Two Lives Converge in Gilded Age Savannah
In the late 1880s, Savannah, Georgia was a city of elegant squares and gaslit streets, still shaking off the shadows of war and yellow fever. Amid its society of cotton merchants and genteel families, two very different men crossed paths within the halls of the Savannah Hospital (an institution later known as Old Candler Hospital). Their names were Charles Naujack and Franklin Lawton, and their bond – forged in illness, intellectual kinship, and a shared fascination with the supernatural – would lead to one of the most haunting episodes in the city’s history.
Charles Naujack was an unlikely hospital attendant. At about 37 years old, he carried with him an Old World refinement and a storied past. He had been born and educated in Danzig (then part of Prussia), where he spent eleven years at a rigorous Latin school. He earned a government diploma for top scholarship, becoming fluent in German, French, Spanish, and English as well as well-versed in the classical literature. Those who met him were struck by his erudition and polite bearing – hardly what one expected from a man doing menial work in a Southern city hospital. But Charles’s life had taken many turns before depositing him in Savannah. In his youth he ventured across the Atlantic to the United States of Colombia (present-day Colombia in South America), where he lived for 17 years. There he claimed to have served as a state official and garnered some reputation, until political turmoil changed his fate. By his own account, Charles became embroiled in an insurrection and incurred the ire of authorities. He was “expelled by the Germans for taking part in an insurrection against the states,” as he later put it, suggesting he sided with a rebellion that made him unwelcome in his homeland. Forced to flee, he made his way to the Caribbean port of Aspinwall (Colón, Panama), and for a time he labored aboard a German man-of-war ship.
This worldly, wanderlust-driven life had honed Charles in unusual ways. He was charismatic and “full of personal magnetism,” with even a stint as a beast-tamer and traveling showman in his résumé. In fact, not long before arriving in Savannah, Charles had teamed up with a friend – a show organizer named Ward – and toured parts of the Americas, performing sleight-of-hand tricks and other entertainments. The pair lived on the road, often beyond their means, giving traveling shows to scrape by. Charles’s fortunes rose and fell dramatically; at one point he noted he had never even seen as much as $300 of his own money at once, despite years of toil. By 1887, his adventures (and misadventures) led him to sign onto a German vessel bound for Savannah. It was to be a fateful stop. Shortly after Charles disembarked in the humid Georgia port city, he was stricken with a severe fever – likely a tropical illness picked up in his travels. With no family or funds in Savannah, he was taken by a local acquaintance (a fellow immigrant friend, Mr. Max Golinski) to the Savannah Hospital for treatment.
The Savannah Hospital in the 1880s was an austere brick building on the edge of Forsyth Park, originally founded in 1804 and weathered by decades of epidemics and war. By 1877 its facade had been updated in a dignified Italianate style, but inside its wards the scenes could be grim. This was the very hospital that had seen countless yellow fever victims and wounded Civil War soldiers. It even had underground tunnels reportedly used as makeshift morgues during disease outbreaks. Within these halls of suffering, Charles Naujack recovered from his fever under the care of hospital staff and the watchful eye of the superintendent, Dr. Thomas Golding. Dr. Golding soon took note of Charles’s courtly manners and obvious intellect. Here was a patient who, despite being destitute and foreign, conversed easily about literature and science. Impressed and in need of capable help, Dr. Golding offered Charles a position as an attendant once he was well – essentially a steward or orderly assisting with patients and chores.
Charles accepted. Perhaps he saw it as a humble fresh start in a new land. Over the next two years, he proved himself an attentive worker at the hospital. He might have been officially just a low-paid attendant scrubbing floors or carrying supplies, but because of his knowledge and polyglot tongue, he earned the respect of the doctors and nurses. Some even let him assist with tasks above his station, and he could often be found in the dispensary (pharmacy) area or library when not tending to patients. He was never patronizing despite his education; fellow employees grew fond of the soft-spoken European who could quote Shakespeare one moment and prepare a medicinal tincture the next. Yet for all his outward courtesy, those close to Charles sensed an undercurrent of melancholy in him – a restlessness or disappointment that he tried to mask with wry humor.
Franklin Lawton, by contrast, arrived at Savannah Hospital under very different circumstances. He was a young Georgian man (described as small-framed, neat in dress, with a single eyeglass perched on his nose) who checked into the charity ward in September 1888 suffering from malarial fever. Franklin’s background would later prove surprisingly distinguished: he hailed from a family with claims to noble English lineage. His father was a Baptist minister who, at the close of the Civil War, had been wealthy – reportedly worth some $75,000, a considerable fortune in those days. Franklin mentioned that his family’s bloodline was “descended from a noble English family,” suggesting he grew up with a sense of pride in his heritage. He himself had been a member of the local militia and a volunteer fire company in his home community, and intriguingly, he had even at one point become a convert to Catholicism (serving as a member of a Catholic church in his state, despite his father’s Protestant calling). All these details hint at a young man with a formal upbringing and perhaps a rebellious or searching spirit. Why he came to Savannah alone and ill is not entirely clear – possibly he was estranged from his family or simply seeking work independently. It appears Franklin may have been traveling or down on his luck, and in the coastal city he succumbed to illness. Like Charles before him, Franklin found a lifeline at the Savannah Hospital.
When Franklin Lawton recuperated from the malarial fever after a few weeks, Dr. Golding saw a use for him as well. The young man was taken on as the hospital’s butler, attending to domestic tasks such as serving meals in the institution. In this capacity, Franklin crossed paths daily with Charles Naujack, the attendant. What began as a work relationship soon grew into an intense friendship. Despite differences in age and origin – Charles the worldly Prussian in his late thirties, Franklin the Southern youth likely in his twenties – the two discovered a deep mutual affinity. Franklin became, as one observer put it, Naujack’s “bosom friend and constant companion.” The butler and the attendant were often seen together during off-duty hours, walking the hospital grounds or huddled in conversation by lamplight after the patients were asleep.
They bonded over intellect and inquiry. In the evenings, Franklin would slip into Charles’s little room in the servants’ quarters of the hospital, eager to hear the older man read aloud. Charles obliged, reciting passages from Shakespeare’s plays or Goethe’s Faust in their original languages, then launching into discussions of science, philosophy, and the mysteries of existence. It was as if, in each other, both men found a refuge from the disappointment and drudgery of their daily lives. In that dim room with books piled high, they were not a lowly butler and an overqualified orderly – they were kindred spirits probing the deepest questions of life and afterlife. Spiritualism was one subject that particularly captivated Charles Naujack, and he eagerly drew Franklin into its allure. Spiritualism – the belief that the souls of the dead can communicate with the living, often through séances or psychic experiments – had become a popular fascination in the late 19th century, even in genteel Southern society. Charles had devoured volumes on the topic, and he was a “firm believer in spiritualism.” He did not believe in a conventional Heaven or Hell, according to Franklin, but he was convinced that some form of existence persisted after death and that it might be proven through empirical means. Young Franklin, perhaps seeking meaning himself, became entranced by these ideas as well.
Night after night, the two friends indulged in imagining what lay beyond the veil of death. One can picture them in that cramped hospital room: Charles’s stern yet animated face illuminated by a flickering oil lamp as he expounds on metaphysical theories, and Franklin listening raptly, eyes shining behind his eyeglasses. They may have experimented with little psychic tests for amusement – perhaps attempting table tipping or concentrating on moving small objects with their will – little parlour tricks popular among spiritualist circles. To them, however, these experiments were not mere games; they were serious inquiries. The hospital around them, with its sickness and dying, only underscored the importance of the question: Is there a soul, and can it return once the body dies?
Despair Takes Hold: Charles Naujack’s Final Experiment
Beneath the camaraderie and intellectual play, a darkness was growing in Charles Naujack. Years of disappointment weighed on him. Outwardly he maintained polite cheer, even humor – he was known to make witty, self-deprecating remarks about his situation. But privately, Charles was slipping into despondency. He felt life had cheated him of his potential. Here he was, a man of letters and former official, reduced to washing linens and scrubbing floors in a country where, as he bitterly observed, “anything not related to the almighty dollar is an unknown quantity.” Savannah society, in his eyes, was shallow and materialistic; he, an educated European, found himself socially isolated, “confined to intercourse with semi-lunatics” (likely referring to some difficult patients in the hospital) and unable to find peers who shared his background. He had no family or loved ones nearby – only his friendship with Franklin and a few casual acquaintances kept him tethered to the world.
Charles also carried a burden of financial regret. By 1889, he had worked for about 18 years of his adult life (much of it in Colombia, and then in Savannah) and had “achieved nothing” tangible. He lamented that he squandered his earnings when he had them, and now his strength was waning with age. At thirty-seven, with a touch of gray perhaps creeping into his hair, he felt old before his time. The thought of drudging through another 18 years of labor, only to end up in a pauper’s home in his old age, was abhorrent to him. “I do not feel inclined to drudge another eighteen years to fill other people’s pockets, and then to be towed about in a poorhouse,” he wrote mordantly.
There was one fanciful hope that Charles clung to in early 1889: the Louisiana State Lottery, a nationally famous lottery of that era in which he frequently bought tickets. In his despairing mind, a big lottery win was perhaps the only chance to reclaim financial freedom and dignity. As winter turned to spring, Charles fixated on the upcoming lottery drawing. He confided in Franklin that if he could not draw the grand prize by a certain date, he would have no reason to continue living. Franklin Lawton heard his friend speak like this many times – ominous, offhand threats to “kill himself” if luck didn’t turn. But Franklin, perhaps not grasping how serious Charles truly was, usually dismissed such talk as melodrama. Charles had a flair for the dramatic in conversation, after all. Franklin would nod and then try to cheer him up, assuming these threats were idle and born of temporary gloom.
In mid-March 1889, as one lottery drawing approached, Charles Naujack declared to Franklin that Friday of that week would decide his fate: if no prize came, he would “end his existence.” Franklin paid it little mind; he had heard similar before, and Friday was only a few days away. However, as that Friday (March 15, 1889) came, Franklin noticed Charles’s tension mounting. The lottery results came in by mail or newspaper, and Charles did not win – not even a minor prize. Franklin found Charles around noon, the older man’s face etched with despair. “I did not get it,” Charles murmured, eyes hollow. In that moment, something in his expression struck Franklin with dread – a fatal resolve that he’d never seen before. Franklin immediately tried to console his friend, urging him that it was just a lottery, that things might improve in other ways. We can imagine Franklin’s frantic tone, attempting anything to pull Charles out of the dark path his mind was heading down.
That afternoon, Charles invited Franklin to his room, a small chamber in the servants’ wing of the hospital. Franklin followed, uneasy. Charles closed the door and sat at his small writing desk. With remarkable calmness, Charles retrieved pen and paper and began to scribble letters – his final letters. Franklin watched anxiously as his dear friend wrote two separate notes with steady hand. One letter was addressed to Dr. Thomas Golding, the hospital superintendent who had given Charles his job and shown him much kindness. The other was to Mr. Max Golinski (the same friend who had first brought Charles to the hospital when he fell ill – one of Charles’s only contacts in Savannah’s immigrant community). Charles wrote deliberately, occasionally pausing to read a line back or let the ink dry. When he finished, he read both letters aloud to Franklin. This was Charles Naujack’s version of a farewell conversation.
The content of the letters both frightened and saddened Franklin. In eloquent prose laced with literary quotations and sardonic wit, Charles explained his decision to take his own life. He opened one note with a line from Hamlet – “To be, or not to be; that is the question” – and answered it decisively: “I have decided for the latter; when this note reaches you I shall have ceased to be.” Charles declared that clinging to life “for life’s sake and with no other inducement” was an act of idiocy in his view. He rattled off the reasons for his despair: he was tired, financially broke, and unwilling to start over at the bottom yet again only to end in poverty. With biting cynicism, he referenced Sir Walter Scott’s quip that had he been consulted, he’d not have consented to be born – “but as it is I shall be bold in the coffin,” Charles remarked. He stated that at 37 years old, after 18 years of hard work, he had nothing to show because of squandered earnings and the impossibility of getting ahead in a world run by money and what he saw as the foolish masses.
Savannah, to Charles, had proved a cultural wasteland for his type of mind. In Europe and South America he once mingled with educated circles; here, he felt lonely among philistines. “Here in Savannah, I have been confined to intercourse with semi-lunatics for two years,” he vented in the letter, “Anything that is not related to the almighty dollar is an unknown quantity in these regions. Quality and distinction depend on the price of broadcloth and patent-leather boots the individuals wear.” The only person he exempted from this critique was Dr. Golding himself – the doctor’s kindness and wisdom had been the “straw that kept me afloat these two years,” Charles admitted gratefully. Without Golding’s generosity, he’d have likely ended his life sooner. He thanked the doctor sincerely, praising his judgment and experience, and urging him to forget him once he was gone.
Charles’s letter also revealed flashes of dark humor and tenderness. He had thought about what his final words should be when he pulled the trigger. The classical allusion of Emperor Nero’s dying phrase (“What an artist dies in me!”) felt too pretentious to him. So Charles decided to borrow a comedic line from an Irish song’s refrain: “Here goes—nothing!” That, he said, would be his last utterance before the fatal shot. He also poignantly mentioned the only “companions” whose fate he worried about – his pet pigeons. Charles kept a few gentle pigeons in a cage as pets at the hospital. In the note he reasoned that if he had even a dog depending on him, he might be compelled to live on, but “I guess my poor pigeons will be happier at large than in a cage.” In preparation for his death, he intended to set them free, finding solace in the image of them flying off unconfined. It was a small, touching insight into Charles’s heart: even on the brink of suicide, he cared for the welfare of the smallest lives connected to him.
Perhaps most chillingly, Charles Naujack’s letter to his friend Golinski hinted at something beyond mere suicide – it proposed an experiment. Charles wrote (in a private postscript meant for a select few, including Franklin and their spiritualist-minded friends) that if there was another world after death, he intended to prove it. He invited them to help conduct a test: “There is a medical scale in the hospital dispensary, on the center of the table,” he explained. After he died, he wanted his friends to gather in that dispensary room with a few others and silently will the scale to move – essentially to ask Charles’s spirit to push the scale. “Fix your mind on the desire that the scale shall move… ask me in your mind to move it,” he instructed. If it was within his power from beyond the grave, he vowed, “I will throw the scales clear off the table.” Such a dramatic action, he said, would be “proof par excellence of spiritual existence.” He emphasized that he would die with this experiment on his mind, eager to establish an example that life after death was real. If the attempt failed, he cautioned, that still wouldn’t prove there is no afterlife – it might simply mean a spirit’s power is limited – but if it succeeded, it would be undeniable evidence from beyond.
Charles even commented on the method he chose for his suicide in the context of this experiment. The hospital dispensary was stocked with plenty of laudanum, morphine, and other poisons – he could easily have quietly overdosed, drifting into death from sleep. But he rejected that path as a “dog’s death,” too cowardly and mundane. No, Charles opted for a more violent, emphatic exit: a gunshot. “Should a man who has faced deadly lead in battle for seven hours and defied the Spanish dagger twice die like a dog? No!” he wrote fiercely. “Come, pistol, do your duty.” Those were the final words of his letter – an almost ritual invocation of the weapon that would send him into the unknown.
As Charles read these letters aloud, Franklin Lawton must have been shaken to his core. Here was his dearest friend calmly articulating a plan to die and even to send messages from the other side. Franklin pleaded with Charles to reconsider. He argued and begged, tears in his eyes, trying to talk his friend off the ledge of self-destruction. But Charles was firm. The meeting ended with Charles sealing the letters. Franklin, seeing that Charles was in a determined and perhaps unhinged state, eventually left the room to let things cool down, likely promising to check on him later. That was Friday evening.
All that night and into the next morning, Charles Naujack’s resolve did not waver. He spent his last hours putting his meager affairs in order. He made arrangements for any belongings he left to be given away – notably asking that his personal papers and a portrait of himself be left with Dr. Golding (and destroyed if undesired). He set his pigeons free from their cage. One imagines him standing by the small window of his room as dawn broke on Saturday, March 16, 1889, watching the birds flutter into the gray sky, and feeling a serene finality settle over him.
Just after daybreak, Charles went to find Franklin. With an eerie cordiality, he invited Franklin to come out to his room, as if for a chat. Unsuspecting and still hoping that maybe Charles had slept off his dark mood, Franklin complied. It was around 7 o’clock in the morning when Franklin stepped into Charles’s cramped quarters once again. The room was unusually tidy – Charles had cleaned it meticulously. The letters he had written were now sealed and addressed; one had been mailed the night before (to Dr. Golding, so it would arrive later that day), and the other to Mr. Golinski awaited delivery. Franklin’s eyes then fell upon an object on the table that made his heart skip: a large, old-fashioned horse pistol (a heavy caliber revolver) and the supplies to load it – powder, lead ball, percussion caps – laid out methodically.
Charles Naujack began to load the pistol in front of Franklin without a tremor in his hands. He poured gunpowder down the barrel, added wadding, and rammed a lead ball into place. The sight of Charles undertaking this task with quiet determination finally snapped Franklin into panic. This was no jest or hollow threat – it was happening. As Charles reached for a percussion cap to prime the gun, Franklin cried out and lunged forward, realizing with horror that his friend was truly about to shoot himself. Charles likely gave him a sad, instructive look, as if asking not to interfere. Franklin knew he was outmatched – Charles’s mind was set and the pistol was almost ready to fire. Trembling, Franklin made a split-second decision to go get help. He blurted something – perhaps “Wait!” or “I’m getting the Doctor!” – and bolted from the room. It was a desperate gamble: maybe Dr. Golding or someone in authority could intervene in time.
Franklin sprinted down the corridor towards Dr. Golding’s office, which was on the same floor. His footsteps echoed in the quiet morning halls of the hospital. He had almost reached the doctor’s door when it happened – a thunderous gunshot reverberated through the building. The report was so loud that it was heard by staff all over the hospital – nurses on the ward, the janitor working downstairs, even an off-duty fireman outside. Franklin froze in the hallway for an instant, a sickening certainty flooding him. He’s done it. Overwhelmed by dread, Franklin did not immediately rush back. The shock was too great. Records later note that in that moment, “he knew then what had happened,” and he became utterly unnerved. Instead of returning to witness the gruesome scene, Franklin staggered away, turning his steps toward the kitchen pantry, where he tried in vain to compose himself by busily occupying himself with routine duties in a daze. Perhaps he simply could not bear to face what was behind that closed door.
It fell to another employee, a porter or janitor named Curley, to discover the aftermath. Within minutes of the gunshot, someone remarked that Charles Naujack was not at his morning post. Dr. Golding, alarmed by the sound, sent Curley to “hurry Naujack to work” – likely unaware yet that the sound had come from Charles’s own room. The porter went to Charles’s quarters and pushed open the door on a scene straight out of a nightmare. In a chair sat Charles’s lifeless body, the pistol on the floor by his feet. He had carefully positioned himself in front of the mirror – perhaps to ensure his aim was true, or perhaps to face himself one last time. He had placed the barrel against the right side of his head and fired. The result was devastating. The entire top and side of his head was blown apart, virtually decapitating him. Blood and brain matter spattered the walls and mirror; fragments of skull littered the floor. Charles’s face was largely destroyed, save perhaps a portion of his lower jaw, and his body slumped at an angle, head tipped back against the chair in a macabre repose. The odor of spent gunpowder still hung in the air. It was a ghastly tableau – one that would sear itself into the memory of all who saw it.
Cries of alarm rang out. Staff hurried to the room and then recoiled in horror. Dr. Golding arrived to confirm what was obvious: Charles Naujack was beyond any help. Nurses murmured prayers or covered their mouths at the gore. Dr. Golding summoned the coroner and also sent for the hospital’s chief physician, Dr. Duncan, and other local doctors to assist with formalities. One of the bullets (the pistol likely held only a single shot, but it was a large . horse pistol round) had passed clean through Charles’s skull and embedded itself in the opposite wall, leaving a gouge. On a table nearby lay any final tokens Charles left – possibly his papers bundled for Dr. Golding, and perhaps the open cage door of the pigeons he had freed.
Later that morning, a coroner’s inquest was convened over Charles’s mutilated remains. Given the letter and Franklin’s testimony of what transpired, the verdict was straightforward: suicide while temporarily insane. In the 19th century, it was not uncommon to attribute suicides to insanity, since the act was so strongly against societal and religious norms that only madness was thought to drive a man to it. Whether Charles was truly in a “fit of insanity” is debatable – his letters suggest cold, methodical intent rather than delirium. But labeling it insanity perhaps eased the stigma a bit and allowed the matter to be closed.
Charles’s body, once the legalities were done, was handed over to the coroner for burial. With no family to claim him and no money for a grave, Charles Naujack was interred in the potter’s field – a paupers’ cemetery – with minimal ceremony. He had threatened to shoot anyone who scandalized his name in public, but the newspapers treated his story with a measure of amazed respect as the details came out. The Savannah Morning News ran an article headlined with Charles’s own chilling words: “‘Here goes – nothing!’ Charles Naujack’s words before he killed himself.” The report recounted his remarkable background and even printed excerpts from his dramatic farewell letter, capturing the city’s morbid fascination. Savannah had rarely seen a suicide quite like this – educated, defiant, and entangled with a quest to communicate beyond death.
And what of Franklin Lawton on that tragic morning? The moment he heard that gunshot and realized his friend was gone, something cracked in Franklin’s psyche. He was found later in the kitchen area, shaking and attempting to distract himself by polishing dishes or doing some trivial chore while in a state of shock. He did not view the body, as far as we know, but he knew exactly the horror that lay in that room. Co-workers noted Franklin’s unnerved, “wretched” demeanor in the aftermath. He moved like a ghost himself that day, eyes vacant. The hospital’s tight-knit staff was deeply upset by Charles’s death – but none more so than Franklin Lawton, who had been closest to him.
Over the next few days, Charles’s suicide cast a pall over Savannah Hospital. Perhaps some quietly attempted to carry out Charles’s last wish: an autopsy. (He had requested that an autopsy be performed on him after death – likely in hopes of some scientific insight or simply as a final curiosity.) Whether that autopsy occurred is not recorded, but given his severe head injuries it may have been perfunctory. More intriguingly, one wonders if anyone took up the challenge of the dispensary scale experiment. Did Dr. Golding or Mr. Golinski, upon reading Charles’s letter, gather some friends in the dispensary at the appointed time to concentrate on the scale? We have no official account of such an attempt in the immediate aftermath – if it was tried, nothing obvious happened, or those involved kept it private. But the very suggestion left a strange atmosphere in the hospital: the notion that Charles’s restless spirit might even now be lingering, trying to move objects or send a sign from the other side.
For Franklin Lawton, every corner of the hospital now seemed to whisper of his lost friend. He saw reminders of Charles everywhere – the empty perch where Charles once stood during rounds, the shelf of books they had read together, the now-silent little room where the bloodstains would likely remain for days despite scrubbing. Franklin’s attachment to Charles had been profound, and suddenly the anchor of his life was gone. The effect on Franklin’s already sensitive mind was devastating. Colleagues noticed that Franklin became deeply depressed and erratic after Charles’s suicide. He spoke often of death and even intimated that he might follow in Charles’s footsteps.
In fact, it later came to light that both men had contemplated a joint suicide pact of sorts. It was rumored (and Franklin himself hinted in private) that Charles had initially wanted Franklin to partake in the grand spiritualist experiment by dying alongside him at the same time. The two friends had discussed doing something dramatic together to prove life after death – a plan that would have made them simultaneous martyrs to their cause. However, when the moment came, Charles chose a gruesomely violent method that terrified Franklin. As Franklin later remarked to someone, “Naujack would have had company in death if he had not done it like he did.” The horrifying spectacle of Charles’s self-inflicted gunshot gave Franklin pause; he could not bring himself to join that morning’s fatal act. In a way, Charles’s choice of the pistol – with its gore and thunder – saved Franklin from an immediate suicide that day. But it did not lift from Franklin the morbid obsession that had taken hold of both of them.
A week or two passed. Franklin’s work performance declined; he moved as if in a fog of grief. At times he would become agitated and speak of hearing Charles’s voice or feeling Charles’s presence urging him. Whether this was real or a manifestation of guilt and heartbreak, no one can say. Staff grew so concerned that roughly two weeks after Charles’s death, Franklin made an open threat on his own life. He reportedly showed another attendant a small bottle of poison he had obtained – likely laudanum (opium tincture) or morphine – and said plainly that he intended to kill himself and join his friend. This alarm was immediately reported to Dr. Golding. The doctor acted decisively: he had Franklin locked in a secure room to prevent any rash act, and by the next morning he petitioned the civil authorities (the Ordinary’s Court) to have Franklin declared a danger due to insanity. In those days, there was no modern mental health intervention; the solution was to place the suicidal person in custody. Franklin Lawton was taken by police to the city jail “for his own safety” to keep him from harming himself. He spent two or three days in a cell at the barracks under observation.
During his brief incarceration, Franklin’s demeanor swung between despondent silence and eerie calm. A police sergeant who spoke with him (Sgt. Kilbourne, by one account) heard Franklin say that as soon as he was free, he would find a “better method” to kill himself than Charles had used. “When I get ready to do it, I will use narcotics,” he told the sergeant with chilling resolve. It seems even then Franklin was planning to emulate Charles’s suicide, but in a quieter way – poison, not pistol. Such declarations only reinforced the belief that Franklin was unstable. However, after a couple of days, with Franklin showing polite cooperation, the authorities decided they could not keep holding him without formal charges. He was released from jail, albeit with everyone aware that he was still a ticking time bomb of grief.
After leaving custody, Franklin did not return to work at the hospital. Perhaps Dr. Golding thought it unwise for him to resume duties there, or Franklin himself could not bear it. Instead, Franklin drifted into the city, living in cheap lodging houses under an assumed identity. Notably, it emerged that at the hospital Franklin had sometimes given his name as “Henry Lawson” to strangers. It’s possible “Henry Lawson” was an alias he adopted – possibly to avoid embarrassing his family name or simply as a personal quirk. Now, separated from the hospital, he effectively vanished into Savannah’s warren of boarding houses as a solitary, brooding figure.
He first took a room at the Barnett House, a hotel or boarding establishment, but he had little money (his employment and wages presumably ended). He managed to stay for about a week, reportedly telling the proprietor that his funds were limited but implying he expected more soon. No funds came, and by the end of the week he couldn’t pay his bill, so he was asked to leave. Franklin left behind a valise (suitcase) containing some clothing and personal letters – possibly as collateral or because he intended to return when he had money. He never did. That valise, later recovered, held clues to Franklin’s past, including letters that confirmed his true name and family background, and even a broken-open letter addressed to a Colonel in Columbus, Georgia (perhaps a family friend or former commander).
From the Barnett House, Franklin wandered to another cheap boarding house run by a man named Hansdorff on Bay Street. He had already tried lodging there once a few weeks prior, but it ended poorly: he had spent all day lying in the rented room, refusing to let the maid or anyone enter, and generally behaving so oddly that the proprietor evicted him the next morning. Now it was late April 1889, roughly six weeks since Charles’s death. On the night of Saturday, April 27, 1889, Franklin Lawton returned to Hansdorff’s boarding house at 59 West Bay Street. Hansdorff recognized him as the troublesome guest from before and was hesitant to rent him a room again. Franklin, with a faint, desperate smile, promised to cause no trouble this time – perhaps even apologizing for his previous behavior and saying he was better now. It was a busy night and vacancies were scarce; Hansdorff reluctantly agreed and assigned Franklin to share a second-floor room with another boarder.
Franklin’s roommate that night was a man named A. Schneider (or Sneidegger, accounts differ on the spelling), a carpenter or laborer who also lodged there. Schneider noted that when Franklin came in, he seemed quiet and already a bit unwell – perhaps pale and trembling. Franklin climbed into his bed still mostly clothed (he removed his coat but left his other clothes on) and covered himself with a heavy quilt. It was unusual given the mild spring night, but Schneider thought the man might be cold or sick. The two exchanged only a few words. Franklin gave no personal details, and Schneider soon fell asleep.
In the silence of that dark room, Franklin Lawton finally acted on his resolve. True to his word, he had procured a lethal quantity of morphine – a powerful narcotic – likely from a pharmacy or druggist in town (in those days such drugs could be bought with few questions). From his coat pocket, Franklin withdrew a small vial of morphine powder – perhaps a dram vial containing a couple of grams. Earlier that evening he had also acquired some laudanum (opium tincture) as a potentiator. Now, in the dim halo of moonlight or a flickering oil lamp, he prepared his “cup of bitter draught.” Franklin later described the scene in a letter he wrote (and left in his pocket for others to find): He poured a dose of laudanum, mixed in a heavy measure of morphine – twenty grains or more, an enormous dose – into a bowl or cup. He stirred it into a suspension and, steeling himself, drank the deadly potion to the dregs. Not wanting to waste a single grain of the poison, he then “gleefully licked the sides of the bowl” to catch any residue of the bitter white powder. He had “screwed his courage to the sticking-place,” as Shakespeare would say, and crossed the point of no return.
Franklin then lay back on his bed, heart pounding as the drugs began coursing through his system. It was near midnight. What followed, as described in his own final written account, was a harrowing firsthand experience of dying by morphine – an experience he recounted with eerie detachment and florid language, as though observing his own demise like a scientific experiment. At first, a sense of warmth and acceleration: his heartbeats quickened abnormally and his body flushed hot. He could feel his pulse thundering in his ears. Each heartbeat was fierce, “each fierce quivering throb sent the heated crimson life-tide dashing in angry billows against the walls of my heart,” he wrote, vividly describing the rush of blood in his veins. His jugular vein throbbed like it might burst; he felt a tightening in his throat as if an invisible snake coiled around his neck. Yet along with the racing of his circulation came a spreading lethargy – the peculiar “ecstatic lethargy” of opiate overdose, where one feels both heavy and deliriously light. Franklin noted that his skin grew congested and flushed; he hovered between waking and dreaming. Images from his past flitted before his mind’s eye: scenes from what he poetically called the “Gate City” (Atlanta) and the “Central City” (Macon) – places he had lived or visited – as well as memories of Savannah’s own streets where he had walked with Charles. Emotions surged and receded in this mental kaleidoscope: joy and sorrow, love and hatred, hope and despair all swept over him in turn as consciousness wavered.
Remarkably, Franklin remained aware enough to test his lucidity. He mentally recited passages of Hamlet and lines from Goethe’s “Faust”, and ran through the Greek and German alphabets, even some mathematical rules – and found that, yes, he could recall them. Despite the oncoming dark, I was “perfectly sane, profoundly conscious,” he assured in his writing. Time lost meaning. Minutes stretched or collapsed. At one point a sensation of fiery heat overwhelmed him – he described it as a “fever-flush enveloping me”. His heart, which had raced, now likely began to falter as the morphine took hold. He felt as if molten lead flowed in his arteries. His extremities went cold; a roaring in his head grew louder. Finally, like a great wave cresting, a merciful oblivion swept over Franklin Lawton. “Then came a joyful blank – merciful oblivion,” he wrote, recalling the moment he lost consciousness.
Franklin had intended this to be the end. However, fate had thwarted his previous attempts at self-destruction, and it would intervene one last time, if only for a short reprieve. Some hours later – perhaps at dawn on Sunday, April 28 – A. Schneider, the roommate, stirred awake. The pale light revealed that Franklin was still lying in bed across the room, but something was dreadfully wrong. Franklin’s breathing was not the soft, slow pattern of normal sleep – it was a labored, heavy rattling, the sound of a man in dire straits. Schneider approached and saw Franklin’s face ashen and lips blue, his body slick with cold sweat and completely unresponsive. This stranger he’d shared the room with was clearly in the throes of death. Panicked, Schneider dashed into the hallway calling for help.
The boarding house proprietor, Mr. Hansdorff, hurried up to the room to see the emergency. One glance at Franklin – comatose and barely clinging to life – and Hansdorff realized this was beyond anything he could handle. He rushed out to summon medical help. In quick succession, Hansdorff notified a nearby police officer and the on-duty city physician, Dr. Owens. By the time Dr. Owens and another physician (Dr. Wegefarth, whose office was on the same street) reached the boarding house, Franklin Lawton was deep in a morphine coma. They found him covered in a heavy quilt, fully dressed except for his coat, lying on his back with eyes closed and pupils pinpoints. He was breathing, but only in ragged, shallow gasps, and he could not be roused at all. The doctors noted the telltale vial in his coat pocket: a half-ounce bottle labeled morphine, now one-third empty. This, plus perhaps an empty laudanum bottle at the scene, told the story.
For an hour and a half, the physicians attempted to save Franklin – or at least they monitored him as the poison ran its course, for in truth there was little to be done. In 1889, there were no ventilators or quick antidotes like naloxone. They likely tried basic stimulants or attempted to keep him awake (but he was far beyond waking). Franklin’s pulse grew fainter, his breaths more strained. He lingered in that twilight state for roughly ninety minutes after discovery. On that Sunday morning, as church bells around Savannah rang out for services, Franklin Lawton died in bed, never having regained consciousness. It was his fifth suicide attempt in as many weeks – and this time, he succeeded.
Later that day, a coroner’s jury reviewed the scene at Bay Street. They found a note in Franklin’s pocket – the final letter he had written sometime before or during his act. In it, he began with a line clearly quoting (or paraphrasing) Charles Naujack: “He who lives merely for the sake of existence is a fool.” It was as if Charles’s philosophy had fully transferred to Franklin. He went on to assure readers that he was “in full possession of my mental faculties” and had simply concluded that life held no purpose for him, thus he would “shuffle off this mortal coil” (echoing Hamlet’s soliloquy) by his own hand. “Unbidden I cross the step into eternity,” he wrote, indicating that without being called by God or nature, he voluntarily leaps into whatever lies beyond life.
Franklin addressed the fact that this was not a sudden impulse but a decision cemented by multiple prior attempts. He actually listed his previous suicide attempts in gruesome detail: one night he drank laudanum; on another occasion he swallowed a large dose of morphine; then a combination of laudanum and morphine; then yet another heavier morphine dose – four tries in total between late March and early April, each of which he survived by some twist of fate. He described (as summarized above) the physiological sensations he experienced during one of those near-death episodes: the racing heart, the hallucinations, the strange clarity of mind even as the body was dying, and the ultimate frustration of waking up alive after hovering so close to death. In one failed attempt, Franklin recounted lying unconscious for fifteen hours, only to “gradually realize” with bitter disappointment that he was still among the living. “Four times the death-angel vainly sought to strangle this fluttering breath… four times I entered the shadow of death defying his fatal sword, and four times it had no power to slay,” he marveled in his letter, almost amazed that he had survived so often. “Was it fate, destiny, or a reluctant guardian angel?” he mused about why he had been spared. These were the thoughts of a man who truly was unafraid of death – even strangely curious about it – and deeply determined to succeed in ending his life.
Finally, Franklin’s note described the fifth and final dose he had taken: “This last, fatal dose was 20 grains at midnight. I had screwed my courage to the sticking point. I looked on my face – ’twas blanched, but not with fear; ’twas whitened by the death-frost. Death could kill this mortal frame; it could not frighten the spirit.” In those words, Franklin revealed that as he prepared to die, he examined himself in a mirror (much as Charles had done) and saw a pale visage, but felt no fear – only grim resolve. He believed his spirit was beyond fear, even if his body would soon perish.
Amid these florid ruminations on death, Franklin’s letter also touched on his identity. He mentioned that he had been a member of a military company and a fire company in Georgia, and a communicant of a Catholic church – establishing that he was socially active in his earlier life. He wrote that his father was a Baptist minister who had been wealthy, and that his family had noble English roots. It is as if he wanted the world to know he hadn’t been a mere nobody or derelict – he had a proud lineage and a life before all this. Yet, that life no longer held him. In closing, Franklin expressed that he had “no objections to living, but no purpose for existence.” Thus, “Ergo, unbidden, I resign life’s lease and step into eternity,” he concluded. He also explicitly stated in an earlier part of the note that he was committing suicide and that no inquest was necessary – a request to spare authorities the trouble (though legally an inquest was performed regardless). He gave instructions for the disposal of his few belongings, even specifying what to do with his clothing and the carpetbag he’d left at the other hotel. This level of detail showed a calm, methodical mind preparing for death, much like Charles’s letters had.
With the letter found and morphine bottle evidence, the coroner’s jury formally ruled Franklin Lawton’s death a suicide by morphine poisoning. The verdict likely noted the influence of temporary insanity or spiritualist mania, because indeed, the newspaper report that followed made a pointed observation: it stated that “both men [Naujack and Lawton] were crazed by spiritualistic teachings.” The press (and presumably the public) saw the ideology of spiritualism as a key factor in unhinging these two friends. In their view, Charles’s fervent belief in communicating beyond the grave had essentially infected Franklin’s mind as well, driving them to this tragic chain of events.
Franklin Lawton’s body was taken into the care of the coroner and prepared for burial. Unlike Charles, Franklin may have had family or acquaintances who, once notified, could claim him. There was mention of a Colonel in Columbus who was to be informed (from the broken letter found, presumably someone who knew him). It’s possible Franklin’s body was sent to his family or buried locally; the record is not explicit. But given the era’s customs, if his family was estranged or he was under an alias, he might also have ended in a potter’s grave. Either way, by the end of April 1889, Savannah had witnessed the grim epilogue to Charles Naujack’s suicide: the loss of Franklin Lawton, the second half of what had been an extraordinary friendship.
Haunting Echoes in the Halls of Candler Hospital
The dual tragedy of Charles Naujack and Franklin Lawton did not fade quietly into history. Their story – equal parts poignant and macabre – became a part of Savannah’s lore. In life, these two men were largely overlooked outsiders; in death, they achieved a certain dark renown. Charles’s eloquent suicide letters and Franklin’s chilling account of his poison ordeal were reprinted in newspapers and surely talked about in hushed tones around town. But beyond the immediate sensation, something of their presence seemed to linger, especially in the place that had been the stage for their drama: the old Savannah Hospital itself.
The Savannah Hospital was later renamed Candler Hospital, and over the decades it continued to function (eventually relocating to a new campus in the mid-20th century, with the original site on Forsyth Park becoming an empty shell and later repurposed by other institutions). Yet employees and visitors would long whisper that the old building was haunted. Given its long history of suffering – from the yellow fever epidemics, Civil War amputations, and countless deaths within its walls – it is no surprise that Candler Hospital garnered a reputation as one of the most haunted sites in Savannah, a city often called the most haunted in America. Amid tales of ghostly Confederate soldiers and restless fever victims, the specter of Charles Naujack quietly took its place as well.
Those familiar with the hospital’s past began to suspect that the restless spirit of Charles Naujack roamed the halls, seeking the proof of afterlife he so yearned for. After all, Charles died with a fervent wish to demonstrate that the spirit lives on – could it be that he was now trying to fulfill that wish by making his presence known? Over the years, unexplained phenomena were reported by night staff and later by security guards in the abandoned building. People spoke of strange sounds in the silence: the echo of footsteps in empty corridors, or disembodied voices in rooms long disused. Some claimed to hear sudden knocking on walls and doors with no person behind it – as if some unseen knuckles rapped urgently from the other side of reality. Others felt sudden cold drafts or inexplicable chills in specific spots, notably near what used to be the dispensary and the old servants’ quarters upstairs, even when the power was off and no ventilation running. These cold spots gave many the uneasy feeling that someone unseen stood right beside them.
On occasion, objects seemed to move on their own in the old hospital. Janitors would leave a tool on a table, step away, and return to find it on the floor without explanation. Doors that had been locked would be found ajar. Such minor poltergeist-like incidents were easy to dismiss as accidents or forgetfulness – but to those who knew Charles’s story, they carried a tantalizing possibility. Was Charles still attempting his grand experiment, trying to “throw the scales from the table” or otherwise show that he was still there in spirit? More than one night watchman patrolling the darkened corridors admitted that they sometimes felt a presence and recalled the tale of the suicidal attendant from long ago.
One particularly eerie locale was the very room where Charles had ended his life. Even decades later, people who ventured into that attic-like servants’ quarters area reported a heavy atmosphere there. Some said that on very quiet mornings near the anniversary of his death, a faint gunshot echo could be heard in that wing – a claim hard to verify, but persistent in lore. Others have described seeing a fleeting shadow of a man in the periphery of their vision on the upper floor, only for it to vanish when they turn to look directly.
As the building aged and was mostly vacated by 1980, city police officers took over the task of checking on it. More than one officer patrolling at night reported curious sights. The front facade of Old Candler Hospital has windows that once looked into wards and offices. Officers have sworn that occasionally, a figure will appear at a second-story window for a moment. Notably, while a famous “White Woman” ghost (thought to be a female patient in a hospital gown) has been seen pacing behind the western windows, there are also accounts of a male figure seen briefly in an upper window, dressed not in a gown but perhaps in an older style of attire. Could this be Charles, keeping a spectral watch? No one can say for sure, but the timing and placement always seem to line up with where Charles spent his final days.
Inside, paranormal investigators who have been allowed into the old hospital recount encountering an “intelligent” haunting amid the residual spirits. Most of the supernatural activity in Candler Hospital is attributed to the many nameless souls who suffered and died there – moaning apparitions of fever victims, screaming echoes from the old psychiatric ward (where patients endured cruel treatments decades ago), and even the forlorn spirit of a nurse sometimes reported on the stairs. But those attuned to the history will mention the unique story of Charles Naujack. Unlike the plague victims or accidental dead, Charles intended to become a ghost, in a sense – he died actively fixated on bridging the mortal and spirit worlds. If ever a soul would be determined enough to remain, it would be him.
Visitors and ghost enthusiasts sometimes focus their attention on the old dispensary in the building’s ground floor – the very spot Charles instructed his friends to gather and test his presence. The dispensary room still contains some dusty cabinetry and, it is said, an old set of balance scales not unlike the one Charles referenced. On more than one ghost tour or investigation, people have claimed that those scales inexplicably tipped or moved slightly when questions were asked aloud to the spirits. While this could be coincidence or the power of suggestion, it certainly fuels the legend that Charles Naujack might be dutifully attempting to “clear the scales off the table” as he promised.
To add further intrigue, in the years after these events, some local spiritualists did hold séances trying to contact Charles and Franklin. Rumors persist that faint rappings or answers came through indicating Charles’s spirit was present and at peace, though such accounts are anecdotal and lost to time.
Today, the Old Candler Hospital still stands on its original plot on Drayton Street, beside the ancient Candler Oak tree (a tree so old it has its own haunted legends, sometimes called the “Hanging Tree” for reputed lynchings or executions beneath its boughs). The building’s windows are often dark; its halls mostly quiet except for the echoes of the past. Those who walk by on a balmy Savannah evening sometimes report a strange feeling, as if unseen eyes are watching from the upper floors. Some adventurous souls who have peered through the building’s dusty windows claim to have seen a fleeting silhouette or heard a faint whisper. While many of those spirits could be the countless patients who met untimely ends there, local lore confidently names one ghost in particular: the spirit of a man with refined features and sad eyes, wearing an old-fashioned attendant’s uniform or perhaps a bloodstained shirt, roaming near the spot where a violent pistol blast once shook the walls.
In life, Charles Naujack felt robbed of recognition and kinship; in death, he has gained a sort of immortality as the resident ghost of Candler Hospital. His tale, and that of Franklin Lawton, is retold not only for its tragedy but as an intrinsic part of the hospital’s haunted legacy. Many who hear it cannot help but feel a pang of sympathy – these were not evil men, nor victims of crime or plague, but two seekers whose loneliness and lofty ideals led them to destruction. Perhaps that very pathos is what keeps their memory alive like a ghost that will not fade.
When shadows lengthen under the moss-draped oaks and the old hospital’s windows glow faintly in the twilight, one might imagine the scene back in 1889: Charles Naujack’s final gaze into the mirror, whispering “Here goes nothing!” with ironic bravado; Franklin Lawton’s trembling hand raising a morphine-laced cup to his lips in a toast to oblivion. These images overlap with the present until one almost expects to catch a glimpse of Charles rounding a corner in the corridor, or to hear Franklin softly reciting Hamlet’s lines in some empty room. The haunting of Candler Hospital is as much in the imagination as it is in reality, but it serves to keep alive the story of Charles and Franklin – two friends united in life and, as some believe, reunited in death.
Epilogue
The story of Charles Naujack and Franklin Lawton is a sobering chapter of Savannah’s late 19th-century history – a blend of human drama and the supernatural that continues to fascinate. It is a tale of brilliant minds brought low by circumstance, of a friendship that transcended societal norms, and of a spiritual ambition that dared to breach the veil between life and death. Historically verified through newspaper accounts and personal letters, their narrative needs no embellishment to be compelling. We are left with the image of Charles, the learned skeptic-turned-believer, standing in that lonely hospital room seeking proof of the soul, and Franklin, the faithful friend, following him like a sorrowful shadow into the unknown.
In the end, did Charles Naujack get his proof? Those who have felt inexplicable taps on their shoulder or seen a balance scale mysteriously topple in the old hospital might say yes. Others, more skeptical, may contend that the only ghosts here are the echoes of a tragic past. Yet even the skeptics would agree that the legacy of Charles and Franklin still walks the halls of Savannah’s memory. Their voices speak whenever the story is retold, reminding us that behind every ghost legend lies a very real human life with dreams and despair. And perhaps that is the true haunting – the resonance of unfulfilled yearnings and the eternal question of what becomes of us when we cross that final threshold.