The lonely life of the late Littleton W. Walker
Less than a century ago, newspapers were the singlesource of information and entertainment for people in towns – large and small – across the country. There was local news and national/ international news from the Associated Press or UPI (these feeds came on ticker-tape-like machines, so loud they were banished to a sound-proof closet next to the managing editor’s office).
For entertainment, there were daily cartoons, crossword puzzles, serialized stories and jokes or funny tales. Entertainment also came in the form of news of bizarre happenings, readers’ favorites. The story of Mr. Littleton W. Walker of Washington, D.C., was one of those.
On October 17, 1897, the aged recluse was found dead in a coffin-like sleeping box in a little cupola bedroom atop the unfinished house he had built and fortified – with a strong fence, iron doors and chains – against intruders.
After its discovery, Walker’s body lay in the District’s Morgue, while officials awaited word from his son and only next-of-kin, Jay Walker, the United States vice-consul at Cairo, Egypt. Coroner A. Magruder MacDonald said Walker appeared to have been dead at least a week. He attributed the death to natural causes.
In the interim, police were piecing together the fragments of a bizarre story of the one-time prizefighter, wrestler, circus-strong man, inventor and contractor.
As a prizefighter, Walker boasted he once was a sparring partner for John L. Sullivan, who won the international ‘’bare-knuckle" championship in 1882. Walker eventually quit the prize fight game because a man he had beaten in the bout later died. Although the death was accidental and he was not blamed, Walker said he never could fight again after that.
To solve the mystery of the old hermit’s life and death, police searched through trunks of letters and pictures and piles of engineering books and tools, covered with dust in the bare rooms of his filthy hermit home.
The few people with whom Walker had spoken in recent years were able to contribute only scraps of information to police and journalists about his past life:
Littleton Walker became prominent as a building contractor, allegedly building post offices in 36 States, and claiming himself to be a master carpenter and stoneworker, as attested by the fine quality of workmanship on the "mystery house” he never finished.
The story grows confused when it comes to Walker's more personal life.
His first wife was believed to have died. He married again some years later and at the same time, started building the house in which he died. Then domestic trouble developed.
Some say his second wife left him. Others, that he divorced her and became reclusive.
In his personal effects, police found a letter from the law firm of Dorsey & Cole, local patent attorneys, which led to the disclosure that he had obtained a patent 10 years ago for a "combined wheel scraper and brace for wheelbarrows." Patent office records show the patent was issued to Walker on November 8, 1927. His invention consisted of a blade of spring metal attached to the wheel of the wheelbarrow to scrape off mud, and widening at the rear to brace it.
Also among Walker's effects was a nicelypreserved portrait of a beautiful girl, about 22, wearing a bustle in the fashion of the first part of the century.
K. H. McCraw of Roanoke, Virginia, appeared at the “mystery house" several days after Walker’s death. He told police his father had known Walker and believed Walker had a half-brother, John Walker, a retired policeman, living in Norfolk, Virginia., and other relatives in Lynchburg, Virginia.
Walker's body was found by Hyman Posin, who hunted for two hours through the barricaded house before finding the strange sleeping box.
Posin's father, Abraham Posin, operated a delicatessen in the Arcade Market, and for the last five years, Walker had been doing occasional odd jobs — bits of carpentry and sometimes picking chickens — for Posin, in return for enough food to live on.
Walker went to the delicatessen for the last time a week before his death and got enough food to last a week. He said then if he was not back by Thursday, Posin should come to see about him because he might be sick.
Recalling this premonition, young Posin took a bag of groceries to Walker's home on October 17th. When he received no answer to his calls, he borrowed a file from a neighbor and cut through a padlock on the gate in the stone, barbed-wire covered fence. Then he made his way slowly through the strange home, with quirky passageways and rough "gangplanks" instead of stairs leading to the cupola.
Young Posin finally discovered the body in the box, which Walker had boasted kept him warm in the coldest weather. The box was 6 feet long, 4 feet high and about 18 inches wide, with a glass door at one end and an air vent in the side. Walker apparently had crawled, feet-first, through the glass door onto an automobile cushion mattress to rest on the bedlike coffin and pulled the door shut behind his head.
Discovering an unresponsive Walker, young Posin called police, who were amazed at the conditions under which Walker had lived. There was no plumbing, no electricity, lights or stove in the unfinished house or other cooking or heating facilities. Police were told Walker ate his food raw.
To remove Littleton Walker’s body, men from Joseph Gawler Sons Funeral Directors secured the remains in an oblong basket. Then, by two men climbing onto the roof, the basket was lowered to a third man on the ground.
Walker’s cremated remains? No record exists of his final disposition.