Election Fraud: Cooping, Political Gangs, What It Had To Do With The Death of Edgar Allan Poe|The Strange History Podcast

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, dear listeners, and welcome back to the Strange History Podcast,

0:03 Speaker 1: where history rarely dies peacefully in its sleep and almost

0:07 Speaker 1: always leaves a note written in something unsettling. I'm Amy,

0:11 Speaker 1: and today we're diving into the story of cooping, election

0:14 Speaker 1: day violence, and the final days of Edgar Allan Poe.

0:17 Speaker 1: But before we throw Poe into the streets of Baltimore,

0:21 Speaker 1: we need to stop and understand what copping actually is.

0:25 Speaker 1: Cooping refers to a nineteenth century form of election fraud

0:28 Speaker 1: where political gangs kidnapped, drugged, and disguised vulnerable people, often

0:33 Speaker 1: homeless men, to repeatedly vote for a specific candidate, and

0:38 Speaker 1: cooping death usually describes the theory that writer Edgar Allan

0:42 Speaker 1: Poe died as a victim of this practice in eighteen

0:46 Speaker 1: forty nine, Found disoriented and wearing ill fitting clothes on

0:50 Speaker 1: election day. Victims were plied with alcohol or beaten in

0:55 Speaker 1: a seller the coop, and then sent to vote multiple

0:58 Speaker 1: times in different outfits to rig the election, and Poe's

1:02 Speaker 1: mysterious death on election day in Baltimore fits many characteristics

1:06 Speaker 1: of being cooped, though other theories exist. But let's actually

1:10 Speaker 1: sit with the man himself, because Poe was not just

1:14 Speaker 1: a Gothic archetype who wandered out of the fog to

1:16 Speaker 1: mutter about ravens. He was a real person, a complicated one,

1:21 Speaker 1: a fragile one, and by eighteen forty nine, a man

1:25 Speaker 1: already living on the edge of exhaustion, grief, and physical collapse.

1:31 Speaker 1: Edgar Allan Poe's life was defined early by loss. His

1:35 Speaker 1: father abandoned the family, and his mother, an actress, died

1:39 Speaker 1: of tuberculosis before Poe was three. He was taken in

1:42 Speaker 1: by John and Francis Allen, wealthy merchants in Richmond, but

1:46 Speaker 1: never formally adopted. That detail matters because Poe spent his

1:50 Speaker 1: entire life hovering between worlds, never fully belonging, never financially secure,

1:57 Speaker 1: never certain of his place. He was brilliant, sharp tongued,

2:01 Speaker 1: and deeply sensitive to criticism. Poe could be charming and

2:05 Speaker 1: witty in company, but he was also prone to deep

2:08 Speaker 1: depressive episodes, anxiety, and long stretches of self doubt. He

2:14 Speaker 1: struggled constantly with money. Even at the height of his fame,

2:17 Speaker 1: he lived hand to mouth, writing reviews, poems and short

2:21 Speaker 1: stories for pennies while helping invent entire literary genres that

2:25 Speaker 1: paid him almost nothing, and despite the later myths, Poe

2:30 Speaker 1: was not perpetually drunk. In fact, alcohol hit him unusually hard.

2:36 Speaker 1: Friends described him as having an extreme sensitivity. One or

2:40 Speaker 1: two drinks could leave him completely incapacitated. This wasn't indulgence,

2:45 Speaker 1: it was physiological. He later joined temperance movements and tried

2:49 Speaker 1: repeatedly to avoid alcohol altogether, which is important when we

2:54 Speaker 1: consider how disoriented and intoxicated he appeared in Baltimore. Poe's

2:59 Speaker 1: personal life was just as fraught. He married his cousin,

3:02 Speaker 1: Virginia Clem when she was very young, a fact that

3:06 Speaker 1: makes modern readers uncomfortable, and did little to help his

3:09 Speaker 1: reputation even then. But by most accounts, the relationship was

3:14 Speaker 1: affectionate rather than predatory, and Virginia was the emotional center

3:18 Speaker 1: of Poe's life. When she died of tuberculosis in eighteen

3:22 Speaker 1: forty seven, Poe unraveled after Virginia's death, His letters grow darker,

3:27 Speaker 1: more erratic. Friends noticed his health declining. He oscillated between

3:33 Speaker 1: hope and despair, talking excitedly about new literary projects one

3:37 Speaker 1: day and sinking into paranoia the next. He was lonely

3:41 Speaker 1: he was grieving, and he was physically unwell. Yet in

3:44 Speaker 1: the months before his death, Poe was also trying desperately

3:48 Speaker 1: to rebuild. In eighteen forty nine, he was engaged to

3:52 Speaker 1: Sarah Elmira Royster, a woman from his youth, and for

3:56 Speaker 1: the first time in years, friends reported that Poe seemed optimist.

4:00 Speaker 1: He spoke of settling down, of stability, of finally escaping poverty.

4:06 Speaker 1: He was planning lectures, editing projects, and new writing ventures.

4:11 Speaker 1: He was, not, by most accounts, in a suicidal spiral,

4:15 Speaker 1: which makes what happened next all the more disturbing. When

4:19 Speaker 1: Poe left Richmond for what should have been a straightforward

4:21 Speaker 1: journey north, something went terribly wrong. He vanished for days,

4:26 Speaker 1: no confirmed sightings, no letters, no explanations, and then he

4:31 Speaker 1: reappeared in Baltimore, confused, incoherent, and dressed like someone else entirely.

4:38 Speaker 1: That image clashes violently with who Poe was at the time.

4:42 Speaker 1: This was a man who cared deeply about his appearance

4:44 Speaker 1: and reputation, a man trying to re enter polite society,

4:49 Speaker 1: a man painfully aware of how easily he was dismissed

4:52 Speaker 1: as unstable. He would not have voluntarily wandered the streets

4:57 Speaker 1: drunk in the clothing he had on that election day,

5:00 Speaker 1: which brings us back inevitably to cooping. By eighteen forty nine,

5:06 Speaker 1: Poe was the perfect victim, physically frail, alcohol intolerant, alone, unprotected,

5:14 Speaker 1: recognizable enough to be targeted, but powerless enough to be used.

5:18 Speaker 1: If abducted, even a small amount of forced alcohol or

5:21 Speaker 1: drugs like laudanum could have pushed his system into collapse.

5:25 Speaker 1: Days of repeated abuse, disorientation, and exposure could easily explain

5:31 Speaker 1: the delirium, hallucinations, and eventual death. And then there is Reynold's.

5:38 Speaker 1: Poe's repeated cries of that name in the hospital have

5:41 Speaker 1: never been fully explained. Some speculate it referred to Jeremiah

5:46 Speaker 1: Reynolds and explorer Poe admired. Others believe it may have

5:50 Speaker 1: been the name of a political fixer or gang member

5:53 Speaker 1: involved in the election, or it could have been a

5:56 Speaker 1: fragment his mind grabbing for meaning as it unraveled. That

6:00 Speaker 1: ambiguity feels painfully appropriate. Poe died without clarity, without closure,

6:07 Speaker 1: without even a clear medical explanation. His burial was rushed,

6:11 Speaker 1: his records were lost, his reputation was hijacked by an

6:15 Speaker 1: enemy who painted him as a lifelong drunk and lunatic.

6:19 Speaker 1: And yet when you look closely, Poe's final days feel

6:23 Speaker 1: less like personal collapse and more like systemic violence. A

6:27 Speaker 1: man already worn thin by grief and poverty, steps into

6:31 Speaker 1: a city on its most dangerous day, a day when

6:35 Speaker 1: bodies were tools, when names didn't matter, when people were dressed, redressed, used,

6:40 Speaker 1: and discarded. If cooping killed Edgar Allan Poe, then his

6:45 Speaker 1: death was not poetic. It was bureaucratic, and somehow that

6:50 Speaker 1: may be the most horrifying ending of all. He was

6:53 Speaker 1: collateral damage. Let's talk about how widespread cooping really was,

6:57 Speaker 1: who ran it, who benefited from it, and wyat took

7:01 Speaker 1: far longer than you'd expect for anyone to seriously try

7:04 Speaker 1: to stop it. Because here's the uncomfortable truth. Cooping didn't

7:09 Speaker 1: exist on the fringes of American democracy. It lived right

7:13 Speaker 1: at the center of it. By the mid eighteen hundreds,

7:16 Speaker 1: political power in American cities didn't belong to voters in

7:20 Speaker 1: the modern sense. It belonged to machines. Political machines were

7:24 Speaker 1: tightly organized networks of party bosses, ward leaders, saloon owners,

7:30 Speaker 1: gang leaders, and fixers. They controlled jobs, housing, food, and protection.

7:36 Speaker 1: In exchange, they demanded loyalty and votes. Votes were currency,

7:42 Speaker 1: and when votes were scarce or uncertain, they were manufactured.

7:46 Speaker 1: Cooping thrived in cities where the population was transient and vulnerable.

7:51 Speaker 1: Immigrants fresh off ships, laborers without permanent addresses, men sleeping

7:57 Speaker 1: in boarding houses or alleyways. These people didn't have paper trails,

8:01 Speaker 1: they didn't have protection, and crucially, they didn't have anyone

8:05 Speaker 1: powerful who would come looking for them if they vanished

8:08 Speaker 1: for a day. Political gangs worked election day like a

8:12 Speaker 1: business operation. Scouts identified targets, enforcers grabbed them. Taverns doubled

8:18 Speaker 1: as holding areas. Ward leaders coordinated which polling stations needed reinforcements.

8:24 Speaker 1: Ballot stuffing was risky. Repeat voting by human beings was

8:28 Speaker 1: much harder to detect. A man could vote in one

8:31 Speaker 1: ward at dawn, another by noon, and a third before dusk.

8:35 Speaker 1: If he collapsed afterward, that was not the machine's problem.

8:40 Speaker 1: New York City's Five Points District became infamous for this

8:43 Speaker 1: kind of violence. Gangs like the Dead Rabbits and the

8:46 Speaker 1: Bowery Boys weren't just street tufts. They were political tools.

8:50 Speaker 1: They escorted voters, blocked opponents, intimidated reformers, and ran cooping

8:56 Speaker 1: operations openly. Newspapers described men being dragged out of flophouses

9:01 Speaker 1: and returned hours later, barely alive. Sometimes they weren't returned

9:05 Speaker 1: at all. And here's the part that should make modern

9:08 Speaker 1: listeners deeply uneasy. Everyone knew. Journalists wrote about cooping. Ministers

9:14 Speaker 1: condemned it, reformers gave speeches about it. Politicians privately admitted

9:19 Speaker 1: it existed and then quietly benefited from it. Anyway, the

9:24 Speaker 1: system wasn't broken. It was functioning exactly as designed. What

9:29 Speaker 1: made cooping especially insidious was its flexibility. It didn't require

9:34 Speaker 1: forged documents or centralized fraud. It relied on chaos, on exhaustion,

9:41 Speaker 1: on human bodies as reusable tools, and because victims were

9:45 Speaker 1: often marginalized, their suffering rarely generated public outrage. If a

9:51 Speaker 1: man died, he was written off as a drunk. If

9:53 Speaker 1: he survived but was ruined, he disappeared back into poverty.

9:57 Speaker 1: And if he complained, who would believe him. There are

10:01 Speaker 1: recorded cases of victims waking up days later with no

10:04 Speaker 1: memory of where they'd been, why they were injured, or

10:07 Speaker 1: why they suddenly owned unfamiliar clothing. Doctors treated these men

10:12 Speaker 1: for excessive intoxication, police shrugged, the machine rolled on. It's

10:18 Speaker 1: important to understand that cooping wasn't always about changing election outcomes.

10:23 Speaker 1: Sometimes it was about insuring margins. Sometimes it was about

10:27 Speaker 1: intimidating opposition voters into staying home. Sometimes it was just

10:32 Speaker 1: about showing power, about reminding a neighborhood who controlled the streets.

10:37 Speaker 1: And sometimes it was about revenge. There are accounts of

10:41 Speaker 1: men being deliberately targeted, not because they were useful voters,

10:45 Speaker 1: but because they were vocal reformers, political nuisances, or inconvenient witnesses.

10:51 Speaker 1: Cooping could be punishment as much as fraud, So why

10:55 Speaker 1: didn't it stop sooner? Because stopping cooping meant dismantling the

10:59 Speaker 1: entire higher political ecosystem that supported it. You couldn't end

11:04 Speaker 1: cooping without ending open air polling. You couldn't end open

11:07 Speaker 1: air polling without standardized ballots. You couldn't standardize ballots without

11:12 Speaker 1: voter registration. And voter registration threatened the very people who

11:16 Speaker 1: relied on fluid identities and invisible populations to stay in power.

11:21 Speaker 1: Reform came slowly, painfully, and often only after public bloodshed.

11:27 Speaker 1: Election riots in the mid and late eighteen hundreds finally

11:32 Speaker 1: pushed cities toward change. Police forces professionalized, polling places moved

11:38 Speaker 1: out of taverns, Registration lists became mandatory, ballots were standardized,

11:44 Speaker 1: voting became private, and as the system hardened, cooping withered,

11:50 Speaker 1: not because it was immoral, but because it became inefficient.

11:55 Speaker 1: By the early twentieth century, cooping had largely vanished, not

11:59 Speaker 1: replaced by purity, but by paperwork. Corruption didn't disappear, it evolved.

12:05 Speaker 1: Political machines learned to influence votes through housing jobs, food lines,

12:11 Speaker 1: and favors instead of fists and locked doors, which brings

12:16 Speaker 1: us back inevitably to Edgar Allan Poe. If Poe was

12:20 Speaker 1: a victim of cooping, his death wasn't an accident, It

12:24 Speaker 1: wasn't bad luck. It was the predictable outcome of a

12:27 Speaker 1: system that treated certain lives as expendable on election day.

12:32 Speaker 1: His fame only preserved his story. Thousands of others vanished

12:36 Speaker 1: without names, without records, without even a footnote. Poe didn't

12:41 Speaker 1: die because democracy failed. He died because democracy was operating

12:46 Speaker 1: as intended for someone else. Before we close, Tonight's sponsor

12:51 Speaker 1: would like a word.

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13:01 Speaker 2: You don't recall developing Repeater's choice, because if you're going

13:05 Speaker 2: to disappear for democracy, you might as well stay hydrated.

13:09 Speaker 1: And remember, dear listeners, the scariest part of cooping wasn't

13:13 Speaker 1: the violence. It was how normal it was. Thank you

13:16 Speaker 1: for listening to the Strange History Podcast. If you enjoyed

13:19 Speaker 1: this episode, subscribe, follow, and leave a review wherever you listen,

13:25 Speaker 1: and remember, dear listeners, Sometimes history doesn't kill you with

13:29 Speaker 1: a dagger. It just repeats itself. Sometimes it hands you

13:33 Speaker 1: a ballot, locks the door behind you, and waits. Subscribe, follow,

13:38 Speaker 1: and leave a review wherever you listen. And if you

13:40 Speaker 1: wake up on election day in someone else's clothing, well

13:44 Speaker 1: you can figure out the rest Until next time. Keep

13:47 Speaker 1: it Strange.