The Night Tragedy Struck

It was cold that night in February 1934, when eleven Dartmouth students, members of Theta Chi, settled down to play bridge on the lower floor of their house on North Main Street. Earlier that night, they had watched Dartmouth defeat its rival Princeton at hockey. At 12:30 am two students left their brothers to return to their dormitories. Sometime after 2:30 am the others retired to their rooms upstairs. At 6:30 am janitor Merton D. Little entered the house to fix the furnace fire, noticing a slight odor of coal gas. Presuming everyone still asleep he left and returned at 1:30 pm to clean up the lower rooms. At that time, according to the official report, he thought “the quietness of the house” was due to the students being at dinner. It was not until 4:30 pm when he returned, once again, to make the beds that he found all nine students and one dog dead in their beds.

The official cause of this mass tragedy, the greatest in Dartmouth’s history, was carbon-monoxide poisoning. According to medical examiner Dr. Ralph Miller:

The smoke pipe of the furnace had been blown off in an explosion, after which some one had apparently re-shut the furnace door without noticing the displaced pipe, and that the carbon monoxide gas accumulating from an improperly banked fire had escaped through the break instead of going up the chimney.

In the aftermath fingers were pointed, accusations of incompetence emerged and facts were doubted. An uncredited newspaper article entitled “The Dartmouth Mystery” proclaimed that coal gas could not have been the cause as “the annual casualties within the United States from this cause would run into the thousands.” Rumors included suicide pact or poisonous liquor as the cause.

In the end it was confirmed that William Simpson Fullerton, Edward Morris Wentworth Jr. , Harold Barnard Watson, Americo Secondo DeMasi, John Joseph Griffin, William Mandeville Smith, Jr., Wilmot Horton Schooley and the brothers Edward Frederick and Alfred Henry Moldenke indeed died of carbon monoxide poisoning.

To read more about the tragedy, the investigation and the aftermath ask for our Vertical File on the subject. To get a closer look at the administration’s response and actions ask to see Box 6942 of DP-11, President Hopkins’ presidential papers.