On September 22, 1789, Silas Deane, a second rate diplomat, booked passage on the ship Boston Packet. While walking the quarterdeck with the ship’s captain, Deane suddenly complained of dizziness and stomach pain. The captain immediately put him to bed. Deane’s condition worsened and four hours later he died. A rumor made its way around London in the weeks following the death of Silas Deane. According to certain people, Deane was depressed by his poverty, bad health, and low reputation, and committed suicide. John Cutting, a New England merchant, wrote that Deane overdosed on opium.
John Quincy Adams heard that Deane’s death was voluntary and self-administered. Tom Paine, the famous pamphleteer reported that Deane took poison. Alternatively, could his death been from natural causes such as stroke or perhaps murder by overdose or poison? Silas Deane, son of a poor blacksmith, was an ambitious social climber. He married a well to do widow of a merchant. Conveniently, Deane became a merchant. After the death of his first wife, Deane married the granddaughter of the former governor of Connecticut. A prospering businessman, Deane entered politics.
In 1776, Congress sent Deane with Edward Bancroft as Deane’s private secretary to France. Deane was the first American to represent the united colonies abroad. Deane expanded the Franco-American relationship, working with Beaumarchais and other French merchants to procure ships, commission privateers, recruit French officers, and purchase French military supplies declared “surplus” for that purpose. Edward Bancroft, friend, Deane’s personal secretary and former pupil was also a doctor who published a book entitled An Essay on the Natural History of Guiana in South America.
The book investigated among other things the poisons of the area, particularly curare. Bancroft deposited samples of curare with his publishers so those samples could be obtained for scientific study. Bancroft, during the time when he first became Deane’s secretary, met with Paul Wentworth, his friend from England. Wentworth recruited Bancroft as a spy for England on the American negotiations in France. Bancroft became a double agent, a spy for the Americans and a spy reporting the Americans to the British. Bancroft passed his information directly to the British ambassador at the French court.
Lee, a precursor of Joe McCarthy, accused Deane of taking unfair advantage of his official position to make a private fortune. Deane denied the accusations and Congress debated over his conduct. In 1778, Congress voted to recall Deane, although none of the charges was proved. Deane in 1781 wrote to friends to recommend that America plead for peace and patch up the quarrel with England. His letters were intercepted, and copies turned up in a New York Tory newspaper just after Cornwallis surrendered to Washington at York-town.
The American victory complete, Deane statements that the United States rejoin Britain made people consider him as a traitor. If he went to England, it would cement his reputation as a traitor. He could not stay in France, because he had accused Louis XVI of aiding the Americans for purely selfish reasons. Deane took refuge in Flanders, without friends and money. In 1783, he moved from Flanders to England. For the next seven years, he lived in poverty and ill health. All under the watchful eye of Ed Bancroft, who looked after Deane.
Bancroft prescribed Deane’s medications, which probably included opium. Bancroft said Deane was a laudanum addict. What is addiction? Addiction is a severe form of dependence, usually marked by physical dependence. The latter state exists when the drug has produced physiological changes in the body, as evidenced by the development of tolerance (increasing amounts of the drug are needed to achieve the same effect), and of a withdrawal syndrome after the drug’s effects have worn off. The syndrome is marked by such symptoms as nausea, diarrhea, or pain; these vary with the type of drug.
Psychological dependence, or habituation, is present when the compulsion to take a drug is strong, even in the absence of physical withdrawal symptoms. 1 What effect would laudanum or opium addiction have? Opioids produce different effects under different circumstances. The drug takers past experience and expectations have some influence, as does the method of administering the drug (by injection, ingestion, or inhalation). Symptoms of withdrawal include kicking movements in the legs, anxiety, insomnia, nausea, sweating, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever.
In 1781, Deane wrote Bancroft that he was bedridden, had persistent dry cough, uneasiness or anxiety and sleeplessness. In 1783, Deane told his brother that he was depressed, weak and bedridden. His sickness continued. In Jan 1787, Deane wrote to Lord Sheffield describing his physical condition: weakness of the legs, anxiety, insomnia, nausea, sweating, cramps, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. These are all symptoms of withdrawal. In Feb. 1788, J. Wadsworth stated that Deane should make a will. Dr. Bancroft was caring for Deane throughout this period. Dr. Bancroft knew Deane was an addict.
In his weakened condition, he could hardly be a danger to Bancroft. Bancroft knew that Deane had developed a tolerance. He needed increasing amounts of the drug. Bancroft was probably reducing that tolerance in order to intentionally overdose Deane with the same amount of drug, should it become necessary. In other words, Bancroft was putting an unwary Deane through withdrawal. Bancroft never thought that Deane was a threat to revealing his traitorous past while under his care. Deane became a threat when he actually booked and boarded the ship to carry him back to the United States.
Deane’s dual purpose was not only to return home but also to clear his name. Bancroft planned for Deane to overdose while Deane was traveling on the ship. Deane accustomed in the past to taking a certain amount of laudanum would not realize he had been through withdrawal, and now that amount would be toxic. How does an overdose affect the body? Narcotic poisons act upon the central nervous system or upon important organs such as the heart, liver, lungs, or kidneys until they affect the respiratory and circulatory systems.
These poisons can cause coma, convulsions, or delirium. Narcotic poisons include opium and its derivatives. 3 The victim of acute narcotic poisoning may become agitated and nauseated, or may pass into a deep sleep marked by increasingly shallow respiration. Coma and heart failure may follow. Chronic narcotic poisoning, caused by prolonged use of the drugs, is usually marked by gastrointestinal irritation, loss of appetite, and anemia. In advanced stages of chronic narcotic poisoning the victim may show mental confusion.
For centuries alcohol and opium were the only substances known to produce these effects. What were the symptoms just before Deane’s death? First, the captain’s report cannot be found so, what we have left is notes taken from remembered observations. That morning Deane ate breakfast at the home of the captain’s father-in-law. He was aboard ship and walking around deck having a conversation with the captain at 10:00 AM. He appeared to be healthy at that time. He was suddenly taken violently ill.
He was in extreme pain, his speech became slurred, had trouble speaking, drowsiness finally insensibility, followed by death. This entire process took place in a four-hour time span. Deane suddenly “complained of a dizziness in his head, and an oppression at his stomach. The stomach pain was something that bothered Deane for years. What could cause sudden stomach pain? Dyspepsia, condition of impaired or painful digestion resulting from failure of some phase of the normal digestive process. The cause may be physical or emotional upset.
Among the physical causes are gastritis, ulcers, or gallbladder inflammation. Symptoms may include a heavy feeling in the pit of the stomach, gas, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, or heartburn. Headache or dizziness may accompany the discomfort. 5 The symptoms match the complaint Deane expressed to the captain, hours after having breakfast at the home of the captain’s father-in-law. Stomach disorders and abnormal stomach conditions such as an ulcer, dyspepsia, or gastric indigestion cause leakage into the body cavity and the blood stream.
If Deane took some medications prepared for him by Bancroft for his journey and that medication was either an overdose of opium or a combination of overdose and some other deadly poison what would he experience? Sudden poisoning can cause shock. Shock is generally characterized by apathy, weakness, shallow breathing, rapid heartbeat, feeble pulse, lowered blood pressure, and coldness and clamminess of skin. During the early stage, consciousness is retained, but alertness is diminished. Sudden peripheral circulatory failure, however, affects the brain and causes fainting.
In less severe shock compensatory constriction of the blood vessels helps restore circulation, but if shock persists, compensatory mechanisms fail and local anemia damages vital organs, such as the brain, heart, liver, and lungs. 7 If the medication were mixed with curare and an ulcer were present what would be the results? Curare has little effect when it is taken directly, but when introduced by penetration it acts with great speed, causing loss of voluntary muscular action through paralysis and, usually, death through arrest of the muscles of respiration.
Curare contains two alkaloids: curine, C18H19NO3, which paralyzes the muscle fibers of the heart, and curarine, C19H26N2O2, which paralyzes the motor nerve endings in voluntary muscles. 8 Deane is buried several days later. Whatever Bancroft prepared in the medications for Deane, it was a good bet that the medications were calculated to kill him. When Deane boarded the ship for his return to America to clear his name, he was no longer under the control of Bancroft. Bancroft not wanting to be exposed for being a traitor premeditated the death of Silas Deane and is guilty of murder.
