Cuthbert Rieveley's Cyanide Adventures

This story is about my 2nd cousin 2x removed named Cuthbert Rieveley.  He descends from my mom’s paternal side from the family of Richard Marshall and his wife Edney. My family descends from their daughter Martha Jane.  Cuthbert descends from their son William Wilburn, who had moved from Georgia to California.  William’s daughter Mary Edna married Charles Rieveley from England while in Shanghai, China.  So Cuthbert and his brother Bertran were born there before moving back to the US. 

Cuthbert studied medicine at the University of Chicago and was a chemist, sometimes as a pharmacy clerk and sometimes as a salesman.  Apparently, in September 1932, despondent over a girl and unemployed for some months, he decided to end his life by taking cyanide.  While others partied at his friend Walter Champagne’s house, Cuthbert took the poison.  Champagne went to check on him and discovered him dying.  He was rushed to the hospital and the public health officer for San Francisco J. C. Geiger was alerted.  Dr. Geiger had developed, in collaboration with others, the first antidote for cyanide poisoning; but it had never been tested on a human.  Cuthbert was given the antidote and woke instantly.  As he woke up, he looked at the man beside his bed and greeted him by name.  Dr. Geiger was confused by this until Cuthbert told him he was his professor 10 years earlier at the University of Chicago. 

Cuthbert was so amazed he was alive that he forgot about his troubles and wanted to write up his experience as a clinical observation on the effects and how he came back to life.  Dr. Geiger promised to get the youth a job. (He was 30.)  Cuthbert was famous then for being the first person to be given the antidote and the story appeared in papers across the nation.  Reading each, or at least many of them, gave much more detail. Dr. Geiger declared Cuthbert as having unwittingly made a great contribution to medical history.

There was a strange new and grim proposal as a result of the antidote working.  In Nevada, “a proposal to attempt to bring back to life, for experimental purposes the next victim of Nevada’s lethal gas execution chamber.”  This proposal was backed by Cuthbert and Dr. Geiger offered to personally conduct the experiment.  I never followed up on whether this gruesome experiment was conducted.

Apparently, Cuthbert’s life still was not satisfactory.  In May 1933, he was jailed for beating up a 22 year old chauffeur Robert Code because of the same girl, Georgie Finn, he had quarreled with before his attempt at suicide.

In July 1934, Cuthbert again drank the poison.  This time, he made sure no one would discover him until it was too late.  I have no idea what happened to his brother Bertran who died in San Diego, California at age 24.  Both very sad stories.

His mother lived in Modesto, California while all this was happening and died in San Diego in 1963.  In 1920, the entire family lived in San Diego.  In the 1921 census of Canada, the mother and two sons were living without the father, but she was listed as married and the head of the family.   I have no idea what happened with his father.  His mother remarried after her sister Hilda's death in 1943 to Ian MacDonald. Ian had been married to Hilda and all three lived together according the the 1940 U.S. Census.

1940 U.S. Census Excerpt for Ian MacDonald, his wife Hilda, and her sister Edna

I am adding some of the newspaper stories.  There were many more.

Tue, 13 Sep 1932 The Maryville Daily Forum, Maryville, Missouri Page 2

Tue, 6 Sep 1932 The Sacramento Bee Page 9.

Fri, 17 Aug 1934 Daily News, NY, NY Page 36

Published 2025