Who Killed Jane Stanford? : A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University by Richard White

Abstract

Reviewed by: Who Killed Jane Stanford? : A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University by Richard White George Robb (bio) Who Killed Jane Stanford? : A Gilded Age Tale of Murder, Deceit, Spirits, and the Birth of a University. By Richard White. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2022. Pp. xviii, 362. $35.00 cloth; $16.05 ebook) In 1885, railroad tycoon and robber baron Leland Stanford and his wife Jane founded Stanford University in California as a memorial to their dead son Leland Jr. Twenty years later, Jane died in Hawaii under mysterious circumstances, almost certainly murdered by strychnine poisoning. Once her body was returned to San Francisco for burial, the local authorities quickly quashed the poisoning verdict, ruling Jane’s death the result of natural causes. In this well-researched and entertaining book, Stanford University historian Richard White sets out to solve the mystery of Jane Stanford’s death. Who Killed Jane Stanford? reads like a classic Agatha Christie “whodunnit,” in which the murder victim is revealed to have been a thoroughly unlikeable person whose every associate, from Stanford University president David Starr Jordan to her Chinese servant Ah Wing, wanted her dead. While many people had a motive to kill Jane Stanford, Richard White must determine which suspects also had the means and opportunity. White is well-placed to undertake this investigation, having twice taught a course about the case at Stanford and being thoroughly acquainted with the university’s archives. Nonetheless, it is no easy task to work a cold case more than a century later, especially when much of the original evidence no longer survives. [End Page 203] The victim, Jane Stanford, was a wealthy and powerful woman, having gained control of her husband’s vast fortune upon his death in 1893. While the press extolled Mrs. Stanford as a pious philanthropist, she was also a bully who tyrannized everyone she had authority over. She micromanaged all aspects of university affairs, from faculty hires to the cost of doorstops in campus buildings. An ardent spiritualist, Jane claimed that she consulted her dead husband and son on all important decisions, or as White pithily states, “ghosts ran the university” (p. 67). Jane kept Stanford University on a very tight leash, as the initial endowment was quite meager. The university would only acquire the bulk of the Stanford fortune upon her death. Stanford University benefited from Jane’s death, but so did some of her relatives and employees that she left bequests. Jane’s killer was persistent, poisoning her twice before she died. The first attempt took place in San Francisco on January 14, 1905, when rat poison containing strychnine was added to a bottle of Poland Spring Water on Jane’s bedside table. The second, successful, poisoning took place six weeks later in Hawaii on February 28. On that occasion, Jane ingested pure strychnine that had been mixed into bicarbonate of soda, which she took for indigestion. In unravelling the mystery surrounding Jane Stanford’s death, White reveals much about the social and cultural life of Gilded Age America and the operations of police departments and civic authorities. Ironically, in Hawaii, a thinly populated American overseas territory with few modern scientific facilities, local officials conducted a thorough and highly professional investigation. The conclusion of the Honolulu coroner’s jury that Stanford had been poisoned “with felonious intent by some person or persons unknown” is undoubtedly true (p. 211). Whereas in San Francisco, the largest and most sophisticated city in the western United States, the authorities made a mess of things, replacing the Hawaiian homicide verdict with the preposterous finding that Stanford had suffered a heart attack after a bout of over-eating. As White argues, a cover-up was underway, motivated by a desire quickly to secure Stanford’s vast fortune for the university and the [End Page 204] state of California. A long, drawn-out murder investigation could delay settling the estate. Likewise, a finding of suicide, as some contemporaries suggested, might lead to Mrs. Stanford being declared insane, thus casting doubt on the validity of her will. In exploring the various issues raised by Jane Stanford’s murder, the book...