The Strange, Sad Story of Dr. John Oliver Taylor

Monday, January 5, 2015

After tea one Saturday evening in mid-August 1872, Lizzie Taylor sat reading when her husband, Dr. John Oliver Taylor, rose from his chair, picked up a small vial, tipped it to his lips and ended his life. 

Before he expired, he took off his coat and boots and, laying down on the bed, said to his wife:  “Lizzie, if you want to find any statement you’ll find it in the—in the—“  He died before he finished the sentence.  

Lizzie had noticed that John had placed something to his mouth but paid no attention to him doing so.  She believed it was a bottle of liquor that she knew he had stashed in the room. 

He had seemed much more cheerful on the day that he finally succumbed to depression.  There was nothing in his speech or behavior to raise suspicion of his intention to kill himself with an ounce of deadly hydrogen cyanide poison at the age of 33.  He left a letter he had written weeks earlier for his wife.  There was no inquest into his death.  

John Oliver Taylor was an Englishman, born in 1838.  Before taking his own life that summer evening in Kewaunee, the city likely knew little of the factual background of the man.  

   

According to an article in the Kewaunee newspaper a few days after his death, it was believed that Dr. Taylor was a graduate of King's College in London and that he received his medical degree in Edinburgh.  However, John Oliver Taylor did not qualify as a doctor in Edinburgh nor did he attend King's College in London.  Perhaps he believed no one would or could check his credentials at that time. 

Taylor actually began his medical training in Ceylon and Calcutta at the age of 19 in 1857.  Based on an article in the Medical Times and Gazette Medical News, John Oliver Taylor passed his examination in the Science and Practice of Medicine and received a Certificate to Practice as a general practitioner, not a surgeon, in June 1862 in Ceylon. 

Dr. Taylor married Elizabeth “Lizzie” Marks a year later, in June 1863 at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Calcutta. 

It is unlikely that people in Kewaunee knew that Dr. Taylor had been sentenced to six years penal servitude in India for forgery.   An October 1863 Indian newsletter called Allen’s Indian Mail published an article about the curious case of the Englishman Taylor who had “mixed in the best society of Calcutta.” 

Dr. John Oliver Taylor had learned of an account at the Bank of Bengal that belonged to a mariner pilot also named John Taylor.  Dr. Taylor boldly went to the bank, told them he was formerly a pilot and now a doctor, and wrote checks on the other man’s bank account.  Naturally the crime was discovered and Dr. Taylor was arrested.  He was tried in the High Court of Calcutta and found guilty.  Dr. Taylor was condemned to six years of penal servitude which, for a European in India, was nearly equal to capital punishment.      

William H. Upham
Photo from Wikipedia

Dr. Taylor, it was said, served for a number of years with the British Army in India.  If so, he did not serve his full jail sentence--maybe none of his sentence--because he and his family arrived in Boston on August 15, 1867.  He became a surgeon for the U.S. Army.  

While serving in the U. S. Army for two years, he met Lt. William H. Upham who was later the 18^th governor of Wisconsin.  Through the efforts of Lt. Upham, in the fall of 1869, Dr. Taylor and his family came to live in Kewaunee where Taylor’s knowledge of his profession was generally accepted.  

Unfortunately, Dr. Taylor became addicted to opium and liquor.  He resolved to rid himself of the habits but to no avail.  The addiction and depression led to his self-inflicted demise.    

Dr. Taylor was buried in the Kewaunee Public Cemetery which is likely Riverview Cemetery.  His wife and four small children were left to mourn his untimely death.

Sir Edward Thornton
from Vanity Fair Magazine

His family was returned to England at the expense of the British government through the efforts of British Minister to the United States Sir Edward Thornton. 

What became of Dr. Taylor’s widow and children?  After returning to England, the family lived in Lewisham, Kent according to the England census of 1881.  His widow, Elizabeth, became a “School Mistress.”  She remarried in 1882 to her cousin, Francis MacDonald Swallow, who was also a doctor.  Elizabeth died in 1922 in Buckinghamshire, England according to family records.       

Both of Dr. Taylor’s daughters—Evelyn and Ida Lizzie—died in England, unmarried.    

Taylor’s first son, Charles, had witnessed Dr. Taylor’s suicide at three or four years of age.  What became of Charles is unknown; he could not be traced after the 1881 England census.    

Taylor’s second son was named Donald.  Donald’s first wife died in childbirth in 1904 in England.  Donald disappeared, leaving a three year-old son and five year-old daughter.  Records indicate that Donald remarried in 1905 but did not return for his children and was never seen by the family again.

Dr. Taylor’s real life story is one that qualifies as stranger than fiction.

Anyone with more information about Dr. Taylor or his family is asked to contact Shirley VerBruggen at sverbruggen@new.rr.com.  John Oliver Taylor’s descendants are very interested to learn more about him.