POE: Cause of Death - Theory #3 - Voter Fraud (AKA Cooping)

With the presidential election only a week away, it is timely to consider Theory #3 regarding the cause of Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious and untimely death - It's a type of voter fraud prevalent at that time called cooping.  Voter registration was hard to track in the 1800s, and voting was not private, so it was fairly easy to vote in more than one location or disguise yourself (or someone else) and vote multiple times at the same location.  Voters would get tickets for candidates before the election and then turn in those tickets to a ballot officer at the polling location. 

An acquaintance of Poe's found him on October 3, 1849, near Gunner's Hall, which was a tavern serving as a polling location on that particular date. Poe was incoherent, appeared drunk, and was wearing someone else's clothing. He was taken to a hospital, where he died on October 7, 1849.

Cooping was common in Baltimore and other large cities.  During cooping, gangs would kidnap victims and force them to vote for a specific candidate multiple times under multiple disguises. They were held or "cooped up" in a secret location and taken out at regular intervals to vote. Victims were often forced to drink alcohol to make them compliant. Alcohol could have worsened whatever other condition Poe may have been suffering from at the time. 

Poe had little tolerance for alcohol. A doctor had recently told Poe that if he drank again, he would likely die. Poe had recently taken a vow of temperance, meaning that he had made a public promise not to consume alcohol. He was planning to marry his childhood sweetheart, and his prospects for the future looked very promising. Because he had a reputation for drinking, many people assumed he had broken his pledge, but if he was the victim of cooping, he may have been forced to drink against his will. 

Fortunately, voting practices have come a long way since 1849! No one has been able to prove the cooping theory, but it might explain why Poe was wearing clothing that didn't belong to him. 

To read other theories about the mysterious cause of Poe's death, check out my new decodable book, The Raven Remix: A Mashup of Poe Titles. It is available on Amazon, or you can order it from your favorite local bookstore. For a free writing activity inspired by Poe, see my blog post entitled, Writing Scary Stories. There is still time in October to inspire your students to write a good ghost story.

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