Actor’s Death Sparked Furor
In his prime actor John Wood was hailed as an actor who “stood alone on the Pacific Coast”. But when he died he became an embarrassment to almost all who knew him when the circumstances surrounding his death touched off a furor that only ended in a crowded courtroom...
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At the time he published his book on early Victoria history, many of the headstones in the Quadra Street burying ground had eroded or been vandalized; one of the best preserved was that of John Wood.
Back in April I told you the story, as seen through the eyes of Victoria historian Edgar Fawcett, of the Quadra Street Burying Ground, known today as Pioneer Square, and of some of its residents.
One of the names that Fawcett touched upon caught my notice:
“‘Sacred to the memory of John Wood, from his wife—1864.’ This is one of the best preserved headstones and enclosures in the cemetery, the latter being of iron and 43 years old. My friend, Mr. [D.W.]Higgins, in his book The Mystic Spring, gives the story of this clever actor, and his wife, also, so I will not enlarge on it...”
So Fawcett wrote in his classic Some Reminiscences of Old Victoria, published in 1912. Years ago, I, too, was drawn to the story of John Wood by the writings of retired journalist D.W. Higgins which prompted me to dig into the 1864 British Colonist to learn more about his mysterious death.
Here goes...
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For almost a year Wood was a popular performer with the John S. Porter Theatrical Troupe. He arrived in outpost Victoria in 1862, just after splitting up with his wife whose career had taken a meteoric rise on the American stage.
Wood had difficulty adjusting to his new surroundings; in October, he was in New Westminster, “suffering from a severe disposition”.
A benefit performance held on his behalf in New West’s Theatre Royal, revived his spirits somewhat. He starred in two popular plays during the winter. But, by spring, he was again under the weather. A second benefit held in Victoria, May 8, 1863, attracted “a very large and fashionable audience” that included Gov. James and Lady Douglas.
Wood took part in the program until near the end when he was stricken on-stage and the performance prematurely ended. Three weeks later he died and became the star—posthumously—of his own real-life drama.
An inquest into Wood’s death opened at the Boomerang Inn on May 29. While Wood had been ill for months, his death at the home of his physician, Dr. C.E. DeWolfe had been so sudden and unexpected that many suspected misadventure.
The first witness to take the stand, Dr. Haggin, testified that he’d examined Wood just before his death. Haggin told the jury and a hushed crowd of onlookers that Wood had been poisoned.
The second witness, Henry Siebert, an actor, said he’d been with Wood during his final hours. He said he’d watched as Dr. DeWolfe administered a “cup of medicine of some kind”. Siebert said he’d guessed aloud that it was laudanum. DeWolfe ignored him, he said, but assured Wood that the potion was “very nice, he had mixed it with molasses”.
Siebert testified that he hadn’t actually seen Wood down the medication because he’d then retired to the next room. He said, however, that he heard Wood say, “it didn’t taste bad”.
Siebert said he’d then dozed off, to be awakened by fire bells and, overcome by curiosity, he ‘d rushed outside to return to his room about 10 minutes later. He said he’d told Wood that the fire was in the Express building and Wood responded “clearly and intelligently”.
Siebert said he got up at 6:30 the next morning and found Wood sprawled across, and almost over the end of his bed. He said he woke Wood up and moved him into a more comfortable position.
Siebert had then gone about his business during the day but made regular checks on Wood, each time finding him asleep. When Wood was still sleeping at 4 p.m., Siebert said he started to worry and mentioned his concern to Tom Dyson: ‘I am going to tell the doctor about it—if he is not sleeping too long.”
It was 5 p.m. before he found Dr. DeWolfe and urged him to see Wood. When DeWolfe examined the unconscious Wood he snapped, “What have you given him?”
Siebert indignantly denied having administered any medication and, after watching the doctor give Wood some medicine and place him in a tepid bath, charged downstairs to seek further assistance. By the time he returned DeWolfe had Wood on the bed and gave him a second dose, saying it was an emetic.
Siebert said Wood was now making snoring and loud “dingling” noises. “When I spoke to him he would open his eyes. I said to him, ‘For God’s sake, tell me what’s the matter? Have you taken anything?” He said no.
In light of later events, Siebert’s next question is most curious, indeed. He asked Wood (obviously for DeWolfe’s benefit) if he (Siebert) had “given him anything”? Wood said no. Then Siebert asked if the doctor had given him any medication the previous night and Wood said, yes.
As a test of his lucidity Siebert repeatedly asked Wood if he knew where he was and each time the ailing actor replied intelligently.
The drama had suddenly deteriorated to low comedy, according to Siebert, when DeWolfe made a strange motion with his hand above Wood’s head. Siebert said he thought it was mesmerism of the wrong sort,” and, thoroughly alarmed, he fled the apartment in search of a third party to watch over Wood while he sought Dr. Haggin. He said he wasn’t convinced that DeWolfe was competent and that he thought his friend was dying.
Asked by a juryman to describe DeWolfe’s strange treatment, Siebert said the physician “made mesmeric motions by moving his hands backwards and forwards”. He said he’d seen DeWolfe do this once before to put Wood to sleep. Siebert was then asked if he’d ever given Wood medicine; he admitted that he’d regularly supplied Wood with morphine pills to help him sleep. Dr. DeWolfe, he said, had told a Mr. Cruickshaw that the medication he’d given Wood on the eve of his death was only a “cathartic, soothing powder” mixed with molasses and peppermint to disguise the taste.
Finally it was DeWolfe’s turn to testify. He said he’d first been called to Wood’s hotel room three weeks before his death. He had, he declared, found Wood lying on a cold floor with an inverted chair for a pillow. He diagnosed Wood as having rheumatic fever and a drinking problem. He said he persuaded Wood to vow to quit drinking before he left.
He said Wood’s condition was improving steadily until his fatal relapse and that, the day before Wood died, he’d prepared a sleeping potion of “soothing powder in some syrup: one-ninth part was opium (not more than one gram)...[and] it also contained epicacuanha [sic]and some peppermint”.
He said that at noon the next day he saw that Wood’s slumber was unnatural and he suspected “his boy [Siebert] had given him morphine”.
Four hours later, DeWolfe found Wood to be yet unconscious. When informed that the actor hadn’t awakened once during the day, he suggested that Siebert had given him something and Tom Dyson, filling in during Siebert’s absence, replied that the young man had mentioned laudanum.
Alarmed, DeWolfe tried to counteract the effects of the drugs by administering a gill of vinegar and sugar, placing Wood in a warm bath for 20 minutes, and massaging his chest and limbs. All of this was followed by his dashing cold water over the patient’s head.
Wood seemed to responded slightly, so he gave him an emetic sweetened with syrup to induce vomiting, followed by two glasses of warm boneset tea. Some time after 7 p.m., Dr. Haggin responded to Siebert’s summons. He was too late; within 10 minutes Wood was dead.
DeWolfe, continuing his testimony, then volunteered the remark that Wood once evinced symptoms of delirium tremens. Interrupted by juror William Culverwell, who asked that he produce his medical degree, DeWolfe blustered, “I am not going to be insulted by a boy [sic] asking questions about things he does not understand and decline to answer him”.
After warning DeWolfe that if he didn’t comply with the request he might end up in jail, the Coroner adjourned the inquest at 7 p.m. and told DeWolfe to return with documentary evidence of his medical qualifications.
Although it isn’t stated in the newspaper account, he must have done so as, during a three and a-half hour-long night sitting, the inquest resumed with five witnesses: Drs. Haggin and Forbes; a Mr. Searby, identified as an analytical chemist; Tom Dyson, identified as “a Greek”; and Henry Siebert.
The jury, after deliberating for 40 minutes, returned a verdict of “death from an overdose of opiate, taken while in a diseased state of health, but by whom administered, there was not sufficient evidence to show”.
Dr. DeWolfe was dissatisfied with such vagueness and, six days later, the Colonist published his scathing letter of rebuttal in which he denounced Siebert. The young man’s testimony, he charged, was “falsety” and “contradictory from beginning to end”. Siebert’s “ignorance and stupidity, his excited deportment, should have been enough, in the mind of a competent coroner, to have discarded his testimony”.
Coroner Dickson “clearly evinced during the whole investigation, a prejudice and special pleading manner, which, to all candid minds, unfits him for the responsible office he holds and draws down on his head at once the pity and contempt of honest jurors and the discriminating public who listened to the proceedings”.
In conclusion DeWolfe challenged Dickson to discuss publicly the “comparative merits of his medical practice with mine, together with the qualifications and claims to medical science”.
“The people can judge. If the opportunity to vindicate myself against his insults is not acquiesced in, the people will judge the reason.”
An unnamed juror leapt to Siebert’s defence, writing that he’d come across as a responsible and honest witness. The juror also stated that Drs. Forbes and Haggin had denounced DeWolfe’s admitted prescription of opium to Wood as “bad.” (This fact hadn’t been published in newspaper coverage of the inquest.) The outspoken juryman stated that he’d seen nothing during the proceedings to suggest that the coroner was in any way biased.
Poor John Wood the respected actor was now all but forgotten as Victorians debated DeWolfe’s competency. The editor of the Chronicle questioned the doctor’s integrity, terming his attack on Siebert’s credibility as “gross [and] unjustifiable...sufficiently so as to justify Siebert’s friends taking it up in some other form”.
When DeWolfe did face his detractors in court in August 1864, it was in the role of accuser. He sued Benjamin Griffin, executor of John Wood’s estate, for the sum of $250 for services rendered.
As he again jousted verbally with his opponents, DeWolfe’s razor-edged tongue provoked several outbursts of laughter, some of which were joined in by Chief Justice Cameron. When defence lawyer R.B. Bishop asked if he understood taking the oath, he snapped, “Yes, to tell the truth, the whole truth and not be choked off to suit your convenience.”
Chief Justice David Cameron joined in the laughter provoked by DeWolfe’s fiery language. —Wikipedia Commons
Accused by Bishop of “unskilled practice,” and asked if he’d prescribed “any powders” during Woods’ illness, he retorted, “Yes—I’d like to give you some!”
“You’ve no right to make such answers to me as a lawyer,” Bishop shouted back. “If you go into such remarks I’ll give you enough of it!”
“I’m on hand,” DeWolfe taunted him.
The exasperated Cameron rebuked both men.
Bishop then continued his examination, striving to discredit the doctor’s suit on grounds of malpractice. The farce resumed. Bishop called DeWolfe an actor and ridiculed his spelling. DeWolfe dismissed the author of a recognized medical journal as a quack.
DeWolfe did concede, however, in a rare moment of magnanimity, that Dr. Forbes was a gentleman “for an old school practitioner”.
He wasn’t so kind in remarks about Griffin, Wood’s estate executor who’d asked to be seated during cross-examination. DeWolfe suggested, “A little standing exercise is good for a fleshy man.”
Delighted spectators roared again at Griffin’s return: “Thank you. I would prefer not to try any of your advice!”
In his address to the jury DeWolfe launched “a most ferocious onslaught” on the doctors who’d condemned his course of treatment, and on the medical fraternity generally who “bled and blistered, starved and killed, one out of every 10 of their patients”.
The laughter only subsided when the jury retired to consider the case. They returned quickly with a verdict in DeWolfe’s favour and awarded him the full sum he’d demanded in his suit.
Officially, the case of John Wood, actor deceased, was closed. Unofficially, the actual cause of death—whether Wood was a victim of DeWolfe’s incompetency or of his own drug addiction (or a combination of both)—remained unanswered.
But, three years later, it became apparent that the court of public opinion had decided.
The Colonist reported that an actress had been hissed off the London stage during a poor performance in Barnaby Rudge. She was identified as the “widow of the unfortunate comedian John Wood who lost his life by malpractice in this city some years ago”.
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