There is a standing theory in my family that Paul Yule (my paternal great grandfather) poisoned his wife (my great grandmother) by feeding her mushrooms. Months of searching finally turned up her obituary which was published in the Marin Journal on Thursday, April 11, 1918 and reads as follows:
Woman Dies From Eating Toadstool
Mrs. Marian Yule of the Murray Tract, Kentfield, is dead, and her husband, Paul Yule is ill as the result of eating a toadstool which they mistook for a mushroom.
Mrs. Yule picked the fungus in her yard Sunday, and Monday morning prepared it for breakfast. Her husband, arguing that neither of them was familiar with mushrooms, protested against their eating it, but Mrs. Yule declared that the plant conformed to all the tests she had heard of, insisted that it was a mushroom. Her husband, however, refused to eat more than a bite of it.
Mrs. Yule was taken violently sick during the day and grew steadily worse until Wednesday morning when she passed away. She leaves an eight months old baby.
The couple had lived in Kentfield about two years. The husband is a carpenter.
The funeral was held this morning at Sawyer’s Parlors, with Rev. Chrysler of the Methodist church officiating, and burial was made in Mt. Tamalpais cemetery. Mrs. Yule was 31 years of age.I have contacted the Mt. Tamalpais Cemetery to confirm her burial location and to hopefully get a picture of her headstone.
The question of whether Paul purposely killed Marion is still open for discussion. My cousin, who coincidentally knows something of mushrooms, told me that if she truly was familiar with mushrooms she would never had made this error. Further, if Paul had eaten even a bit of this thing he too would have died. My aunt backs the theory of suspicious poisoning. It seems that when Charlotte (the eight month old baby) was growing up, there was a lot of talk in the neighborhood about how she best mind her behavior lest she also become a victim to her father.
I guess we'll never really know, but I feel a bit of closure having found her actual obit and at least got Paul's side of the story.
