September 21? | King Edward II

April 25, 1284 - September 21?, 1327: Age 43

The son and heir of the brilliant and ruthless Edward I, Edward II was “strong and handsome in body, weak and foolish in character” (Ronald Hamilton). He ruled in difficult times, but did it badly and, perhaps more important, tactlessly. Being openly gay is not in itself a game-ender when you are powerful, but heaping honours and titles on your palace squire boyfriend is pushing it. Edward and his homies didn’t bother hiding their contempt for various nobles, making fun of them with stupid names. Edward was equally foolish in his domestic and foreign policy, and his report card includes an ignoble defeat at the hands of the much smaller army of the Scots rebel Robert Bruce.

By 1324 there was an effective conspiracy that included the Queen and her boyfriend, who had possession of the Crown Prince. With plenty of baronial support, they seized power and deposited the King, imprisoning him in a filthy dungeon in the hope that he would die “naturally” of some disease. When he didn’t, they had him murdered. The date of death was uncertain, but it was announced officially on September 21.

It is not certain how he died, but a writer who knew someone who lived at the castle at the time claimed some years later he was “ignominiously slain with a red-hot spit thrust into his anus”. This horrible account, whether true or not, at least expresses the deep hatred and resentment Edward’s homosexuality aroused. It would also have ensured a clean corpse for display at the funeral.

Sources: Hamilton, Ronald, Now I Remember, The Hogarth Press, London, 1983; and Forbes, Malcolm, They Went That-A-Way, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1988.

September 14 | Isadora Duncan

May 27, 1877 - September 14, 1927: Age 50

Isadora Duncan was one of the greatest dancers in history. Her individualism and free style changed cultural history. Born in America, she lived most of her life in France.
I say that she changed cultural history – not just the history of dance, but much more. Here is what she wrote in 1903: "I shall not teach the children to imitate my movements, but to make their own, I shall not force them to study certain movements, I shall help them to develop those movements which are natural to them.

There will always be movements which are the perfect expression of that individual body and that individual soul: so we must not force it to make movements which are not natural to it but which belong to a school.

The dancer of the future will be one whose body and soul have grown so harmoniously together that the natural language of that soul will have become the movement of the body.”

In 1927 while touring in Europe, she was visiting friends in Nice, France. As she was being driven off in a sports car in Nice, France, by a young Italian mechanic, her last words were, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à l’amour.” (Originally her friend, Mary Desti, reported that she had said "Je vais à la gloire" in order to avoid the embarrassment of the implication that she was on her way to a date with the handsome mechanic. What she actually said was revealed later.) Her scarf, long enough to wind around her neck and trail dramatically out of the car, got caught in one of the car’s wheels. Duncan was dragged out of the car, hit the pavement, and died.

Sources: Wikipedia, Women in History

September 12 | Steve Biko

December 18, 1946 - September 12, 1977: Age 30

Stephen Bantu Biko was a medical student in South Africa who co-founded the South African Students' Organization (SASO) in response to apartheid. One of the most prominent and inspiring voices in South African resistance to injustice, Biko was targeted by the South African security forces for harassment and detention. On August 18, 1977 he was arrested for violating an order banning him from travel outside his home town. During his detention he was tortured and beaten, resulting in a brain hemhorrage. On September 11 he was transported to Pretoria central prison, a 12-hour journey endured naked in the back of a police Land Rover. He died on the floor of an empty cell in the Pretoria Central Prison on September 12.

At first police claimed his death was the result of a hunger strike, but the obvious head injuries on the body made it clear Biko had been beaten and clubbed while imprisoned and that he had died of head injuries. During a 1978 investigation the police claimed that his head injuries were the result of a suicide attempt. The Minister of Police, Jimmy Kruger, was quoted as saying, "Biko's death leaves me cold."

Alive, Biko was just another player, albeit an outstanding one, in a movement weakened by quarreling and fragmentation. Dead, he was a martyr: the horror and outrage at his murder and the pathetic attempt to gloss it over united the many factions fighting South African oppression. To a great extent his death opened the eyes of the world to the brutality of the regime. His white friend Donald Woods, another journalist, got access to his body in the morgue and took photographs that were transmitted all over the world. Nobody who was an adult at the time will forget them. His funeral was attended by hundreds of people, including notable public figures and diplomats from all over the world.

It was not until 13 years later, in 1990, that the South African government began removing apartheid legislation from the statute books. In 1997 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission reported that five former members of the South African security forces admitted to killing him and had requested amnesty. In 2003 the South African Justice Ministry announced that they would not be prosecuted because of insufficient evidence and the long time span that had elapsed.

Sources: Steve Biko Foundation, Wikipedia, ZAR.CO.ZA

September 11 | Beatrice Cenci

February 6, 1577 - September 11, 1599: Age 22

Beatrice Cenci was the daughter of an Italian Count named Francesco Cenci. He had a dubious reputation, and kept Beatrice and her mother virtually prisoners in his country castello while he amused himself with the vicious pleasures of Rome. His visits home were no picnic for the women, as he was said to have abused both of them physically and sexually.

One day in 1598 a great commotion was heard in the castle. The locals rushed over to find Beatrice's mother screaming, Beatrice "strangely silent", a splintered wooden balcony, and the Count's bloody body 30 meters below it in a gully of rocks and shrubs. He was definitely dead. In fact, oddly enough, he was cold. Moreover, when the body was washed, it was discovered that he had somehow acquired several stab wounds in the head that were not quite consistent with the notion of a fall.

A year of investigations revealed that the Count had been drugged and then two men had entered the castle and driven an iron spike into his head. They pushed the body off the balcony and made a hole in the balcony floor to make it look like an accident, but neglected to get rid of the bloody sheets and mess inside. Extensive confessions (obtained under torture) revealed that the men had been hired for this purpose by the Count's family. Both murderers died during the investigation: one ran away but got his head cut off by a bounty-hunter's hatchet, the other died under torture. Although Beatrice never confessed, it was believed that she had been the most determined of the conspirators, urging the men on when they hesitated at the last minute. The whole family was found guilty.

Alhtough Beatrice never confessed, nobody doubted her culpability. The Count was extremely unpopular and the common people had no trouble believing he had abused Beatrice. That, combined with her youth and beauty — she was thought to be about 17 — made her a cause célèbre. Widespread protest of the verdict did bring about a brief stay of execution, but in the end the Pope ordered that the sentences be carried out. (The family estate reverted to the Church.)

On September 11, 1599, one year and two days after the murder, the sentence was carried out. The elder brother, Giacomo, was publicly tortured to death. Beatrice and her mother were beheaded. The other brother, being only 12, was considered by the judges to have been too young to have had anything to do with it. Even so, he was sentenced to be present on the scaffold with his family to witness their executions before being sent to the galleys for a life of slavery. Today, Beatrice's ghost can be seen every year on the night of the eve of her execution, walking the Sant'Angelo Bridge where the scaffold was built, carrying her severed head.

Over the years the story of the desperate innocent girl driven to murder by her father's abuse seized the imagination of artists, playwrights, poets, and filmmakers. The portrait by Reni (shown here) was a big part of that continuing interest; many wrote about its inspiring effect. Mary Shelley, writing of her husband's interest in the legend (he wrote a play about it), said that the portrait's "beauty cast the reflection of its own grace over her appalling story; Shelley's imagination because strangely excited." Stendhal wrote of "a poor girl of 16 who has only just surrendered to despair. The face is sweet and beautiful, the expression very gentle, the eyes extremely large; they have the astonished air of a person who has just been surprised at the very moment of shedding scalding tears." Dickens foudn it "a picture almost impossible to be forgotten", full of "transcendent sweetness" and "beautiful sorrow". Hawthorne found it "the very saddest ever painted or conceived: it involves an unfathomable depth of sorrow", and further wrote, "She is a fallen angel — fallen and yet sinless."

Modern historical research is such a buzzkill. Reni was Bolognese and didn't even paint in Rome before 1608, nine years after her death. It's much more likely the portrait is one of the Muses, and the link with Beatrice is a based on pure speculation ("probably the Cenci girl" written in a catalogue in the late 18th century). Moreover, documentary research has turned up a record of her birth and shown that "the poor girl of 16" was 22 when she was executed. Finally, there is some suggestion that she had an illegitimate child — a plausible explanation for her "imprisonment" in the castle.

It is obvious that the Cenci family was dysfunctional, even abusive; there is plenty of evidence supporting that. However this story, that grew into a rather simplistic drama laced with sex and violence, is deeper and more complicated than the myth.

Sources: Beatrice Cenci: Storia del secolo XVI (Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi), Screaming in the Castle (Charles Nicholl), Wikipedia

September 10 | Elizabeth of Austria

December 24, 1837 - September 10, 1898: Age 60

Empress Elizabeth of Austria was the third child of a Duke. Her elder sister, Helene, was chosen to be the wife of the young Emperor Franz Josef, but when the family was taken to meet the young monarch he fell in love with Elizabeth. Against everyone's wishes (except hers), they were married. She was 16; he was 23.

Elizabeth's life was as interesting as her personality. Her mother-in-law was a powerful and wily politician who ruled the empire through her son; they never saw eye-to-eye but Elizabeth was one of the very few people in Europe capable of standing up to her. Strong, independent, rich, dazzlingly beautiful, popular, adored by her subjects — even so, Elizabeth was often deeply unhappy. She hated the tedious responsibilities of the role she had married into. She became obsessed with preserving her beauty, and was anorexic, starving herself to maintain a 20-inch waist throughout her life. She traveled obsessively and constantly, becoming more and more restless as she grew older. When in 1889 she lost her son to suicide, she withdrew into deep depression.

On September 10, 1898, 25-year-old Luigi Lucheni, an Italian anarchist, was in Geneva with the intention to kill an aristocrat. His original target was a french Duke, but when that individual changed his itinerary he fixed on the other royal who happened to be in town: the Empress Elizabeth. He actually had no idea who she was, he just knew she was important. While she was boarding a steamship, he rushed up to her and stabbed her with a needle file. She didn't realize she was hurt at first. She had fallen to the ground but got up immediately and proceeded to board the boat. Once on the boat, the wound was discovered, and she was rushed back to land to be seen by a doctor. The wound was small but fatal: it had punctured her heart. She died before receiving medical attention. Her last words were, "What has happened to me?"

Lucheni was sentenced to life in prison. In 1910, 12 years later, he was found hanged in his cell, an apparent suicide. Physicians and psychiatrists, eager to "fathom the secrets of the criminal mind", removed Lucheni's head, preserving it in a jar of formaldehyde. Described as "yellowing" and "sleepy-eyed", it was kept in a closet in Geneva's Institute of Legal Medicine for 66 years. In 1986 the Swiss sent the head to the Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna, where presumably it remains today.

Sources: Wikipedia, Empress of Austria (Her British Journeys), "Relic of an 1898 Crime Goes Home to Vienna" (New York Times, August 31, 1986)

September 6 | John Raymond Rice

April 25, 1914 - September 6, 1950: Age 36

Sergeant John Raymond Rice was an American soldier killed in action in Korea in 1950. His body wasn't shipped home to Nebraska until the following August, and his wife Evelyn prepared to have him buried at the Memorial Park Cemetery in Sioux City. During the funeral on August 28 a cemetery employee noticed there were a lot of Native Americans among the mourners. When cemetery officials discovered that Rice himself was native, they made the family take the body home without burying it.

According to the cemetery officials, they weren't being prejudiced, just enforcing a policy based on people's wish to be with their own kind. They insisted they had legal obligation to the rest of plot owners in the cemetery.

After a big firefight in the press, then-President Harry Truman publicly reprimanded the cemetery and the Sioux City town leaders. Rice's family were invited to bring him to be bured at Arlington National Cemetery in Washington. Sergeant Rice (who was also a WWII veteran) was buried with full military honors on September 5, 1951, nearly a year to the day after he died, in Arlington National Cemetery between a couple of generals.

Sources: Find-a-Grave, Sioux City History

September 4 | Steve Irwin

February 22, 1962 - September 4, 2006: Age 44

“Crocodile Hunter” Steve Irwin, a popular Australian naturalist and TV personality, was killed at 44 by a stingray’s barb piercing his chest and heart. He was snorkeling in shallow water at the Great Barrier Reef, filming some scenes for a segment in a television show he was co-hosting with his daughter. His colleagues, who witnessed and filmed the accident, explain that the ray probably felt threatened by Steve’s proximity, but that it was a “one-in-a-million thing” that he was stung.

Although the film of the accident was never released to the public, his colleague John Stainton described it, stating, "Steve came over the top of the ray and the tail came up, and spiked him here [in the chest], and he pulled it out and the next minute he's gone." He was pronounced dead by medical staff when they arrived shortly after.

From Wikipedia: “It is thought, in the absence of a coroner's report, that a combination of the toxins and the puncture wound caused Irwin to die of cardiac arrest, with most damage being inflicted by tears to arteries or other main blood vessels. A similar incident in Florida a month later in which a man survived a stingray barb through the heart showed that Irwin may have caused his own death by removing the barb.”

Sources: Wikipedia, Australia Zoo

September 2 | Russ Columbo

January 14, 1908 - September 2, 1934: Age 26

Russ Columbo, born Ruggiero Eugenio di Rodolpho Colombo in New Jersey, was the son of Italian immigrants. By his early 20s he was a famous crooner, on a par with Bing Crosby and Rudy Vallee. He was a famous radio presence and beginning to get top billing in films. He is quoted in a press release as saying, "At 26, I find that I have just about everything I want from life and am pretty happy the way things have turned out for me."

On September 2, 1934, still 26 years old, he was visiting a close friend who had a pair of antique dueling pistols. The friend liked to use the pistols to strike matches, but this time trick went disastrously wrong. The pistol used still had some gunpowder and an antique bullet in it. The bullet ricocheted off the desk and hit Columbo in the left eye, lodging in the back of his brain. Although he lost consciousness immediately he lived another six hours.

One of the strangest things about Columbo's death is that his family were able to hide it from his mother for the remaining ten years of her life. She was 68 at the time and had a heart condition; her doctors advised the family not to give her the bad news for fear of sending her off as well. She was told he had married Carole Lombard (who really was his girlfriend) and had left for Europe for a honeymoon. Thus began a bizarre conspiracy of fake postcards and telegrams and an elaborate story about a European tour that kept getting extended. Newspapers that reported Lombard's marriage to Clark Gable were carefully edited before being brought into the home. As Mrs. Colombo was aging, nearly blind, and English was not her first language, the charade seems to have worked. She died in 1944, ten years after her son, without ever having been given the news.

On a completely different note, there is an excellent movie, made in Georgia (the former Soviet Republic, that is) called "Since Otar Left" that tells a similar story about a family keeping the news of a death secret. It's a great film and worth renting if you can find it.

Sources: Classic Images, Wikipedia, Sicilian Culture

Click here to watch and listen to Columbo in Broadway Through A Keyhole, released in 1933