Gallery Guide | The Melancholy Museum

ut remained well connected: a
congressman’s son-in-law who routinely
worked for the rich, which sometimes
involved concealing evidence and lying.
Callundan and the police questioned the
servants. Bertha appeared to implicate
Ah Wing, who had been in the Stanfords’
employ for years. The newspapers
suspected a British-born maid and the
Death Mask of Jane Lathrop butler. Reporters wrote that the police were
Stanford, 1905. Stanford about to make arrests. They never did.
University Archives
Bertha was the only person present
at both poisonings. Before departing
for Hawaii, she brought the bottle later found to contain strychnine to
a Palo Alto pharmacy to be filled with bicarbonate of soda. Bertha’s
brother proclaimed her innocence, even though at the time no one had
actually accused her. Her mother supposedly told reporters that she
knew who the murderer was, yet she never revealed the name.
There was no real police investigation following the second
poisoning. Before departing for Hawaii to claim Jane’s body, David
Starr Jordan and Timothy Hopkins, the latter a university trustee and
family friend, told the press that strychnine was not the cause of death,
insisting that Jane died of natural causes. The sheriff in Honolulu
washed his hands of the case, saying that it belonged to the San
Francisco police. At Callundan’s urging, the police accepted Jordan’s
version of events and dropped the investigation. The police apparently
did not know that Jane had been planning to dismiss both Jordan and
Hopkins when she returned to San Francisco.
The 1906 earthquake destroyed the San Francisco police records.
The president of the board of trustees, Samuel Leib, destroyed
most of his correspondence with Jane around the time of her death.
Those who knew of Jane’s fears and her intention to fire Jordan and
Hopkins said nothing. University officials gave Jane a lavish funeral in
Memorial Church. They instructed the ministers giving the eulogies
not to mention the poisonings. Jordan famously celebrated Jane
Stanford as “a good woman.” His indifference to her vision for the
museum, coupled with budgetary problems and tough decisions about
rebuilding after the 1906 earthquake, all but ensured the neglect of the
museum so important to Jane Stanford and the memory of her son.
The 1906 and 1989 Earthquakes
ANNA TOLEDANO
PhD candidate, History of Science
IN THE EARLY MORNING OF APRIL 18, 1906, THE GREAT SAN FRANCISCO
earthquake caused earth-shattering damage to the young Stanford
University campus. The Main Quadrangle, the architectural dream of
Leland Stanford Sr., emerged largely unscathed. The Leland Stanford
Junior Museum, however, was not so lucky. While the reinforced
concrete and steel-girded main section—the first large building of
its kind—remained intact, the brick additions that Jane Stanford added
after Leland Sr.’s death to house the ever-growing collection were
decimated.
B. E. Jenney, Stanford Room in the Stanford University Museum, 1906.
Stanford University Archives
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