This is a 2 part cache series honoring the life of Edgar Allan Poe.
An Ode to Poe #1 (this cache)
An Ode to Poe #2 (GC1AQG7)
On October 3, 1849, Poe was sent in a carriage to the Washington College Hospital (now called Church Hospital). Poe was taken to a room in one of the towers, where persons ill from drinking were usually put to avoid disturbing the other patients. His doctor, John J. Moran quickly decided, however, that Poe was not drunk and indeed had not been drinking. Since Poe's clothing had been taken and replaced with something much more worn and garish, Moran suspected that Poe may have been robbed and mugged. At around 5:00 in the morning of Sunday, October 7, Poe died. His last words are said to have been "Lord, help my poor soul." Moran's description of the cause of Poe's death is sufficiently vague that he probably did not know precisely what happened to his patient. He was apparently unaware of the fact that Poe had been diagnosed sometime earlier with a weak heart and that another physician said that he had "lesions on the brain." The only official cause of death noted at the time comes from the Baltimore Clipper as "congestion of the brain."
When Washington College Hospital was opened in 1836, it was intended as a substantial advance for medical practice and training. Unfortunately, it did not make any noticeable improvements in the success rates for operations, which had previously been done in the doctors' houses. Faced with having to pay for the doctor's services and frightened by stories of pain and mistakes made on the table, most patients preferred to die from the disease rather than the cure. Unable to make mortgage payments, the school abandoned the building in 1855. It was immediately seized by its primarily creditor, the Fells Point Savings Institution. In their haste, the prior owners left behind many of their books, surgical tools and equipment. They also neglected to remove a large number of bones and other human remains, presumably used for anatomy classes. Local residents apparently made several attempts around 1856 to set fire to the building. The likely reason for such hostile feelings was probably the building's grim association with body snatching. William N. Batchelor recalled, many years later, that there was a cemetery nearby where ". . . many that had been buried . . . never stayed in their grave twenty-four hours before they were on a dissecting table. Some, no doubt, were taken to Washington College." This suspicion was effectively confirmed when a man appeared at the door at about midnight of the Batchelor family's first day in the building in 1855. The man had with him a large bag containing a corpse and was most unhappy to find that the doctors had all left. Mr. Batchelor also recalled that, "It was said there had been people kidnapped and taken in there which made Washington College a horror to the people in the city of Baltimore. After the sun went down you hardly ever saw a person anywhere near it.” Although the specific charge may have had no merit in truth, the rumor was no doubt spread widely and the fear it inspired genuine enough.
In 1857, the building was purchased for $20,500 by an Episcopalian group and reopened as Church Home and Infirmary, a joint operation run under the control of St. Andrew's Infirmary and the Church Home Society. In 1943, the institution was renamed the Church Home and Hospital. Sometime after 1994, it became simply Church Hospital.
(Historical facts courtesy of The Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore.)
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