Text: Eugene L. Didier, “The True Story of Poe's Death,” The Poe Cult and Other Poe Papers (1909), pp. 175-179

[page 175:]

No American poet has attracted more attention, living and dead, than Edgar A. Poe. Nine lives of him have been written, yet about no celebrated writer of modern times has it been so difficult to get the real facts of his life and death. According to some of his biographers he mingled among men like a bewildered angel; while others describe him as a prying fiend, or an Ismælite, with his hands against everyone and everyone's against him. The time and place of his birth were for many years uncertain; even now some of his biographers still differ as to that matter. The place of his burial was at one time undecided, but that was definitely settled, in 1875, when his remains were discovered in Westminster churchyard, Baltimore, and a monument seven and a half feet high erected over his grave. The cause of his death, and the circumstances [page 176:] attending it, have not yet been definitely determined, and everything that throws any light upon the subject will prove interesting to his many admirers.

A former Baltimorean, now living in San Francisco, gives what he claims to be a true account of the poet's last days and death. This is his story: “I was an intimate associate of Edgar Allan Poe for years. Much that has been said and written regarding his death is false. His habitual resort in Baltimore was the Widow Meagher's place. This was an oyster-stand and liquor-bar on the city front, corresponding in some respects with the coffee houses of San Francisco. It was frequented much by printers, and ranked as a respectable place, where parties could enjoy a game of cards, or engage in social conversation. Poe was a great favorite with the old woman. His favorite seat was just behind the stand, and about as quiet and sociable as an oyster himself. He went by the name of ‘Bard,’ and when parties came into the shop, it was ‘Bard, come up and take a nip;’ or, ‘Bard, come and take a hand in this game.’

“Whenever the Widow Meagher 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 couplet, [page 177:] and at times poems of some length. These verses, quite as meritorious as some by which his name was immortalized, were thus frittered into obscurity. It was in this little shop that Poe's attention was called to an advertisement in a Philadelphia paper of a prize for the best story; and it was there that he wrote his famous ‘Gold Bug,’ which carried off the hundred dollar prize. [Incorrect.]

“Poe had been shifting for several years between Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. He had been away from Baltimore for three or four months, when he turned up one evening at the Widow Meagher's. I 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. It was drinking all around and repeat, until the crowd was pretty jolly. It was the night before election, and four of us, including Poe, started uptown. We had not gone half a dozen squares when we were nabbed by a 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 were opened, and then march them around to every precinct, where they were made to vote the ticket of the party that controlled the coop. Our coop was in the rear of an engine [page 178:] house on Calvert Street. It 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 a man's 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 a dead man any longer, so they shoved 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 condition while he was being voted around the city. The story by Griswold of Poe's having been on a week's spree and being picked up on the street is false. I saw him shoved into the cab myself, and he told me he had just arrived in the city.”

The above narrative will form an interesting chapter in the life and death of the poet whose life was a romance and whose death was a tragedy. The account of Poe's last days agrees in several respects with the account which the late Chief Judge Neilson Poe, of Baltimore, gave to the present writer. It's [page 179:] painful to think that a man of Poe's wonderful genius should, after a life of intolerable misery, die in the wretched manner above described. But, it must now be admitted that the author of the Raven was “cooped” and drugged to death by political roughs, who used the hapless poet as a “repeater” at a 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.