Starvation Heights. - book reviews

The genres of serial killer/true crime and skeptical investigation do not often overlap. But they do so, and very well, in this riveting story of medical murder and quackery set in beautiful Puget Sound in the early 1900s. Linda Burfield Hazzard, at the time the only licensed "fasting therapist" in the country, set up a sanitarium in the tiny town of Olalla, Washington, in 1911. As readers of this journal will be aware, one sure sign of a quack treatment is the claim that the treatment will be effective for a wide range of different disorders. Sure enough, Linda Hazzard claimed that her particular brand of fasting would cure everything from epilepsy to lead poisoning. A sure sign of a quack diet is the claim that the diet will "purify" the body by aiding the removal of various unspecified "toxins." True to form, the rationale for the fasting cure was to allow the body time to rid itself of just such toxins.

Had Hazzard simply advised her patients to fast for a few days, little would have come of her treatments, for better or worse. However, her regimen was much more bizarre and dangerous. She had patients fast for up to thirty days, allowing them only the slightest amount of very thin tomato soup. Combined with fasting, patients were given "massages" that more closely resembled beatings. To make matters worse, at least some of Hazzard's victims were persuaded, while in their greatly weakened state, to give her power of attorney and to change their wills in her favor. Valuables left in Hazzard's care were very likely to disappear.

It will come as no surprise that a number of patients died under the horrific treatments handed out by Linda Hazzard. The exact number is not known, but it is certainly more than ten - perhaps a lot more.

The horrors of "Starvation Heights," as the sanitarium was known to local residents, might never have become known to the world had it not been for two unfortunate English sisters, Claire and Dora Williamson, who came under Hazzard's care in 1911. These rich, orphaned young women spent their time traveling the world, frequently checking out the latest natural cure. From Olsen's description, one gets the impression of these sisters as naive and somewhat hypochondriacal health faddists.

While under Hazzard's care, Claire starved to death. Dora survived. The story of their fate, and Dora's last-minute rescue from Hazzard by a dear and loyal former nanny who had come all the way from Australia in response to a cabled plea from Claire shortly before she died, is as suspenseful and heart-wrenching as anything I have read in horror fiction. Following her rescue, Dora recovered and became determined to see her sister's death avenged and Hazzard brought to justice. The local authorities were not at all keen on doing this. It required the heroic efforts of the British Vice Consul in Tacoma, Washington, Lucien Agassiz, and several others, to see that Hazzard was finally brought to trial in 1912. The trial attracted worldwide attention. Olsen provides a gripping description of that trial. I will not reveal the outcome, other than to say that it was not the end of Hazzard.

Olsen's telling of this long-forgotten story is first rate. My only quibbles are that he tends to jump around a bit in the narrative and he doesn't give the reader any information about what finally happened to several of the major players in the story. Linda Hazzard's history following her trial is told in detail. But the fate of Dora Williamson, about whom I came to care a great deal, is unrevealed. She simply vanishes. Agassiz and the nanny, Margaret Conway, similarly vanish once the trial, but not the book, is finished.

Finally, some readers may be troubled by the author's use of a standard technique in true-crime writing - the reconstruction of conversations between characters that were certainly never recorded verbatim. It is an effective means to heighten the drama of the story, but the use of quotation marks in this context should be taken with a large grain of salt. Nonetheless, the author's notes make it clear that he has relied very heavily on primary sources (court transcripts, official records, etc.) for the factual material in this book.

Starvation Heights is an excellent cautionary tale about the dangers of health quackery that is most relevant today, even though it concerns events that took place over eighty years ago.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group