Speaker 1: You think our politics are dirty? Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of cooping? It was a really common method of voter
Speaker 1: fraud back in the eighteen hundreds. Imagine being grabbed off
Speaker 1: the street, drugged, and forced by your kidnappers to vote
Speaker 1: for their candidates at various polling places around town. It happened,
Speaker 1: and may have been what killed one of the most
Speaker 1: famous authors of the nineteenth century. I'm Patty Steele. The
Speaker 1: mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. That's next on the backstory.
Speaker 1: The backstory is back. The election process is getting a
Speaker 1: lot of negative press these days, right, the anger coming
Speaker 1: from all fronts and all political ideologies, and a lot
Speaker 1: of folks think it's never been this bad. But guess what,
Speaker 1: it's just the latest iteration of politics as usual in
Speaker 1: the US. Let's go back to the early eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: How we voted and who got to vote changed dramatically.
Speaker 1: Starting in the late seventeen hundreds, the only people who
Speaker 1: were allowed to vote were white male landowners, mostly Protestants. Now,
Speaker 1: alcohol always played a huge role in elections, which were
Speaker 1: seen as social occasions that chanced to discuss the topics
Speaker 1: of the day with your pals, and also to party
Speaker 1: with them. In fact, George Washington, running for office in
Speaker 1: Virginia before the Revolutionary War, spent his entire campaign budget
Speaker 1: on booze, handing out to voters twenty eight gallons of rum,
Speaker 1: fifty gallons of rum punch, thirty four gallons of wine,
Speaker 1: forty six gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider Royal.
Speaker 1: That was all for just three hundred and ninety one
Speaker 1: male landowner voters, about a half a gallon apiece. His
Speaker 1: campaign even rolled barrels of liquor to polling places on
Speaker 1: election day, a custom very popular then known as swilling
Speaker 1: the planters with bumbo. The heck is bumbo? Well, actually,
Speaker 1: it seems it was a drink made from rum. But
Speaker 1: by eighteen hundred, states started to remove the land owning qualification,
Speaker 1: meaning you no longer had to own property in order
Speaker 1: to vote, which led to the right of working classmen
Speaker 1: to vote. That's when it became a free for all
Speaker 1: because there were lots more people voting, lots more opinions,
Speaker 1: but still plenty of booze. Political parties of all sorts
Speaker 1: began to show up, and everybody wanted their candidates to
Speaker 1: win at all costs. Plus you no longer had to
Speaker 1: cast a voice vote. Now it was election by anonymous
Speaker 1: written ballot, and that's where the practice of cooping came
Speaker 1: into play. Cooping victims again were kidnapped by gangs, drugged
Speaker 1: or forced to drink, and disguised several times, including a
Speaker 1: change of clothes, in order to cast several votes at
Speaker 1: the same or different polling places. In most cases, they
Speaker 1: were given already filled out ballots to hand in. Often
Speaker 1: they were already people who had alcohol or drug problems,
Speaker 1: so they were easily persuaded to do what they were told.
Speaker 1: The most popular theories about Edgar Allen Poe's mysterious death
Speaker 1: has to do with cooping. It stems from the fact
Speaker 1: that Poe was found on election day in a gutter
Speaker 1: outside of a polling location, delirious and wearing somebody else's clothing.
Speaker 1: He died without ever regaining his sensibilities. We all know
Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe right, the master of dark, creepy fantasy.
Speaker 1: He was famous for his terrifying poems and short stories
Speaker 1: about death, like The Raven Annabelle Lee, The Telltale Heart,
Speaker 1: The Pit and the Pendulum, and Murders in the Room
Speaker 1: more just to name a few, but as terrifying as
Speaker 1: those poems and stories were, his own death, though less
Speaker 1: well known, was equally as spooky. He had a tragic life.
Speaker 1: His father and actor abandoned the family when Poe was
Speaker 1: just a year old, and his mother died when he
Speaker 1: was only two. He and his older brother and younger
Speaker 1: sister were split up and taken in by different families.
Speaker 1: His foster father was extremely wealthy, but Poe was a
Speaker 1: difficult guy. He went to the University of Virginia, but
Speaker 1: he drank, gambled, and neglected his study, sounds like a
Speaker 1: typical college kid, and finally his foster family broke with
Speaker 1: him and he left school unable to support himself. He
Speaker 1: joined the army at eighteen and by twenty entered West Point,
Speaker 1: but the academy wasn't exactly his cup of tea either,
Speaker 1: and he left after just six months. He began spending
Speaker 1: more time writing, and within a couple of years and
Speaker 1: with the help of a wealthy sponsor, he started to
Speaker 1: find some modest success, and he began working for a
Speaker 1: small newspaper, but once again his demons caught up with
Speaker 1: him and he was quickly fired for being drunk on
Speaker 1: the job. It's eighteen thirty five and Poe is twenty six.
Speaker 1: He heads to Baltimore to marry his thirteen year old
Speaker 1: cousin Virginia. Yes, I said thirteen. They were married for
Speaker 1: eleven years before her death in January of eighteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: and that sent him into a deep alcohol fueled depression
Speaker 1: from which he never recovered. Now it's September of eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine and Poe is forty years old. He'd had
Speaker 1: some literary success, but it wasn't always financially rewarding. For instance,
Speaker 1: you know his poem The Raven. Everybody knows that when
Speaker 1: made him a household name quoth the Raven Nevermore, but
Speaker 1: he was only paid a total of nine bucks for
Speaker 1: it by the newspaper that published it. So, in search
Speaker 1: of a few extra bucks, he heads from Virginia to
Speaker 1: Philadelphia to help a poet edit her work. But somehow
Speaker 1: he stops off in Baltimore, maybe to see his dead
Speaker 1: wife's family. Well, next thing, you know, a man who
Speaker 1: recognizes him finds Poe in the gutter again outside a
Speaker 1: polling place on election day, wearing ratty clothes that don't
Speaker 1: seem to belong to him. The guy contacts a friend
Speaker 1: of Poe's, doctor Joseph Snodgrass, who finds Poe delirious and
Speaker 1: unable to explain what happened to him. He stayed that
Speaker 1: way in the hospital for four days. During those days,
Speaker 1: he kept repeating the name Reynolds. Who was Reynolds one
Speaker 1: of the cooping gang members? Was it an explorer and
Speaker 1: journalist that Poe admired named Jeremiah Reynolds? But then why him?
Speaker 1: It's another mystery surrounding Poe's final days. Finally, October seventh,
Speaker 1: eighteen forty nine, Edgar Allen Poe spoke his last words,
Speaker 1: Lord helped my poor soul, and then this tormented genius
Speaker 1: was gone. Is it possible Poe was a victim of cooping?
Speaker 1: Sure seems like it, and due to his alcoholism, he
Speaker 1: would have been a really easy mark for those guys.
Speaker 1: But others have suggested maybe he was beaten and robbed,
Speaker 1: or even that he somehow got rabies, but he had
Speaker 1: no bite marks. Maybe he had some other illness, some
Speaker 1: people say, or maybe he simply drank himself to death.
Speaker 1: The idea of him being used to some political end
Speaker 1: seems not only probable, but kind of chilling when you
Speaker 1: think about our own political climate, but it's fascinating to
Speaker 1: think about his mysterious death. In fact, he couldn't have
Speaker 1: written a more fitting end to a life completely dedicated
Speaker 1: to tragedy, mystery, and death. Edgar Allan Poe was a
Speaker 1: literary genius who gave us a peek into the darkest
Speaker 1: corners of the human mind, and his death only adds
Speaker 1: to his legend. Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele.
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Speaker 1: and feel free to dm me if you have a
Speaker 1: story you'd like me to cover. On Facebook, It's Patty
Speaker 1: Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele. I'm Patty Steele.
Speaker 1: The Backstory is a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks, the
Speaker 1: Elvis Durand Group, and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is
Speaker 1: Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes
Speaker 1: every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to
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Speaker 1: for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The pieces
Speaker 1: of history you didn't know you needed to know.