A poisoned remedy. An official murder finding. A century-long fight over the story that survived.
On February 28, 1905, Jane Stanford died in Room 120 of Honolulu’s Moana Hotel after taking bicarbonate of soda. The Honolulu coroner’s jury later concluded that strychnine had been introduced into the bicarbonate with felonious intent by an unknown person or persons. No one was charged. No one was tried. No one was convicted.
Bicarbonate Room is a historical true crime investigation into that unresolved death—and into the struggle over what the public would be allowed to remember. The story begins weeks earlier in San Francisco, when Jane tasted bitter mineral water and believed someone had tried to poison her. It follows the private household routines, medicine bottles, travel preparations, and intimate access that carried the unanswered danger across the Pacific.
Inside the hotel room, an ordinary remedy became evidence. The book reconstructs Jane’s final night through the surviving accounts of attendants, physicians, chemical testing, the body, and the inquest. It examines what the record supports about strychnine poisoning while refusing to turn uncertainty into accusation.
The investigation also returns Jane Stanford to the center of her own story. She was a bereaved mother, widow, university cofounder, patron, employer, and power broker whose money and authority helped preserve the institution built in her son’s memory. Her wealth gave her influence, but her daily life still depended on secretaries, servants, physicians, and university officials who moved through different layers of access and trust.
After the inquest named a crime without naming an offender, Stanford University president David Starr Jordan publicly challenged the poisoning conclusion and helped advance a competing account of natural death. The book traces how that counterstory reshaped the case’s public memory. It also considers the later suspicion surrounding Jane’s longtime secretary and travel companion, Bertha Berner, while remaining clear that she was never charged or convicted.
Drawing on public records, official findings where available, credible reporting, interviews, and other traceable sources, this narrative separates confirmed fact from allegation, interpretation, and speculation. It weighs the surviving theories without inventing motives, private thoughts, or certainty the evidence cannot provide.
Written in a restrained, victim-centered style, Bicarbonate Room is for readers drawn to historical true crime, unsolved poisoning cases, Gilded Age history, cold case evidence, and the ways powerful institutions shape public memory.
Follow the bottle, the verdict, and the record as far as they can responsibly go—and stop where proof ends.
