Jane Elizabeth Lathrop Stanford (August 25, 1828 – February 28, 1905) was an American philanthropist and co-founder in 1885 of Stanford University (opened 1891) with her husband Leland Stanford, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who died of typhoid fever in 1884 at age 15.
After her husband's death in 1893, Jane Stanford funded and operated the university almost single-handedly until her unsolved murder by strychnine poisoning in 1905.
Jane Stanford was the eighth First Lady of California. Her husband served as governor from 10 January 1862 to 10 December 1863.
Early life
Born Jane Elizabeth Lathrop in Albany, New York, she was the daughter of shopkeeper Dyer Lathrop and Jane Anne (Shields) Lathrop. Jane attended The Albany Academy for Girls, the longest-running girls' day school in the country. She was the second of six siblings:
- Daniel Shields Lathrop (1825–1883)
- Jane Elizabeth Lathrop (8/25/1828-2/28/1905)
- Ariel (1830–1908)
- Anna Maria Lathrop (9/3/1832 – 8/3/1892) (married David Hewes)
- Henry Clay Lathrop (5/20/1844 – 4/3/1899)
- Charles Gardner Lathrop (5/11/1849 – 5/24/1914)
Marriage
thumb|Portrait of [[Leland Stanford|Leland and Jane Stanford in 1850|left|364x364px]]
Lathrop married Leland Stanford on September 30, 1850.
The Stanfords lived in Port Washington, Wisconsin until 1852, when Leland Stanford's law library and other property were lost to fire; they then returned to Albany, New York. Leland Stanford went to California to join his brothers in mercantile businesses related to the California Gold Rush, and Jane remained in Albany with her family. He returned in 1855, and the following year, they moved to San Francisco, where he engaged in mercantile pursuits on a large scale. Leland Stanford was a co-founder of the Central Pacific Railroad and served as its president from 1861 until his death in 1893. Leland was president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, served as governor of California from 1862 to 1863, and was a United States senator from California from 1885 until his death in 1893.
On May 14, 1868, Jane Stanford gave birth to a son, Leland Stanford, Jr., at age 39. He died at age 15 on March 13, 1884, of typhoid fever while the family was in Florence, Italy. In November 1885, they created foundational plans for the Leland Stanford Junior University, which opened on October 1, 1891. After her husband's death on June 21, 1893, Jane Stanford effectively took control of the university. The university struggled financially in this period and the trustees advocated a temporary closure of the university until tax and legal issues could be resolved. From 1893 to 1898, she collected $10,000 per month from the university, as its co-founder. The estate left probate in 1898. The board of trustees confirmed that arrangement, and the Jewel Fund continues to add to the university's library collections. The endowment, originally $500,000, is now worth about $20 million. Items purchased through the Jewel Fund display a distinctive bookplate that depicts a romanticized Jane Stanford offering her jewels to Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Since 2007, benefactors who provide endowments for library acquisitions are referred to as members of the Jewel Society.
Death
On February 28, 1905, Stanford died in Hawaii, where she had traveled after a failed poisoning attempt in San Francisco. The verdict in Hawaii was that Stanford had died of strychnine poisoning. However, David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford, immediately went to Hawaii, where he suppressed the report of poisoning and insisted that she had died of natural causes. Jordan's coverup was accepted as the truth for decades.
Earlier, on January 14, 1905, at her Nob Hill mansion in San Francisco, Stanford consumed mineral water that tasted bitter. She quickly forced herself to vomit the water with prompting from and assistance by her maid, and when both the maid and her secretary agreed that the bottled water tasted strange, she sent it to a pharmacy to be analyzed. The findings, returned a few weeks later, showed that the water had been poisoned with a lethal dose of strychnine. At 11:15 p.m., Stanford cried out for her servants and hotel staff to call for a physician, declared that she had lost control of her body, and believed that she had been poisoned again. what took place upon the arrival of Francis Howard Humphris, the hotel physician:
<blockquote>As Humphris tried to administer a solution of bromine and chloral hydrate, Mrs. Stanford, now in anguish, exclaimed, 'My jaws are stiff. This is a horrible death to die.' Whereupon she was seized by a tetanic spasm that progressed relentlessly to a state of severe rigidity: her jaws clamped shut, her thighs opened widely, her feet twisted inwards, her fingers and thumbs clenched into tight fists, and her head drew back. Finally, her respiration ceased. Stanford was dead from strychnine poisoning.</blockquote>
thumb|right|Headline of the [[San Francisco Bulletin|San Francisco Evening Bulletin on 1 March 1905, reporting Stanford's death.]]
The San Francisco Evening Bulletin trumpeted the news with the March 1 headline "Mrs. Stanford Dies, Poisoned." and the former is about twice as bitter as the latter but only one fortieth as toxic and so a dangerous level of strychnine would taste about half as bitter in pure form than as a component of the seed. In addition, it has been reported that sodium ion suppresses perception of bitter tastes. Thus, the method employed in the second poisoning attempt would have made it more difficult to detect the bitter taste that had foiled the first attempt. as well as traces of the poison in her tissues. The controversy was largely stoked by Stanford University President David Starr Jordan, who had sailed to Hawaii himself and hired a local doctor, Ernest Coniston Waterhouse, to dispute poisoning as the cause of death. He then reported to the press that Stanford had in fact died of heart failure, In 2022, Stanford University historian Richard White concluded that Stanford was likely poisoned by her employee Bertha Berner, who was the only person present at both poisonings. White concludes that the first poisoning may have been intended to be non fatal and that Jordan and the San Francisco Police likely suspected Berner but covered up the murder to suit their own interests.
The source of the strychnine was never identified. Stanford was buried alongside her husband, Leland, and their son at the Stanford family mausoleum on the Stanford campus. The town of Lathrop, California in San Joaquin County was developed by her husband's railroad company in the late 1860s and named after Jane and her brother Charles Lathrop.