There’s a complicated story in our local history that ends tragically, in 1864.
1864 had plenty of tragedy with the Civil War still seemingly far from over, and not far away even for those days. This is about a death in Newark, though, and an event which may be our earliest account of an overdose death. The rhetoric around that fatal outcome may tell us something about how the framing of these issues has long shaped our perceptions of people as well as of substances.
David Wyrick is often mentioned in modern accounts of the Newark Holy Stones as having died by suicide. To explain the “Holy Stones controversy” in a short space is essentially impossible, but it was a series of finds between 1860 and 1867 in Licking County which are now generally seen as “scientific forgeries” planted for Wyrick to discover, to advance certain viewpoints on human origins. Few then or now think Wyrick was the fabricator of these objects, but his reputation suffered from the association.
Wyrick was already suffering, physically.
Charles Whittlesey, his associate in antiquarian interests, explained it this way: “He had held the office of county surveyor until long continued attacks of acute rheumatism rendered him physically incompetent. With his limbs and joints so swollen… attended by intense suffering, his feet and hands so disfigured as scarcely to retain their human aspect, he was everywhere regarded with commiseration.”
We would probably say today he had a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis, a chronic inflammatory disorder for which there was and is no cure, and then few means of treatment.
On April 13, 1864, Wyrick died.
In “The Newark Advocate,” Friday, April 15, 1864, p. 3, the initial coverage said: “SUDDEN DEATH. David Wyrick, Esq., a widely known citizen of Newark, died very suddenly at his residence on Wednesday evening last. His death is supposed to have been produced by an over-dose of laudanum, which he had been in the habit of using. He was a man of eccentric character and considerable attainment…”
Laudanum was one of the few medications for pain available in 1864, if somewhat frowned upon in polite society, but widely in use.
It’s also an opioid, an extract from a common origin in the poppy plant. Mostly grown in India at this period, the Opium Wars between Britain and China had only recently ended in 1860, which resulted in the British Empire forcing the Qing dynasty to permit a trade China had been struggling to ban for decades. Opium was a major cash crop for the British East India Company, and China was forced at gunpoint to allow it in. Opium, morphine, and laudanum in 1864 Ohio was likely from India as well.
Combat in the ongoing Civil War caused increased use of opiate medications; battlefield surgeons and military physicians would prescribe opium gum, laudanum, or morphine to treat not only the pain of gunshot wounds, but almost any other injuries, as well as a treatment for diarrhea or even a severe cough. There was an opioid epidemic of sorts growing across the Northeast U.S., in the wake of general use of opium poppy products, one of the few analgesics other than alcohol available in 1864.
At Cedar Hill Cemetery, there are huge bound volumes of records, the burial books for the original records, which you can still read. For “cause of death” Wyrick’s entry says “Rheumatism.” If you scan that sad column forward or back a few pages either way, you will find a few entries simply saying “Suicide.” So the option of such a listing for cause of death existed in 1864. It was not used for Wyrick.
But with the controversy around his scientific researches, and his effective bankruptcy in the same paper announced with a sheriff’s sale of his home and tree nursery, the description of “an over-dose of laudanum” quickly became in later accounts “took his own life.” Did he? In truth, we will never know.
Wyrick wrote in January of his last year, “We have had some of the most extraordinary cold weather here that we have had for a long while… Peach trees – Sweet Cherry and Chinese Arborvitae all killed – dead as a hammer – … a serious loss to me again.” He would leave behind a younger second wife, and two children of his nine still in the home. Could his despair and frustration led to a misuse, even abuse of his regular source of relief?
What’s interesting is how the official accounts in that week’s newspaper and the cemetery records specifically do not say he died by his own hand, but simply as a result of overdose due to his chronic illness. That is turned only in the later re-telling into flat assertions of suicide, which you can now find in multiple locations all over the print and online records about David Wyrick.
News traveled slowly in 1864, and in the first month of 1865 Wyrick’s widow received a cordial letter for him from a scientific colleague in New York. She replied:
“It is my painful duty to inform you what your Friend and my Husband Mr. D. Wyrick is no more on Earth but is gone to a far happier home, but his loss is felt by all who knew him here, his son who went to the field so early came home safe after his three years and three Months service, and is gone again, and I do not hear from him, now, but hope he is still save.
Truly yours with respect,
Caroline Wyrick”
Much about the life and death of David Wyrick is still shrouded in mystery. There is little we can say for sure about him. But to say with certainty that his death as a result of his search for relief from pain was his own fault, and even his intention, is a confidence borne of stigma only, and not supported by the facts.
This problem is one we still see at work in popular narratives, some 160 years later.
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio.