be found. He might have slipped the trunk key into Edgar's pocket knowing he had a change of clothes in town and could tidy himself up when he had recovered.
In a letter of November 27, 1874, N. H. Morrison claimed to J. H. Ingram (another of Poe's biographers): “The story of Poe's death has never been told. Neilson Poe has all the facts but I am afraid may not be willing to share them. I do not see why. The actual facts are less discreditable than the common reports published. Poe came to the city in the midst of an election and that election was the cause of his death.” What Neilson really knew about the death of his cousin has never been fully established, but it is clear that he knew something.
Poe's remains are interred next to those of his grandfather General David Poe, Sr., the American Revolutionary War hero, in Baltimore cemetery, and every year, on the anniversary of Poe's birthday, on January 19, fans still assemble for a silent vigil. Every year since 1949 a smartly dressed hooded man leaning on a silver cane has approached Poe's grave, knelt in respect, toasted the writer with a glass of cognac, and left the bottle, along with three red roses, at the graveside. Poe enthusiasts have watched this ritual without ever attempting to identify the stranger. In 1993, a note was also left, stating that “the torch will now be passed,” and since then a younger, similarly dressed man has carried out the ritual.
Over time the debate about Poe's death has served only to make his mystery seem more mysterious and increase the intrigue. But the tragic event remains one of the most mysterious deaths in literary history, and one cannot help concluding that the great man might have been secretly pleased about that. He might also have a few questions to ask of his cousin Neilson.
with you instead of your umbrella.
On Wednesday 9th February 1859 I was fetching a piece of timber when I was startled by something falling all over my head and down my neck. On reaching down my neck I was surprised to find they were little fish. By this time the whole ground was covered in them and when I took off my hat the brim was full of fish, all jumping about. They covered the ground in a long strip of about eighty yards by twelve yards that we measured. My mates and I collected many buckets full with our hands.
That was the sworn testimony of John Lewis of Aberdare in Mid Glamorgan, Wales. Since then there have been thousands of reports from all over the world of showers of either small fish or tiny frogs. These so-called fish or frog “falls” have never been properly explained, however, and remain one of nature's mysteries.
Moreover, the phenomenon goes back farther than the nineteenth century. In 1666, a letter to a fellow of the Royal Society went largely unreported, perhaps because it was also the year of the Great Fire of London:
On the Wednesday before Easter, Anno Domini 1666, a Pasture Field at Cranstead near Wrotham in Kent, about two acres, which is far from any part of the sea or river and a place where there are no fish ponds and a scarcity of water, was all overspread with little fishes, conceived to be raining down. There having been at the time a great tempest of thunder and rain. The fishes were about the length of a man's little finger and judged by all that saw them to be young Whitings. Many of them were taken up and shown to several other people.
But even farther back in history, in the second century
B.C.
, we come across the following account in the
Histories
of Hera-clides Lembus:
In Paeonia and Dardania, it rained frogs and so great was their number that they filled the houses and streets. Well, during the first days the people killed them and shut up their houses and made the best of it. But before long they could do nothing about it. Their vessels were filled with frogs, which were found boiled or baked with their food. Besides, they could not use the water, nor could they step upon the ground because of the heaps of frogs piled up and they also became overcome with [such] disgust at the smell of the creatures that they fled the country.
A whirlwind or waterspout picking up the contents of a lake and depositing it elsewhere has been put forward as a possible explanation for the phenomenon, but nobody really knows why fish or frog falls occur. Nor can anybody explain to me why it's raining cats and dogs outside my window today.
in nineteenth-century London?
In January 1838, the lord mayor of London, Sir John Cowan, was opening his morning mail when one letter in particular grabbed his attention. It was from a citizen living in Peckham who had been terrified by a demonic figure while crossing Peckham Rye. The mysterious beast had also pounced on a young lady and left her too frightened to give even a vague description, apart from the fact that it appeared to bounce, rather than walk normally like a man. The letter read:
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD MAYOR.
My Lord—The writer presumes that your lordship will kindly overlook the liberty he has taken in addressing a few lines on a subject which within the last few weeks caused much alarming sensation in the villages within three or four miles of south London.
It appears that some individuals (from, as the writer believes, the higher ranks of life) have laid a wager with a mischievous and foolhardy companion (name as yet unknown), that he dares not take on himself the task of visiting many of the villages near London in three disguises, a ghost, a bear and a devil. And moreover that he dare not enter gentlemen's gardens for the purpose of alarming the inmates of the house. The wager has however been accepted and the unmanly villain has succeeded in depriving seven ladies of their senses …
The affair has now been going on for some time, and, strange to say, the papers are still silent on the subject. The writer is very unwilling to be unjust to any man, but he has reason to believe that they have the history at their finger-ends but, through interested motives, are induced to remain silent. It is, however, high time that such detestable nuisance should be put a stop to.
I remain your Lordship's most humble servant,
A RESIDENT OF PECKHAM.
The letter forced the mayor to go public with his concerns and, as soon as he did, reports flooded in from all parts of the capital, earning the strange creature official recognition by the authorities. The newspapers soon nicknamed the beast “Spring-heeled Jack” and published stories of appearances on a regular basis. Hundreds of reported assaults were recorded—it seemed that the mysterious beast was terrorizing several districts of the city— and it wasn't long before many Londoners were refusing to leave their houses after dark.
A young maid, Mary Stevens, was intimidated on Barnes Common. Polly Adams, a barmaid in south London, was attacked as she walked across Blackheath. A servant girl at the home of Mr. Ashworth in Whitechapel answered the door to a hooded beast with fiery breath, and her screams were heard hundreds of yards away. Lucy Scales, a teenager from Limehouse, reported an assault. And Jane Allsop was virtually strangled by the hooded creature, until her family fought it off.
To local press hounds, the young women all described a “hideous face and his eyes were balls of fire. He had ice claws and breathed fire.” With a photofit picture like this, you would think Spring-heeled Jack shouldn't have been too hard to find, especially if you were standing next to him in the omnibus queue. It was a description echoed by many Londoners, who also reported seeing him bounce across the rooftops to make his escape.
That old English warhorse the Duke of Wellington, by then nearly seventy, armed himself to the teeth and went in search of the creature, but without success. Reports of attacks continued to flood in, and the army set a trap. After nightfall, sentries reported the beast suddenly appearing in front of them and “slapping their faces with icy hands” before bouncing away. Reports continued to arrive, mainly from the outskirts of London, in the areas of Ealing, Chiswick, Hammersmith, and Kensington.
Rumors abounded of servant girls dying of fright as soon as Jack appeared and of children being found ripped to shreds in the street—although there is no evidence of any of this and it is almost certainly untrue, so you can sleep easy. By the end of the century, Spring-heeled Jack had spread his wings to Surrey, Devon, and Hampshire and made his last appearance in Liverpool in 1904. Presumably he had his springs nicked and was forced to retire.
The true identity (or identities) of Spring-heeled Jack has never been discovered, although, despite frightening people and giving them the odd slap around the face, he had committed no serious crimes. History is littered with pranksters, and my guess is that “Jack” was one, or several, of these.