Letters and papers re: death of J. L. Stanford, 1905-1921

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United States Department of Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations.

Hawaii Agricultural Experiment Station.

Honolulu, Hawaii, ________________, 190 .

I also know that he changed position at once when he found that his fee would come from the Stanford estate.

Incidentally although Mr. Duncan was associated with Shorey as an analyst in the case, Shorey retained the whole of the fee and Duncan did not receive one cent.

Greed of gold is a very strong characteristic with this fellow, and I believe that he would sell his word or his reputation or whatever traces of an immortal soul there may be in him, to the highest bidder or to any bidder if he thought he could cover up his trail. As to honor he has none, absolutely.

Yours Truly

Jared G Smith

May 18, 1921

Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, Stanford University.

Dear Dr. Wilbur:

In my autobiography I shall not go into many details as to Mrs. Stanford's death. But I think that the University should have a record of the circumstances which led to the widespread idea that she was poisoned, and the simple explanations which the facts permit.

Mrs. Stanford died on February 18, 1905. On the day before, she went on a picnic to the glorious scenery of the Pali, overdoing herself and overeating from the generous luncheon provided by the Hotel Moana. In the night she awoke with agonizing pain, believing that she had been poisoned. She had taken a little bicarbonate of soda as a relief from the overfull feeling, and some time in the day also a tonic pill prescribed, I was told, by Dr. Stanley Stillman, in which there was a minute quantity of nux vomica.

Her secretary, Miss Bertha Berner and her lady's maid, a Miss Hunt, gave her emetics, in spite of which, in great pain, but without rigor, she died during the night. The attendant physician, Dr. Humphries if I recall the name (an English remittance man, if not of good reputation) seemed dazed, as if under the influence of some drug. When told by Mrs. Stanford that she had been poisoned by strychnine, he tasted the bottle of soda, and said something to the effect that it contained strychnine enough to kill a dozen men.

Six days later, Mr. Hopkins and I reached Honolulu. We took with us two very competent detectives, Captain Cullandan, a private detective and a man of great ability and integrity, and Mr. Reynolds from the Police Force of San Francisco.

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On the doctor's report that the death was due to strychnine, we employed the ablest physician we found available, Dr. Waterhouse, a graduate of Columbia. On investigation of the symptoms, Dr. Waterhouse declared that they did not tally in any degree with the rigors of muscle produced by strychnine. In taking the emetics, Mrs. Stanford sat or stood by the washstand, with no distortion whatever. Dr. Waterhouse's diagnosis was a form of Angina Pectoris, due, he thought most probably, to a rupture of the coronary artery. The heart was carefully preserved and sent to Dr. William Ophuls and a committee of surgeons of the Cooper Medical College staff who reported the rupture of the coronary, as expected by Dr. Waterhouse.

Meanwhile the carbonate of soda was sent to the Government analyst at Honolulu for examination. He reported that it contained a small amount of strychnine. It was also stated that a trace of strychnine was found in the stomach. I did not see these analyses, but they were thus reported to me. Not long after, this chemist was dismissed from the Government service for fraudulent analyses.

Mr. Hopkins and I found Miss Berner held incommunicado in the Moana Hotel by the police authorities of Honolulu. The detectives gave her a rigid examination and declared her absolutely innocent of any evil. Mr. Hopkins and I cross-questioned her independently reaching the same unquestionable conclusion. This was before we had received the report form Dr. Waterhouse. There remained then no room for doubt that Mrs. Stanford died a natural death, probably hastened by undue exertion and incautious eating. But the physician reported death from strychnine poisoning. His motives can only be inferred from his actions.

Mrs. Stanford had left San Francisco for Honolulu three weeks before - about February 5 - on account of an incident at her San Francisco residence. One morning she took a glass of Poland Water, a frequent custom on her part. Later in the day, she poured out another glass which she found intensely bitter. She drank but little, and was given a series of emetics by Miss Berner. There were no ill effects. The contents of the bottle were analyzed by a competent chemist who found a large quantity of strychnine in the water. I met Mrs. Stanford

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and Miss Berner on a street-car next morning, and they told me of the incident and of Mrs. Stanford's decision to go away for a time. This discovery of strychnine suggested to Mrs. Stanford at Honolulu the idea that she had been poisoned.

Mr. Cullandan found that a maid temporarily employed by Mrs. Stanford, an Englishwoman forty-five to fifty years of age, named Richmond, was subject to periodic attacks of mania, that the chief subjects of her conversation with her associates turned on her experiences in the houses of the English aristocracy, with numerous anecdotes of those members of high society who had died from poisoning.

I reached the conclusion that no one else could be under suspicion for the affair in San Francisco. Meeting Callundan at Placerville some time after he told me that he believed that this phase of the mystery was fully solved. The poison was put into the Poland Water in an insane freak. Meanwhile, as nothing could be absolutely proved, nothing was done in her case nor in that of the blunders or worse which took place at Honolulu. I have always regretted on Miss Berner's account that the Board did not see fit to publish the report of the surgeons of the Cooper Medical College, but there would be no gain in reopening these questions now after sixteen years.

DSJ/McD

COPY

Honolulu, T.H. March 14, 1905

Since writing the former statement regarding my opinion as to the causes of Mrs. Stanford's death, Miss Berner has made some further statements bearing on the case. Her statement accompanies this communication. She gives reasons why she thinks Mrs. Stanford's statement that she was "thrown out of bed by a spasm" did not mean that she was thrown out of bed on to the floor, but simply that she jumped out of bed at the time. Now, of course if she was thrown out of bed in a strychnine convulsion, she would have been thrown on to the floor and would have had to have gotten up immediately afterward and gone out into the hall. This would practically have been impossible, and even if she had by any possibility been able to do so she would have shown the effect of it and no doubt said more about it considering all she did say later.

But if now she was not thrown to the floor it would be stronger evidence that the so called spasm was due to hysteria or fright or waking up suddenly with pain and distress. And if this were so, the very fact that she spoke of it in the exaggerated way as "being thrown out of bed" would suggest fear or hysteria.

I wish also to call attention to the fact mentioned in an entirely different connection in this statement concerning Mrs. Stanford's sitting in the cold wind for an hour. All such things go to show what a fatiguing day Mrs. Stanford had had, as well as the undue exposure at this time. This in itself would amount to very little, but taken together with all Mrs. Stanford did that day, show that there had been an unusual strain on her that day.

E.C. Waterhouse M. D.