The Bizarre Mystery of the Mobile Slave Who Predicted 12 Deaths With Perfect Accuracy | HO

In 1872, while renovating the aging courthouse that anchored Mobile, Alabama’s Government Street, construction workers uncovered a sealed wooden crate buried inside a collapsed storage chamber. Inside lay a stack of water-stained trial transcripts, brittle affidavits, and a small leather-bound notebook covered in neat, elegant handwriting.

The pages were filled with names.
Dates.
Methods.
Predictions.

At the top of the first page was written a single word:

Solomon.

What these papers revealed—painstakingly analyzed decades later by historians—was so unsettling that Mobile’s officials had buried the entire case, quite literally, to make sure it never resurfaced.

The documents described a four-year period between 1847 and 1851 in which twelve people died—every one of them predicted in advance by an enslaved man who served in their households.

Doctors blamed fever, cholera, heart failure, stroke, and misfortune. Families blamed fate.

But the ledger told a different story.

And Mobile had spent a century trying to forget it.

This article reconstructs that buried case—its mysteries, its tragedies, and its chilling implications—based on the surviving court documents, newspaper fragments, family letters, and testimony from enslaved people interviewed decades later through the WPA.

It is not a ghost story.
It is not supernatural.

It is something far more disturbing.

I. Mobile, 1847: A City Built on Cotton, Wealth, and Fear

In the mid-19th century, Mobile was the jewel of the Gulf Coast, a city that smelled of tar from the shipyards and molasses from the warehouses.

Cotton was king, and the riverfront was its throne.

Three-story mansions lined Dauphin, Government, and St. Francis Streets—white pillars gleaming through the humidity. Beneath that polished surface lay a city held together by the labor of nearly 8,000 enslaved people who worked as field laborers, blacksmiths, servants, cooks, carpenters, boat hands, and drivers.

Among these households stood the Greek Revival mansion of Pierre and Margarite Dvau, a wealthy cotton factor whose connections stretched from New Orleans to New York. The family prided itself on refinement, intellect, and what Pierre liked to call “progressive household management.”

It was into this house—into its libraries, kitchens, social circles, and secrets—that Solomon arrived in the winter of 1843.

II. The Man Nobody Watched Closely Enough

The bill of sale listed Solomon as:

31 years old

Literate

Skilled in carpentry

Knowledgeable in medicine

“Docile temperament”

The last phrase was a lie.

Historians now believe the truth was buried in the line preceding it: knowledgeable in medicine.

His previous owner, a Quaker physician in Charleston, had taught Solomon anatomy, herbal pharmacology, and the basics of diagnosis. What began as an attempt to give an enslaved man practical healing skills ultimately created something that terrified Mobile two states away.

Solomon absorbed information the way a sponge absorbs water—silently, invisibly, completely. He read every book in the Dvau library on herbs, chemistry, and illnesses. He assisted with minor treatments when doctors were unavailable, and upper-class families trusted him because he did his work quietly and well.

He went unnoticed.

Which is precisely what made him dangerous.

III. A City of Intersecting Households

Mobile’s elite social circles were tightly intertwined. The Dvau family interacted daily with:

The Chamberlains, timber magnates

The Apprentices, cotton warehouse owners

The Whitfields, wealthy merchants

Judge Marcus Finley, presiding over Mobile’s circuit court

Mrs. Talbert, one of the city’s oldest and most prominent widows

Their slaves interacted even more frequently—delivering messages, attending dinners, running errands, coordinating carriages.

This meant Solomon had access.
He had mobility.
And, most importantly, he had knowledge.

Knowledge of illnesses.
Knowledge of weaknesses.
Knowledge of the habits that made these families vulnerable.

He watched.

He listened.

He waited.

IV. April 1847: The First Prediction

On April 20, 1847, the Chamberlains’ cook overheard Solomon say something that froze her blood.

Thomas Chamberlain—wealthy, overweight, known for his temper—walked past Solomon breathing heavily from the stairs.

Solomon watched him carefully.

“That’s a dying man,” he murmured.
“His heart won’t last the week.”

Three days later, Thomas Chamberlain was dead on his study floor, lips blue, fingers mottled.

The doctor declared natural heart failure.

Everyone accepted the verdict.

But the cook remembered the prediction.
And she remembered Solomon’s tone—not shocked, not fearful, not speculative.

Certain.

V. The Summer of Deaths

The heat thickened.
The mosquitos came.
Yellow fever loomed.

And the deaths began to multiply.

1. June 1847 — Catherine Apprentice, 29

Symptoms mimicked cholera: stomach cramps, vomiting, dehydration.
Predicted two weeks earlier.

2. July 1847 — William Foster, 38

Drowned after a night of drinking.
Predicted one week earlier.

3. August 1847 — Mrs. Talbert, 76

Died peacefully in her sleep.
Predicted two weeks earlier.

4. January 1848 — Sarah Whitfield, age 7

A tragic pneumonia case.
Predicted months earlier with chilling accuracy.

By now, the enslaved people in Mobile had divided into two quiet factions:

Those who believed Solomon had the sight.

And those who believed he had something else.

Something far more dangerous.

Marcus, the Dvau carriage driver, noticed the herbs Solomon collected—plants known to be medicinal in small doses and lethal in larger ones.

Rachel, the cook, noticed powders, mixtures, and dried leaves.

But they said nothing.
To accuse a fellow enslaved person was unthinkable.
To accuse him wrongly was fatal.

So they watched him.
And they waited.

VI. Patterns in the Shadows

One man, however, began to see the pattern: Dr. Edmund Wickham, Mobile’s aging, hard-drinking physician.

It began as a coincidence—two families mentioning Solomon had predicted a death days before it occurred. But Wickham’s mind was a catalog of his cases, and by March 1848 he saw what others didn’t:

Nine deaths, nine predictions, all involving the same servant.

Wickham compared notes with Pierre Dvau. Both men felt a rising dread.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

So Wickham began following Solomon closely—watching how he prepared food, delivered drinks, mixed herbal tinctures.

He found nothing.

Solomon, however, found him.

VII. The Death of the Doctor

In June 1848, Dr. Wickham fell violently ill.

His symptoms were unmistakable to a trained physician:

Severe vomiting

Burning in the throat

Kidney failure

Metallic taste

A slow, agonizing decline

He whispered to his colleague with his final coherent breath:

“Check… Solomon… poison…”

But the words were delirious.
The evidence was non-existent.
And by Friday, Wickham was dead.

Cause of death: acute renal failure.

Exactly as Solomon had predicted.

And Mobile finally panicked.

VIII. The Discovery Under the Floorboards

Pierre Dvau went to Sheriff James Cartwright. For the first time, a man with real authority listened to the rumors threading through the city.

They searched Solomon’s quarters that night.

Beneath the floorboards they found:

Jars of dried poisonous plants: aconite, oleander, foxglove, white snakeroot

Powdered compounds wrapped in paper

A small leather-bound ledger

It was the ledger that terrified them.

Inside were:

Profiles of every victim

Symptoms

Methods

Dosages

Predictions written weeks before the deaths

Blank spaces filled in later with the actual dates

All correct.

But what froze everyone was the final page:

EW — arsenic compound — kidneys will fail — week of June 10
PD — pending
MD — pending

Pierre and Margarite Dvau.

Solomon was arrested on the spot.

He did not resist.

He did not protest.

He simply said:

“You’re late.”

IX. The Trial That Should Have Shaken the South

The trial began June 30, 1848.

The courtroom was packed—white merchants in linen suits, widows in dark veils, enslaved people forced into segregated corners to watch the spectacle.

The prosecution presented:

The poisons

The ledger

Testimony from enslaved servants

The pattern of deaths

Wickham’s dying accusation

The defense argued:

Circumstantial evidence

Medical knowledge, not murder

No eyewitnesses

Unreliable testimony from enslaved people

Then Solomon himself took the stand.

People expected fear.
Or desperation.
Or remorse.

What they got instead was clarity.

X. Solomon’s Chilling Testimony

He admitted everything.

Every name.
Every method.
Every motive.

He spoke calmly, cleanly, like a professor lecturing in a classroom.

On Thomas Chamberlain:

“He worked men to death and felt nothing.”

On Catherine Apprentice:

“She was dying long before I touched her. I only hurried cruelty’s timetable.”

On Robert Apprentice:

“He beat three slaves to death. I simply removed a man the law refused to punish.”

On the Whitfield child:

“That was a miscalculation. The dosage was meant for her father.”

On Dr. Wickham:

“He was too close. He had to go.”

The courtroom erupted.

The judge screamed for order.

And Solomon waited, perfectly still, until silence returned.

Then came the most infamous exchange of the trial.

Prosecutor Breenidge:

“Why did you do it?”

Solomon:

“Because you made me invisible.
And invisible men can do anything.”

XI. The Final Blow: Psychological Murder

The prosecutor asked one last question.

“Did you poison the Dvau family?”

A hush fell across the courtroom.

Solomon smiled faintly.

“Does it matter? You’ll never eat in peace again.”

Pierre Dvau fainted.

The jury took less than an hour to convict.

Execution was set for July 28.

XII. The Execution

The gallows behind the Mobile courthouse drew a crowd of 300. Widows of the dead stood in black. Merchants gathered with grim satisfaction. Enslaved people watched with blank expressions that hid storms.

When asked for final words, Solomon spoke softly:

“You cannot own a mind. You can chain a body, but not a thought. And thought is what kills you.”

He died instantly—neck snapped clean.

But the unease he left behind did not die.

XIII. Aftermath: A City Haunted
1. The Dvau Family

Pierre died eight years later of a mysterious illness.
Margarite lived until 1872, plagued by chronic symptoms doctors could never explain.

Was it poison?
Or fear eating her alive?

Scholars disagree.

2. Mobile Society

The city began locking medicine cabinets, banning servants from mixing food, and restricting literacy among enslaved people.

Fear replaced complacency.

3. The Enslaved Community

They did not celebrate.
They did not mourn.

They spoke of Solomon in whispers—some horrified, some awed, all aware of a truth white Mobile refused to face:

Power is never as absolute as it seems.

XIV. Modern Interpretations

Historians today debate whether Solomon was:

A serial killer

A vigilante

A product of psychological trauma

A savant of toxicology

Or something more complex

What remains uncontested is this:

He weaponized invisibility.
He weaponized knowledge.
And he weaponized the system that sought to break him.

The real horror of the Solomon case is not that one enslaved man killed twelve people.

The horror is that he operated for years without notice because the society around him refused to imagine he could be capable of such intelligence, calculation, or agency.

Their blindness gave him access.
Their arrogance gave him opportunity.
Their cruelty gave him motive.

XV. The Mystery That Remains

The greatest unanswered question is the one Pierre Dvau carried to his grave:

Did Solomon poison the Dvau household before he was caught?

No poison was ever found.

But no Mobile doctor ever explained Pierre’s long, wasting illness.

No one ever explained Margarite’s chronic symptoms.

And Solomon’s smile on the witness stand haunts the surviving transcripts.

Some historians think he was lying to terrify them.

Others think he was telling the truth.

The chilling possibility is that both interpretations may be correct.

Conclusion: The Monster They Created

Solomon’s story survives today not as a parable of supernatural prophecy, but as a grim reminder of a society whose cruelty created the very danger it feared.

He was not born a murderer.

He became one in a world where he was treated as property, where brilliance was ignored, where suffering was normalized, and where justice was denied.

Solomon used the only power available to him—knowledge—and wielded it with surgical precision.

In the ledger found beneath the courthouse floor, between the tidy rows of names and dates, one line appears above all others:

“Final obstacle removed.”

Whether Mobile ever removed the deeper obstacles that created Solomon in the first place is a question the city—and the nation—still wrestles with.