Welcome to Starvation Heights: The Home of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard

At the dawn of the 21st century, there’s all kinds of medical mumbo jumbo floating around. ‘Radical’, ‘revolutionary’, ‘amazing’ and ‘miracle’ cures and treatments, which claim to do everything from help you to lose weight, grow hair, tone the skin, increase the size of your…mental storage-capacity…among other things! But radical, ‘cure-all’ medical claims date back a lot further than the year 2000, with fitness fads and diet-pills and stuff like Tae Bo and Slimfast and free, 12-month membership to your nearest Jenny Craig or Lite’n’Easy diet-center.

Indeed, at the turn of the last century, a new kind of medical treatment was emerging; a controversial and dangerous treatment which many people in the medical profession at the time, saw as complete quackery, but which some people were willing to give the benefit of the doubt, anyway. It was called ‘fasting’, and Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard became the world’s first ‘fasting specialist’…in fact she had a medical degree in it, when she graduated from university and started active medical practice back in the early 1900s.

‘Fasting’ is the systematic and deliberate starvation of oneself for supposed ‘medical benefit’. By limiting food and drink to insanely small portions, the body was supposed to purge itself of all its ‘evils’ and ‘toxins’ and the patient would soon feel full of life and vitality again. That was the theory behind it, anyway. Unfortunately, there is next-to-no practical proof to back up this claim…something that people obviously forgot to tell Dr. Hazzard. In fact, by the turn of the last century, fasting had already been debunked as medical flipflop and not worth serious scientific study, but some people persisted, regardless. Dr. Linda Hazzard was amongst them.

The Hazzardous Doctor

Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard was a special woman. And she saw herself as a special woman. She saw herself as a pioneer in the area of medicine which she saw as her speciality: ‘fasting’. She was special because, in an era when most women entered the medical profession as nurses, she was a qualified physician who was doing groundbreaking research! She even wrote a book on the subject, it’s called Fasting For The Cure Of Disease, and it was published over 100 years ago, in 1908. In it, she claimed that fasting could cure everything from common aches and pains to something as serious as cancer. Did it? No.


“Fasting for the Cure of Disease” by Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard

Dr. Hazzard believed so strongly in the supposed virtues of fasting as a restorative or cure, that she even created her own sanitarium for her to carry out her treatments in. It was called ‘Wilderness Heights’ and it was located in the small, Washington town of Olalla. It was a place where her patients could come to, to be treated and cured, amongst the birds and bees, breezes and trees. In the countryside. Relaxing, huh? Or it might have been…for a while.

Starvation Heights

Dr. Hazzard’s HQ was her sanitarium called ‘Wilderness Heights’. It was advertised as a place for patients who were seeking natural therapies to cure their ills, to go to, to place themselves under the doctor’s care. Here, they would fast for a period of time, after which, according to Hazzard, their bodies would experience bursts of energy which would leave them feeling energised and full of life, ready to combat everything, with all her patients making claims like they do on TV these days, that this new treatment had left them ‘with more energy than I had ever imagined! I’m not drowsy or sleepy anymore, I don’t have cramps! Dr. Hazzard…wow! She’s a miracle worker!’.

Or at least, that was the theory and fancy. The reality of it was very different.

A common horror-movie or horror-story plot is the mad doctor who lives in a secluded spot in the woods, carrying out all kinds of weird experients and killing patients. If you thought this was all Hollywood mumbo-jumbo or the makings of a pen-pushing, doped up writer hunched over his desk…think again.


One of the few photographs of Wilderness Heights Sanitarium

Wilderness Heights was the archtypal ‘spooky hideout of a mad doctor’. It’s as if Hazzard went through a checklist of spookjoint prerequisites for her sanitarium. Let’s go through them together, shall we?

No telephones to call for help? Check.
No Way to contact the Outside World? Check.
Isolated and lonely and quiet? Check.
Near the forest, convenient for burying dead bodies? Check.
In the countryside where nobody can hear your screams? Check.
Near a quiet, sleepy, country town where everyone keeps to themselves? Check.

Everything was there, including the mad doctor herself!


Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard

The locals in the nearby town of Olalla called Hazzard’s home ‘Starvation Heights’, because of all the patients who starved to death there. All kinds of stories emenated from the house, including the one that Dr. Hazzard performed autopsies in her bathtub! (Which she did). But what was it like in Starvat…ahem…in Wilderness Heights?

Once a patient arrived in Wilderness Heights, they would be housed on Hazzard’s estate. They would then live there for anywhere from a few days to a few months, living entirely on vegetable broth, made of tomatoes and asparagus, occasionally supplemented by orange juice. And the patients didn’t get the broth whenever they wanted it, either. It was served in strict portions, only once or twice a day, and this was ALL that they ate, for up to a month.

it’s probably not surprising to hear that Hazzard’s patients didn’t last very long. Many starved to death. Hazzard was prosecuted a few times, but the charges were always dropped for various reaons, ranging from her not yet being a licensed doctor, to patients going to her of her own free will, and that she wasn’t held accountable if her treatments didn’t work. Almost invariably, death certificates listed the cause of death of Hazzard’s patients as ‘starvation’, unless Hazzard herself carried out the autopsies in her bathtub, whereafter, the cause of death was almost always written down as ‘cirrhosis of the liver’ or ‘cirrhosis of the kidneys’.

One exception to this was when police, while searching Hazzard’s Wilderness Heights estate, found the body of Eugene Stanley Wakelin. Wakelin’s body was found, badly decomposed and with a gunshot wound to the head. Originally, the police suspected suicide, but others believed that the Hazzards, both Linda and her scheming, no-good, bigamous husband, Samuel, had actually killed Wakelin after Linda somehow managed to get Power-of-Atttorney over him and his money. Despite that several people think, even though Wakelin was of artistocratic and noble birth (his father was a British lord), Eugene himself actually had very little money…so the Hazzards’ murderous actions against the young (26-years-old) Wakelin were for nothing.

As the years went by, more and more weird things started happening. People started going missing. If they were found, the police were unable to account for any valuables missing from the dead patients. Personal effects such as jewellery, pocket watches and chains, necklaces, money and other personal items were found either missing, or having been signed over to Dr. Hazzard. If Hazzard ever became really rich from her treatments, you can bet it wasn’t by her patients paying her their medical bills!

The Williamson Sisters

Dr. Hazzard’s shady doings of starving her patients, stealing their money, property and valuables and then saying that things went ‘horribly, horribly wrong’ during treatment, couldn’t last for much longer, though. People were getting suspicious and people were getting angry. The big problem was that the authorities couldn’t really do anything. As the people who died under Hazzard’s care had gone to see her of their own free will, the law was powerless to tell people that they COULDN’T go to see Dr. Hazzard, and the killings continued.

But it couldn’t last. And it didn’t, because in 1911, things came to a shuddering halt.

Two English sisters, Dorothea and Claire Williamson were in Canada on holiday from England. While in Canada, the two wealthy sisters who were diehards for all kinds of alternative medicines and treatments, heard about Dr. Hazzard and her amazing fasting cures. Without even telling their family where they were going (the Williamson family were already weary of their childrens’ constant seeking-out of weird and wonderful medical treatments), the two, thirty-something sisters headed off to Washington, USA, into the trusting and twisted arms of Dr. Linda Hazzard.

Only one of them would leave those arms alive.

Originally, the sisters stayed in one of the cabins away from the main estate, where they were placed under the care of a nurse, who fed them Dr. Hazzard’s prescription vegetable broth. Hazzard herself showed up regularly to give the girls massages and enemas and she made smalltalk with the Williamson sisters, digging into their financial backgrounds. Unlike the Wakelin boy, the Williamsons were rich, and this made Hazzard very happy. She probably told them a cock-and-bull story about how it might be dangerous when they moved to Wilderness Heights, with all the other patients around, and she got the Williamsons to entrust their jewellery (mostly their diamond rings) and their valuable paperwork, such as real-estate deeds and wills, to the doctor’s safekeeping, which she had locked up in her office safe.

On the way to the Wilderness Heights sanitarium, Hazzard further exploited the sisters gullible natures. By now, the sisters, weak and delirious from weeks of starvation, were convinced by Hazzard’s lawyer, to sign neat little pieces of paper. What did the pieces of paper say? Only that the sisters (or specifically, Claire), would leave Dr. Hazzard the sum of 25 pounds sterling, to be paid to Dr. Hazzard every year after her death, and that Claire’s body be cremated upon her death. This was supposedly Claire’s ‘dying wish’…in fact it was Hazzard’s. By having Claire sign the paper, she could burn Claire’s body to a crisp when she died, and therefore, hide all evidence of her crimes, saying that it was Claire’s wish to be cremated, and present the ‘proof’. In fact, when Claire signed the document, she was so weak, she could barely hold the pen, let alone write out a recognisable signature.

Help on the Way

So far, everything was going swell for Dr. Hazzard. She had two, rich, crazy ladies willing to give her all their money! But the big problem with rich people is that they’re invariably well-connected and tend to have even richer, and more powerful friends and relations, or even worse, for Dr. Hazzard, devoted and loving servants who have known their masters and mistresses since birth. It was this latter group of people who were to spell Hazzard’s doom.

The lady who came to the Williamson sisters’ rescue was a lady named Margaret Conway. Margie Conway was more than just the Williamson sisters’ friend, she had been their nanny since childhood! She had watched the sisters grow and develop from toddlers to teenagers, and she knew the girls like the backs of her own hands…which would probably come in useful in a few months’ time.

On the 30th of April, 1911, Conway, then living in Sydney, Australia, recieved a telegram from America, inviting her to come and see the sisters, saying that they were at the Wilderness Heights sanitarium. Today, this would be no problem for Conway. She could hop on a plane and be in Washington in a week. But this was 1911. It took Conway two months to reach Washington by ocean-liner and steam-train! By the time she got there on the 1st of June, it was almost too late.

By the time Margie Conway arrived at Wilderness Heights, Claire Williamson had already died from starvation. Dorothea Williamson was still alive, but just barely. Conway was shocked when she was asked to identify Claire’s body at the local mortuary, and she was even more horrified when she met her one-time ward, who was living in a ‘cabin’, a little more than a shack, on the Hazzard estate. Dorothea’s mental state had deteriorated rapidly and she wavered wildly between begging Conway to take her away, to telling Conway she wanted to stay.

Conway was shocked by everything that she saw. It soon became clear to the nanny that her darling Dorothea, along with other patients at Wilderness Heights, were bieng kept at the sanitarium against their will. She was furious! When she saw, to her horror, that Dr. Hazzard was even wearing some of Claire’s old dresses, the nanny became even more enraged. She threatened to take Dorothea away with her as soon as she could, whether or not Dr. Hazzard said that Dorothea was fit to leave!

Of course, the doctor said ‘no’, but Conway wasn’t about to go down without a fight. Even though she’d learned that Hazzard had attained legal guardianship of Dorothea and had stolen all her money, Conway still considered herself Dorothea’s nanny, and as such, she still had a responsibility to her charge, not to abandon her to a monster like Hazzard. Hazzard said that Dorothea had intended to live all the rest of her days at Wilderness Heights and that she wouldn’t leave without paying Hazzard at least $2,000, which was an astronomical sum of money in 1911!

Conway knew for a fact that she hadn’t the money. But she’d been working for the incredibly wealthy Williamson family for long enough to know who did. One evening, she snuck out of Wilderness Heights (which had no electricity, and thus, no telephone), and sent a telegram to Dorothea’s wealthy uncle. Appropriately so, Dorothea’s uncle wasn’t very happy about the news that his neice was being held to ransom! He bullied Hazzard into letting Dorothea go, which she finally did, for a substantially smaller price.

Free from the clutches of the evil Dr. Hazzard, Conway and the Williamsons started plotting the doctor’s downfall.


Dorothea Williamson, shortly after her departure from Wilderness Heights. Despite the poor quality of the photograph, the effects of Dr. Hazzard’s ‘fasting treatment’ are clearly evident

Arrest and Trial

Away from Dr. Hazzard and her starvation regime, Dorothea slowly began to heal and mend, under proper medical supervision and a proper diet. The Williamson family was enraged by what Dr. Hazzard had done, fasting specialist or not. The British Vice-Consul put pressure on the Washington state government to prosecute Hazzard for murder, but the government insisted that it didn’t have the money! Dorothea Williamson, now thoroughly recovered from her ordeal, said that she would gladly pay for the prosecution from her own funds, if the government would get off its backside and arrest Hazzard.

In August of 1911, Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard was arrested. Newspaper headlines screamed:

    ““Officials Expect to Expose Starvation Atrocities: Dr. Hazzard Depicted as Fiend.”
    – Tacoma Daily News, 1911

In court, Hazzard painted herself as a persecuted medical pioneer. People were attacking her because she was a *gasp*…WOMAN!! And nothing else! She claimed that she had perfectly sound reasons for everything she did. She even had her own defenders, ranging from former patients and even staff at her own sanitarium.

Despite everything, however, the prosecution won in the end. Or they sort of did. The jury returned with a verdict of ‘Manslaughter’. The newspaper media of the day widely theorised that Hazzard had escaped a verdict of ‘Murder’ purely because she was a woman and the jury refused to believe that a woman could do something like this.

The Aftermath

Despite the best efforts of Conway, The Williamson Family and the prosecution, Hazzard might as well never have gone to court at all, for all the good it did. Hazzard was sentenced to a mere two years in prison, after which she fled to New Zealand and started practicing again, killing even more patients. In 1920, she returned to Olalla. The Washington state government had pulled her medical license, so she couldn’t say she was a practicing doctor anymore, but that didn’t stop her from building another Wilderness Heights sanitarium where even more of her patients starved to death.

It all came crashing down in the end, though, in a way that almost nobody could imagine. In 1935, Wilderness Heights caught fire and burnt to the ground and Hazzard was forced to move out. Three years later in 1938, Hazzard was caught up in her own web of lies. She fell ill herself and attempted to use her own fasting-treatment to cure her illness, living mostly on her own prescription broth of tomatoes and asparagus. She died a few weeks later, presumably of starvation. In her roughly forty years of medical ‘care’, Hazzard is believed to have killed at least one dozen to as many as two dozen, or more, of her patients.

 

21 thoughts on “Welcome to Starvation Heights: The Home of Dr. Linda Burfield Hazzard

  1. William Franklin Betts says:

    My Mother Edith Marion Betts nee Berfield was a niece of Linda Hazard. That makes me one of Linda Hazzard’s great Nephews. Why the name Berfield was different from Burfield I do not know but the family tree shows we are of the same clan. I have memories of visiting Wilderness Heights as a child about 3 to 5 years old and sleeping in one of the small cabins the patients used to sleep in. My twin brother Bob and I were born in a renovated barn on the premises on 9-26-1929. My Mother had a cedar chest filled with letters and pictures of Wilderness Heights and
    Aunt Linda dating back before we were born and when she passed on a lot of the family data disappeared as well as the cedar chest. One of my Nieces had most of the data, letters and old photos but there are still a lot of photo’s missing. I recognized both of the photo’s shown in this article. One of Linda Hazzard and one of the house Uncle Sam and she lived in. Those pictures were in my Mothers cedar chest and I am very curious as to who gave you the pictures to post in this article re: Linda Hazzard. I have letters,or copies of letters, Sent by Aunt Linda and Uncle Sam to Aunt Nina Berfield nee Shoup and Uncle Judson Berfield also. Please inform me who gave you the photos shown in this article as it may help me to locate the other missing data.

    Sincerely,

    William Franklin Betts

     
    • scheong says:

      Hi William,

      Finding the photograph of Wilderness Heights was extremely difficult. I only managed to find the ONE photo on the ENTIRE internet. To my knowledge, it’s the only one that ever existed.

      I got it from this website: http://www.starvationheights.com/ It was the only half-reliable source for information about Dr. Hazzard that I could find.

       
    • Hi William,

      Would you be willing to share those photos?

      Thanks

      Darren

       
    • Lesley says:

      Dear sir,
      I do know that this post was well over a year ago but I only just here recently began to study this case involving your great aunt. At one point in time, I was studying to become a historian but then I had kids and developed pseudotumor cerebri which has since required 8 brain surguries and majorly impacted the way my brain now functions. I was so close to grauduating at one point in time & now I find myself having to start from scratch at the local community college.
      My husband, being navy, got us sent over here where we know absolutely no one and nothing around us until I stumbled across this topic by sheer accident. I am attempting to test myself on my research skills which used to be quite good as I’d actually won an award for them for getting information on a topic I was told there was no way I’d ever get live interviews on but I did.
      My focus with history has always laid mainly with the medieval period, what drove men like William Steward of England to remain so loyal in a time when everyone else was out for themselves? Psychologically analized, who would truely have had the most benefit from the death of the two little York princes in the Tower, Richard III or Hnery VII?
      I am more fascinated by what drives a person to be/become what they do. And from little research I have done, I believe she was, at least in her own mind no matter what anyone else said about her, no charlatan as she was accused of. She really believed in her fasting cure and from what I’ve read, I can see there were actually several sucesses but everyone seems to be so focused on the negative that those are totally eclipsed. Historians are supposed to only record & report the facts, 8 brain surguries, a recent staph infection growth on my shunt requiring more surgury & with all that along with a hole in my skull & a straw in my brain-and I remember that much. Its supposed to be the most important factor. To give people all the facts & then let them draw all their own conclusions.
      But long story short what I am asking is now that my husband has gone & gotten us stuck here in the Bangor/Bremerton area which obviously is rather close to Ollala which I’ve yet to figure out where it is. Is there any place in particular you might recommend as a possible research source? I do not know if there is in deed a museum that posibly has copies of the photographs you mention. I am particularly interested in seeing ones of the sanatarium as that was so important to her & from the few accounts I have read so far, it seems to have broken her heart to have lost her dream after having finally acheiving what she had worked so hard for, for so very long. I’m in no way writing a book. Not with my pseudotumor, navy husband, 4 kids(3 of whom have autism) & I am trying to go back to college at the community college. Its just she seems like such a strong dynamic woman for that time period who wouldn’t back down no matter what and I am fascinated in learning more about her. Anything new I do discover, if you are interested, I’d be glad to share with you but being family I bet ya’ll know it all. I’m just interested in seeing if I can still manage to somehow retrieve those skills from the recesses of my brain by making use of them. Its worked with some things not with math unfortunately as I landed in a remedial math course but you never know how each surgury will effect your brain each time. I do understand also if you have no interest as you are probably plagued with people who are faddists or just creepy wanting all the gory aspects. But please don’t get me confused with one of them. I thank you for your time.
      Sincerely,
      Lesley

       
  2. Adrienne says:

    Do you know how Linda Hazzard changed Washington State?

     
  3. There is a centennial “Last Gasp” tour being held at the original home of the Hazzards on July 16th. The tour guide is Gregg Olsen, author of the book Starvation Heights.

    Ticket information can be found on the site of the same name.

    Regards
    Darren

     
  4. gina oldham says:

    i wish i lived close enuf to see that house

     
  5. Lily Hunt says:

    Darren, what is there left to tour? I’m moving to within about an hour’s drive and would love to know whether it’s worth it! LOL

     
  6. deedee parks says:

    The owner was kind enough to give me a private tour today. She had quite alot of factual information, as much of it you read/hear is untrue. The house itself is in the slow process of being torn down, although is was liveable until about twenty years ago. It is now falling on it’s own. The best, and most accurate info I have read on this is “Starvation Heights”, by Greg Olsen. He is quite a famous author, but also lives in Olalla. As stated, the sanitarium did burn and is no longer there, however, before she was arrested she used the home to house residents. The home was smaller than I expected, though definaly had to be one of the nicer homes at that time. Greg’s book also has several pictures of home, etc. It is also a factual book. To get the true account of the story, and the history leading up to it, I would highly recommend reading the book. It is available in local libaries, as well as on Amazon.com or as an Ebook for Kindle. I am an Olalla resident, and so I am familiar with many of the places spoke of in book, however, after now seeing the house, the incenerator, etc. I am going to read it again, since I have a visual image to put to some of the places in the house spoken of. I would like to add, though, many sites, and even “paranormal” shows, have many untruths in them. As for it being haunted, I felt nothing of the sort, just sadness knowing what really wenton in that house. Again,, I recommend reading Greg’s book, for the truth. He knows the owners personally, and the house has been in their family for many years. In fact, it had stood empty for thirty years and they may have been the first purchasers when it went back on the market, though I cannot say this with full knowledge. Just giving the timelines she gave me, I think it is very possible.

     
    • Dr. Paul Douglas says:

      I am researching the starvation “cure” and I was hoping to contact the current owners of the property. Would you have any contact information?

       
  7. William Colliflower, M.D. says:

    Can you please send me the exact date of birth and death of linda Hazzard.
    Thank You,
    Bill

     
    • scheong says:

      Hi Doc,

      According to Wikipedia, she was born in 1867 and died in 1938. I haven’t been able to find any dates more specific than that. Her full name was Linda Burfield Hazzard, if that helps your search.

       
    • Veronica says:

      I know it has been years, but I did find some info in the Washington State Digital Archives:

      Birth: Carver, Minnesota
      Based on her census info and a passenger manifesto, Her birth date seems to be between April 2 and August 19, 1867

      Death: 24 Jun 1938 in Olalla, Kitsap, Washington

       
  8. nicole bean says:

    i just watched a television program “the dead files” last week.the story was about starvation heights. and dr. hazzard.i read in the article above that the home place caught fire and burned, but in the program it was still a standing structure,and the family who own the property had once lived in it,till they built a new home next door in which they used some of the materials from the old house, the staircase rails,doors,ect.in the show (true or false i dont know)a teenage boy had contacted them because he felt the place was “haunted”.and that since moving into the new house the haunting had moved with them.he admited to holding 17+ seances,with friends inside the old home on the property (starvation heights),on the show a clairvoyant claims to feel the spirit of dr hazzard,and patients,describes how she sees and feels the things that happened to them,at the end of the show they talk to the boys dad and tell him that the suggest he tears down the old home because it is whats “holding” the spirits there that they are attached to it.i was just unsure because in the program it showed the house and its the one in the photo above.

     
    • Nope says:

      There are two separate buildings, the Sanitarium, which burnt down, is set back in the woods behind the house. The house Amy investigates was the doctors reaidential home where she sometimes housed some of the patients. This was all told above

       
  9. Allison says:

    I have lived in Olalla my whole life that’s scary

     
  10. denise says:

    Very interesting..

     
  11. Marylouise says:

    I am reading Starvation Heights right now. I went to the Web to find a picture of the house and to see if there were tours. I see that there was on in 2011. This is 2014. Will there be any more tours?

     
    • I doubt there will be any more public tours as the house is in the process of being demolished. It is still standing and barely visible from the road. We drive by it frequently as it is between our house and my sister in law’s house. If you dont know it is there, you would never notice it as we drove by there for years without knowing it was the Starvation Heights home. The sanitarium is gone (burned) but the incenarator is there, but not visible from the road. The 2011 tours were on the 100th anniversary and benefitted the public library. The property is private and no one should attempt to tresspass without owners permission.

       

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