Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Did Election Day kill Edgar Allan Poe?


from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Edgar_Allan_Poe --

The death of Edgar Allan Poe has remained mysterious: the circumstances leading up to it are uncertain and the cause of death is disputed.
On October 3, Election Day, 1849, Poe was found delirious outside Baltimore's Fourth Ward Polls at Ryan's Tavern, "in great distress."
He was taken to the Washington College Hospital, where he died four days later. Poe was never coherent enough to explain how he came to be in this condition.
He was described as "repulsive", with unkempt hair, a haggard, unwashed face and "lusterless and vacant" eyes. It is believed the clothes he was wearing were not his own, not least because wearing shabby clothes was out of character for Poe.
It has been suggested that he was the victim of "cooping." This was a ballot-box-stuffing scam in which victims were shanghaied, drugged, and used as a pawn to vote for a political party at multiple locations.
As befitting Poe's literary legacy, no one knows for sure what killed him, although evidence exists to suggest that he might have been suffering from rabies.

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