Jane Stanford - Death

Death

In 1905, Jane Stanford was at the center of one of America's legendary murder mysteries. She died of strychnine poisoning while on the island of Oahu, in a room at the Moana Hotel.

On January 14, 1905 Stanford consumed mineral water at her mansion in San Francisco which tasted bitter. She promptly forced herself to vomit the water up and, when both her maid and secretary agreed that the bottled water tasted strange, sent it to a pharmacy to be analyzed. The findings, returned a few weeks later, showed that the water had been poisoned with a lethal dose of strychnine. Shortly thereafter Stanford decided to sail to Hawaii, partly to rest and recuperate from a cold. The Stanford party left San Francisco for Honolulu on February 15, 1905.

At the Moana Hotel on the evening of February 28, Stanford asked for bicarbonate of soda to settle her stomach. Her personal secretary, Bertha Berner (who was the only other person present who had also been at the scene of the previous incident), prepared the solution, which Stanford drank. At 11:15 p.m., Stanford cried out for her servants and hotel staff to call for a physician, declaring that that she had lost control of her body and that she believed she had been poisoned again. Robert Cutler, author of "The Mysterious Death of Jane Stanford", recounted what took place upon the arrival of Dr. Francis Howard Humphris, the hotel physician:

"As Humphris tried to administer a solution of bromine and chloral hydrate, Mrs. Stanford, now in anguish, exclaimed, 'My jaws are stiff. This is a horrible death to die.' Whereupon she was seized by a tetanic spasm that progressed relentlessly to a state of severe rigidity: her jaws clamped shut, her thighs opened widely, her feet twisted inwards, her fingers and thumbs clenched into tight fists, and her head drew back. Finally, her respiration ceased. Stanford was dead from strychnine poisoning."

Controversy resulted from the quick verdict of the coroner's jury, which concluded in less than two minutes that she had died of strychnine poisoning. A dispatch in The New York Times of March 11, 1905, stated that the verdict was "written out with the knowledge and assistance of Deputy High Sheriff Rawlins", implying that the jurors may have been coached on what conclusion to reach. This controversy was largely stoked by Stanford University President David Starr Jordan. Jordan had sailed to Hawaii himself and hired a local doctor, Ernest Coniston Waterhouse, to dispute poisoning as the cause of death. He subsequently reported to the press that Stanford had in fact died of heart failure. Jordan's motives for involvement in the case are unknown; however, in his book, Cutler concludes that “There is ample evidence that Mrs. Stanford was poisoned, that she was given good care, and that Jordan went over there to hush it up.” Mrs. Stanford had long had a difficult relationship with Jordan; at the time of her death, she was president of the university's board of trustees and was reportedly planning to remove him from his position.

The source of the strychnine was never identified. Today, the room no longer exists, having been incorporated in an expansion of the hotel lobby. Stanford was buried alongside her husband Leland and their son at the Stanford family mausoleum on the Stanford campus.