A living person got into James O’Hara’s cab in 1912, but a dead person was removed at the end of the ride. The odd thing was, O’Hara didn’t even realize he was driving a corpse to his last appointment.
Frederick L. Dashe, of Hackensack, New Jersey, arrived in Cumberland on the Western Maryland Railway on the morning train on April 17, 1912. Stories of the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic still dominated the front page, but in Cumberland, Dashe’s story would become just as important for a day.
Dashe hailed a cab and asked O’Hara to take him to Western Maryland Hospital at the other end of Baltimore Street. Many people would have simply walked the distance. A fare was a fare, though. O’Hara opened the door for Dashe to get in the back.
Western Maryland Hospital had originally operated in a number of private homes when it first opened in 1888. It had moved to its location on Baltimore Street near Decatur Street in 1892. It would eventually be renamed Memorial Hospital in honor of the local men who gave their lives in World War I and moved into a new building on Memorial Drive in 1929.
O’Hara made the quick trip east on Baltimore Street and then got out to open the back door of the cab so Dashe could get out.
Only he didn’t.
Sometime within the short five-minute drive, Dashe had died without any sound or thrashing, and O’Hara’s fare had become a corpse.
Since O’Hara was at the hospital, he rushed inside for a doctor, who pronounced Dashe dead. The police were notified. They searched the body, looking for identification. They found his name on some papers, but they also found other items that led them to believe Dashe had a sister, Lizzie Addington, in Hackensack, and a brother, G.H. Dashe, in Salt Lake City.
The corpse was taken to the Louis Stein Funeral Home on North Centre Street. While the body was there, a number of police officers viewed the body and “all believed he had been in the city jail at some point during the past few months,” The (Cumberland) Evening Times reported.
Despite their agreement, no one could find a record of Dashe in the city jail.
The police notified G.H. Dashe and Addington. Addington was able to identify her brother when described to her over the phone.
Although Dashe had not been a current resident of the city, he had come to Cumberland to interview with the Canal Towage Company, which he had worked for multiple times in the past. Some of the items in his possession were recommendations that described him as good, sober and an industrious worker.
Dr. Thomas Koon listed the cause of death for Dashe as general peritonitis, a serious disease that can develop quickly and is sometimes fatal. Peritonitis is a condition that starts in the abdomen when tissue there becomes inflamed, usually from infection from bacteria or fungi.
The symptoms include abdominal pain, bloating, fever, diarrhea, exhaustion and confusion. The newspapers don’t note that O’Hara observed any of these symptoms, but since he wanted to go to the hospital, he may have been felling ill.
Addington came from New Jersey to claim her brother’s body and take him back to the Garden State for burial.