On the night of August 17, 1900, Paul Laurence Dunbar was drugged and robbed in New York City.
Paul Laurence Dunbar reported to the police at the West Thirtieth Street station yesterday that he had been drugged and robbed last Friday night. About midnight he started to go to the house in Ninth Avenue where he was staying temporarily, and he met a Negro named William Ricks. Ricks invited him into a saloon to take a drink. He accepted Ricks' invitation, and took a drink with him. He then started on through Thirty-Seventh Street to Ninth Avenue. This is all that he remembers until three o'clock the following afternoon, when he awoke on the top floor of No. 210 West Thirty-Seventh Street. A family of Negroes which he knew told him that he had been found unconscious in the hall, and they had put him to bed. As soon as Dunbar examined his pockets he found that he had been robbed. His diamond ring, a gold watch and chain, a gold toothpick, some money and some trinkets were missing. He thinks that "knockout" drops must have been put in his whiskey, because he felt as if under the influence of some drug.
"Paul L. Dunbar, Poet, Robbed." The New York Herald (New York, New York). August 20, 1900. Page 7.
The story was widely published in newspapers around the country. When Paul returned home to Washington, D. C., he wrote to his mother Matilda in Chicago to let her know he was unharmed.
I am just dropping you this line to let you know that I am all right and back again in Washington. I suppose that you heard about my loss, and I thought that you would be worried. I will write you at length later on.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Matilda Dunbar, August 28, 1900. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 2).
I was not hurt at all and so I don't worry about the things. The drops must have been put in my beer while I stood talking at the bar and that was the last I knew until the next day.
Paul Laurence Dunbar to Matilda Dunbar, August 28, 1900. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 2).
Paul wrote two reassuring letters to his mother in the same day, but he did not contact his wife Alice, who was at Brodhead's Bridge in the Catskill Mountains of New York State.
I never heard from him at all. He went away and the first I knew anything was when I read about him in the papers. You can imagine how I felt. People in New York wrote me all sorts of awfully wild tales about him and I thought I'd go crazy. I waited and waited hoping he'd write but never a line did he send. Finally, I couldn't stand it any longer, so I left Tuesday by the first train. I had no idea where Paul was, but I thought I'd go to New York and hunt him up. I found him, very much broken up and worried, but he's getting around all right now. He has never been so shocked and he feels the loss of his things very much. I thought I'd go raving crazy up in Brodhead's but it's all right now. We shall have to be very careful of the dollars now, I guess.
Alice Moore Dunbar to Matilda Dunbar, August 30, 1900. Paul Laurence Dunbar Papers, Ohio History Connection (Microfilm edition, Roll 2).
Years later, Alice wrote an autobiographical account of her relationship with Paul (whom she called Gerald in the story).
I had been reared with an old-fashioned horror of the drunkard. Had I married one? Gerald was all penitence the next day, and I found it easy to forgive him. I was very young, and very much in love, and he could exercise a most disarming charm.
Gerald had been found apparently lifeless in a house of none too savory reputation, his pocketbook, stickpin, watch, cufflinks, overcoat, all gone. Apparently he had been drugged, robbed and thrown into the street.
"No Sacrifice," by Alice Moore Dunbar. Published in The Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Volume 3, edited by Gloria T. Hull. Oxford University Press (New York, New York). 1988. Pages 208, 209 and 222.