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Outlandish and Extravagant Facts from the Gilded Age

Khalid Elhassan May 31, 2022 37 min

24. The Start of the Plot That Led to the Gilded Age’s Greatest Trial

Hattie Pettit, Reverend William Pettit’s poisoned wife. Historical Crime Detective

On July 1^st, 1889, shortly before his wife’s return, William Pettit tried to buy some strychnine from a merchant, but it was out of stock. When he asked that some be ordered for him, something about the Reverend’s manner made the merchant uneasy, and he declined. It was not a huge setback, as William had some leftover from the previous summer – he just was not sure whether it was still good. He tested it on his daughter’s dog, and the pooch promptly keeled over. The plot that would lead to the Gilded Age’s most gripping trial was on.

Hattie Pettit returned on July 12^th and was gone within days. She had been poisoned on at least three occasions. Only her husband and Elma Whitehead fed her in that time, and witnesses reported that they fed the victim shortly before she went into convulsions. A doctor friend of William treated Hattie the victim, suspected that she had strychnine poisoning, but thought she had ingested it accidentally when she cleaned the cupboards a day earlier. Her husband dismissed that as womanly silliness, and convinced the doctor that she had malaria. Unsuspecting to the last, Hattie Pettit was grateful to Elma for nursing her. She even begged her at some point: “Don’t go away. I want you in the house“. Hattie Pettit passed on July 17^th, 1889.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.