I Have Been Poisoned Again! Part 3

This is Part 3 of the story of Jane Stanford’s demise. Click here to go to Part 1.

In the Moana Hotel the evening of February 28, 1905, Mrs. Stanford asked for a bicarbonate of soda for digestive relief. Her trusted personal secretary, Bertha Berner, prepared the solution for her (using the drug obtained from the apothecary’s chemist in San Francisco) and Stanford went to bed. At approximately 11:15 p.m., Mrs. Stanford awoke her staff crying out, “I am so sick! Run for the doctor! I have no control of my body! I think I have been poisoned again!”

Dr. Francis Howard Humphris, the responding physician, attempted to administer a solution of bromine and chloral hydrate, but Stanford was “in anguish” and declared, “My jaws are stiff.” Humphris confirmed the contraction of her jaw muscles by palpations. The doctor reported that Mrs. Stanford had a “tetanic spasm that progressed relentlessly to a state of rigidity: her jaws clamped shut, her thighs opened widely, her feet twisted inwards, her fingers and thumbs clinched into a tight fist, and her head drew back. Finally, her respiration ceased.”

Humphris called other physicians in an attempt to revive Mrs. Stanford. An emetic was administered; he also called Dr. Francis R. Day to hurry over with a stomach pump and yet another physician, Dr. Harry Vicars Murray. None of those efforts were an antidote for Mrs. Stanford’s condition and she was pronounced dead.

Because Jane Stanford’s death was under unusual circumstances, an autopsy was performed. Those findings resulted in calling an inquiry by a coroner’s jury which heard testimony over a 3-day period. It was said that it took the jury only a few minutes to reach its conclusion: “Jane Lathrop Stanford came to her death . . . from strychnine poisoning, said strychnine having been introduced into a bottle of bicarbonate of soda with felonious intent by some person or persons to this jury unknown . . . “

Go to Part 4.