The Real-Estate Man Who Talked to His Dead Wives
A Seattle real-estate operator was committed to Steilacoom after a court found him insane—convinced he could commune with his dead wives and that enemies were trying to poison him with chicken lice and smallpox germs.
J. J. Middleton, the real estate man, was last week suddenly taken insane, and while in that condition talked to the police in a way that aroused many drowsy people. He was yesterday adjudged insane by Judge Langley and ordered committed to Steilacoom.
At the examination in court it developed that Middleton had given a deep study to spiritualism and believed he could hold communion with the spirits of his dead wives. Before his second marriage he made an antenuptial contract whereby he and his wife mutually agreed to convey their property to the children. At that time he was not a citizen of this country, and he deeded his property to his wife. When she died the children, it is said, endeavored to enforce the contract and obtain the title to the property.
His insanity is attributed to the above two causes. Middleton worried a great deal over his real-estate difficulties and imagined that someone was trying to poison him. At the jail the other day Jailer Burkman prepared a dose of medicine for him, but Middleton refused to take it, saying it contained chicken lice and pulverized glass. Again he refused a handkerchief because he said it had been filled with smallpox germs.
Yesterday Z. H. Allen was appointed guardian of the estate of the demented man, and his bond fixed at $1,000. Middleton has a large family. Five of his children live at Miles City, Mont.; one at Galt, Ont.; one at St. Paul; and one at Jamestown, N.D.
“Middleton refused to take it, saying it contained chicken lice and pulverized glass.”
Middleton's case mixes the period's fascination with spiritualism with the messy business of property and inheritance; his fears of poisoning and contamination read like a window into mental-health care in 1891, when the asylum at Steilacoom was the state's main institution. The story also shows how quickly a real-estate career could become entangled with family contracts and claims on property.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.