The Starvation Doctor - Linda Hazzard
Dr. Linda Hazzard
As some of you know, back in 2020 I left California. So this last story is local for me here in the Seattle, Washington area.
Quacks have been around forever; past, present, and future we will always have quacks. As individuals, we all make the right decision to not follow these people but just as there are quacks, there are ducklings that follow the quack wholeheartedly even when it hurts them.
There was a lady who was living somewhere in Minnesota married with two kids where she got the idea to become a sort of dietitian in Minneapolis so she abandoned them. She set up a practice without a license and had a patient come in for treatment. her treatment was a cure-all for any kind of disease imaginable. A fast.
Which, fasting isn't bad for you, religious fasting has been practiced forever. But you can overdo it, which is what Dr. Hazzard promoted. Her first victim arrived at the coroner and he deemed the cause of death to be starvation, tried to have Dr. Hazzard prosecuted but couldn't legally for some reason. She and her newfound husband fled to Washington State where she set up shop yet again.
Her first Washington Patient was a lady named Daisey Maud Haglund who had stomach cancer and thought Dr. Hazzard could heal it. Instead, Mrs. Haglund Starved to death within a few weeks leaving behind her husband and 3-year-old son Ivar.
Who, by the way, is THE Ivar of Ivar's Fish and Chips, here in Seattle.
After that, more and more people flocked to have the miracle cure treatment by Dr. Hazzard. and sure enough most of those who signed up for it, died.
Not only that, She would perform the autopsies and deem the cause of death other things like liver cirrhosis or whatever.
But there's more, these people for some reason would sign away their estate, give power of attorney and rights to their bodies after death to Dr. Hazzard!
The famous victims of this quack were two hypochondriac British sisters Dorothea and Claire. They were all into alternative medicine and though had nothing wrong with them chose to put their lives in the hands of Dr. Linda Hazzard.
The sisters came from British Columbia to Seattle and met with Dr. Hazzard who put them up in an apartment near downtown in the Capital Hill neighborhood.
They were put on 2 cups of tomato broth a day diet, daily hours long enemas in a bathtub which would have a canvas support for when they would faint. and would be given long "massages" beatings including on the forehead where Dr. Hazzard would scream "Eliminate! Eliminate!"
Within 2 months they were both around 70 pounds and one of them supposedly wrote a letter to their childhood nanny who was in Australia at the time the letter made absolutely no sense so she traveled across the globe to Seattle to find out what was going on. By the time she got there, Claire had died and Dorothea was 50 pounds and deemed insane, essentially a zombie.
Here's a before and after of her.
While checking on Dorothea she saw other zombified people hobbling around begging for food and to be rescued.
Apparently some of these inmates, I mean patients would walk down the road and beg the neighbors and they wouldn't help because they were afraid of Dr. Hazzard.
You see, Hazzard was a very scary lady and was really into the occult so people said she was hypnotizing these people to starve themselves to death and more so. sign away all their rights and estates to Hazzard!
The nanny tried to take Dorothea away but was denied. She went and got the girl’s uncle who was forced to pay 1,000 dollars. and was not able to retrieve what was signed away.
After she was rescued they went and got the British Vice Consul and they set out to get Hazzard convicted, as they did their research for the case... they discovered a whole lot more deaths that can be linked back to Hazzard. At least 12 are proven but who knows the true number, probably north of 40 including one suicide.
Hazzard was arrested in 1911, during the trial Mr. Haglund, the Father of Ivar, and husband of Daisey who was the first Washington death came to support Dr. Hazzard during the trial and even admitted to taking little Ivar to Hazzard 3 times a week for treatments after Daisey died...
Convicted in 1912, she was sent to do hard labor in Walla Walla, Washington but Luckily for her, The frickin Governor of Washington pardoned her and told her to flee to New Zealand, which she did.
And guess what she did in New Zealand?
Starve more people, got found out, and returned to Washington in 1920
What happened in Washington you think?
You guessed it, she opened a sanitarium in a small secluded town called Olalla across the sound from Seattle and operated it for 15 years killing who knows how many more people because she had an incinerator on site. Until the place burned down.
3 years after it burned down, she got sick in her 70s and starved herself to death.
