I was reading the wiki article of Frances Sargent Osgood a poet and writer who dated edger allen poe. It says that after she died both her her daughters died within a year, that seems very strange and I wonder if it was suicide. Are the causes of deaths recorded anywhere?
Since you can’t get the dope on that, I’m assuming I can’t. I will just guess that, with an absentee husband and little money, she died of TB brought about by poverty. The daughters would follow shortly if things didn’t improve.
Poe died before Frances but even if he lived, we would have known if he did the girls in. Were they walled up in some basement?
Says that the daughters also died of consumption.
consumption usually takes years to die, it seems weird that both of them would die within a year after their moms death
Not really. Children often died before parents back then. Plus if they were all living in similar circumstances, the daughters living an extra year might be do to some small advantages of youth.
There’s a type of TB that was known as “galloping consumption”, which progresses more rapidly than other types.
It is all semantics here. Consumption IS tuberculosis. Fulminant TB kills fact, but it can take years of illness to induce death.
You guys are forgetting that edger allen poe never got TB despite being much more intimate with this woman than her daughters would be.
How do we know Edgar Allan Poe never got consumption?
Her daughters could have had TB for years before they died, especially if they lived with her while she was ill.
His wife got Tb when she was in her teens and died when she was 24, he married her when she was 13 and he lived until his 50’s and didn’t died from TB so I think it’s safe to say he didn’t get TB
Poe died at 40, not in his 50’s.
He may have had it and never have known. Even if he didn’t get it at all, that has no bearing on whether or not her daughters got it.
“Dated” is a weird way to put the relationship between Poe and Osgood. They knew each other. They corresponded with each other. They may have had an affair. They were not “dating.” Osgood isn’t even important enough to be mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on Poe.
It isn’t clear, AIUI, what killed Poe, but even if he died of something else, that doesn’t mean he didn’t have TB at the time of his death.
I’m not sure what his cousin-wife’s illness has to do with the topic at hand. Could you clarify?