Laura Wright 
In an old St. Louis hospital, there was once a corner where patients seemed to die.
It apparently did not matter whether their injuries were serious. Patients who appeared to be recovering could be placed in that particular corner of the room and suddenly deteriorate. Others occupying different parts of the very same room experienced no such problem.
Doctors examined the phenomenon.
Engineers searched for an explanation.
Nothing obvious was found.
Eventually, the strange location acquired an ominous name.
It became known as the Corner of Death.
An Old Hospital in St. Louis
In 1905, a new hospital was being constructed in St. Louis, Missouri.
The city’s existing hospital facilities had suffered terribly after a disastrous tornado struck the area in 1897. The storm destroyed the City Hospital along with numerous other structures.
While Emergency Hospital No. 1 was under construction, an empty institution known as the Convent of the Asylum of the House of Good Shepherd was selected for use as a replacement hospital.
The old hospital was located between 17th and Pine Streets.
It was there that one particular section of the building developed an extraordinary reputation.
The Corner of Death
One of the strangest features of the House of Good Shepherd facility became known as the Corner of Death.
According to the story, patients placed there died.
Their original condition apparently made little difference. Even people suffering from relatively mild ailments could unexpectedly deteriorate after being assigned to the corner.
More peculiar still, patients placed elsewhere in the very same room did not experience the same fate.
The hospital investigated.
Regular examinations were performed, and engineers reportedly checked the area in an effort to determine whether something about the building itself might explain the deaths.
No satisfactory explanation emerged.
Then an unusual pattern developed among some of the people who died there.
Their stories were connected.
Curly Keys Enters the Corner
One frequently repeated example involved a rustic saloonkeeper named Curly Keys.
Keys became involved in an altercation with a man named Bill Condon. Both men drew weapons, and Keys was shot.
His wound was not immediately fatal.
In fact, Keys seemed to be recuperating reasonably well.
Then hospital staff needed a place for him.
The infamous corner was the only unoccupied location available.
Keys was moved there.
Within days, he was dead.
His death would have been peculiar enough by itself.
But Bill Condon would eventually occupy the same corner.
Bill Condon Follows Him
Condon was brought to trial for shooting Keys.
He successfully argued that he had acted in self-defense and was cleared.
Approximately a year passed.
Then Condon found himself in trouble with the law again.
This time, he resisted arrest and became involved in a physical struggle with police. During the confrontation, Condon suffered an ironic injury.
He was shot.
Condon was transported to the hospital.
And somehow, he ended up in the same corner where Curly Keys had died.
Condon died there as well.
The strange chain still wasn’t finished.
Another Death in the Same Corner
The detective who shot Condon was named Williams.
Later, Williams’s father, W. Williams, became involved in an altercation with his employer.
Like Keys and Condon before him, the confrontation escalated until weapons were drawn.
Williams was shot.
He was taken to the hospital for treatment.
Then he was placed in the cursed corner.
He died.
Three violent confrontations had now produced three wounded men whose stories were connected.
And all three eventually died in the same part of the same hospital room.
By then, the corner’s reputation must have been difficult to ignore.
But according to the legend, the curse had begun before any of them arrived.
The Woman Who Cursed the Corner
The supposed origin of the Corner of Death involved an unidentified female patient.
She was described as a Jane Doe and believed to be a gypsy.
According to the account, the woman possessed a violent and irrational temper. Her frequent outbursts and demands shocked many of the nuns working at the House of Good Shepherd.
Her physician eventually ordered her confined to bed because of both her medical condition and her behavior.
That only made matters worse.
The woman became so difficult to control that physical restraints were eventually considered necessary.
Then one morning, she heard a religious service taking place in the nearby chapel.
A Hatred of Religious Rites
The unidentified woman reportedly reacted violently whenever nuns or priests attempted to console her with prayer or scripture.
Mention of religious texts or rites sent her into fits of cursing and thrashing.
When she heard the nearby religious service, something apparently snapped.
She managed to free herself from her restraints.
Then she fled from her hospital bed and rushed into the service.
Precisely what she intended to do is unknown.
Hospital staff apprehended her in the middle of the gathering.
That was apparently the final provocation.
The Curse
The woman was physically dragged back to her hospital bed.
She screamed as they carried her.
Before doctors could sedate her, she supposedly pronounced a curse upon the corner where she had been confined.
Anyone placed there would die.
What ultimately happened to the mysterious patient was never recorded.
But according to the legend, her curse remained.
Every subsequent death in that section of the hospital became another piece of evidence that the unidentified woman’s final threat had somehow taken hold.
What Did “Hoodooed” Mean?
The old description of the location as a “hoodooed corner” deserves some explanation for modern readers.
Historically, hoodooed was sometimes used colloquially to mean cursed, jinxed, or afflicted by persistent bad luck. The word could therefore appear in old newspaper accounts without necessarily describing an actual hoodoo religious or magical practice.
Hoodoo itself has a much more specific history. It developed as an African American folk spiritual tradition incorporating practices involving roots, herbs, household objects, charms, protection, divination, and other forms of conjure or rootwork.
In the context of the St. Louis story, however, “hoodooed corner” appears to have meant simply a corner believed to be cursed.
That distinction matters, because the unidentified woman blamed for the curse was described in the old account as a “gypsy.” Nothing in the surviving story demonstrates that she practiced hoodoo.
The terminology probably tells us more about the language and superstitions of the period than it does about the mysterious woman’s actual identity.
Was There a Physical Explanation?
A hospital corner that appeared unusually deadly naturally raises possibilities other than a curse.
Could there have been something structurally wrong with that part of the building?
Poor ventilation, contamination, environmental hazards, sanitation problems, or some other condition might theoretically have affected patients placed in one location more severely than those elsewhere.
According to the story, however, examinations and engineering inspections failed to uncover an explanation.
There is also the possibility of coincidence amplified by reputation.
Once doctors, nurses, patients, and visitors became aware that a particular corner was considered deadly, every subsequent death there would reinforce the story. Patients who recovered elsewhere would be forgotten. Those who died in the notorious corner would become part of its legend.
Yet the peculiar chain connecting Keys, Condon, and Williams ensured that this was not easily forgotten.
What Became of the Hospital?
The buildings associated with the story eventually disappeared or found new purposes.
According to the available history, Emergency Hospital No. 1 continued operating until it was abandoned in 1985. The building was eventually renovated into condominiums.
The Convent of the Asylum of the House of Good Shepherd later became a home for so-called “wayward girls.”
It was demolished during the 1960s.
With its destruction went any opportunity to examine the infamous corner using modern methods.
Was the Corner Really Cursed?
Perhaps there was never anything supernatural about the Corner of Death.
Hospitals are places where people die, and an unusual cluster of deaths can acquire significance simply because people begin looking for a pattern.
But this particular story contains a remarkable sequence.
Curly Keys was shot and appeared to be recovering until he was placed in the corner.
Bill Condon, the man who shot him, later suffered a gunshot wound of his own and died in the same place.
Then the father of the detective who shot Condon was wounded in another altercation.
He, too, was placed in the corner.
He, too, died.
Behind all three deaths lingered the older story of an unidentified woman who supposedly cursed that exact location after being dragged back to her hospital bed.
Coincidence may explain everything.
The old hospital is gone, and the mysterious patient who supposedly began the legend disappeared into history.
But for a time in St. Louis, apparently everyone knew there was one place in the hospital where you did not want your bed.
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