Though varied and unreliable, each account is consistent with the idea that Poe did not stay in Philadelphia and possibly did not even leave Baltimore in the first place. He certainly failed to collect the letter from Mrs Clemm addressed to E. S. T. Grey because the post office, as was common practice, published receipt of it in the Philadelphia Public Ledger on 3 October 1849, the same day that he lay dying in the bar in Baltimore. Such was Poe’s devotion to Maria Clemm, it seems unlikely he would not have made straight for the post office to collect a letter he was expecting if he had arrived in Philadelphia as planned.
But while there no confirmed sightings of Poe in Baltimore during the week prior to his death, the writer’s physical condition offers some clues as to what may have happ
