The Starvation Doctor

New Zealand has more than enough criminals of its own without importing them.
But in 1915 a woman who had been convicted of one murder and suspected of more moved here and made headlines.
Linda Laura Hazzard was nicknamed the Starvation Doctor for her ideas that led to her being convicted of the death of one woman but was likely responsible for the deaths of many more.
She had been born Lynda Laura Burfield in Minnesota on December 18, 1867, the eldest child of Montgomery and Susanna Burfield.
She never had any type of medical degree but through a loophole in the law was able to practise medicine as an alternative practitioner.
Linda developed a fasting method that she claimed cured all sorts of illnesses.
She even wrote three books about fasting.
In Washington she established a sanitarium called Wilderness Heights where patients went to fast for days, or weeks and sometimes months. They existed on small amounts of tomato, asparagus juice and sometimes orange juice.
Some of course survived but dozens died in her care. She always claimed they had died of some undiagnosed illness.
Opponents claimed she was simply starving them to death.
In 1912, she was convicted of the manslaughter of Claire Williamson, a wealthy British woman, who weighed less than fifty pounds at the time of her death. At the trial, it was proven that Hazzard had forged Williamson's will and stolen most of her valuables.
Hazzard was sentenced to 2-20 years in prison.
By 1915 she was granted a pardon but she and her husband Samuel Hazzard opted to move to New Zealand where she practised as a dietician and osteopath.
Despite a Whanganui paper reporting she had a medical qualification in America she ended up being charged here with using the title doctor and not being registered here.
She was fined £5.
Three years later she and her husband returned to Olalla, America and opened a new sanitarium- but it was called a school of health as her medical license there had been revoked.
Linda continued to supervise fasts until the ‘school’ burned down in 1935 and she never tried to rebuild it.
It’s hard to know now whether she was simply ahead of her time or truly a killer. A newspaper article about her mentions her work in chiropractics where she talking about therapeutic treatment for disease through the adjustment of the spine, to relieving pressure or tension upon nerve filaments.
She says that many troubles arise from a slipping of a vertebra which presses on a nerve. Dr. Hazzard uses chiropractic methods largely in the care of lumbago, which is commonly considered a form of rheumatism. She says that lumbago is caused by the slipping of a vertebra in the lumbar region, and that the care is to adjust the vertebra back into its place.
Creepily the paper said a large portion of Dr. Hazzard's knowledge of the human body has been gained by post mortem examinations, she haying performed some' hundreds of these during the past sixteen years.
Ironically Hazzard herself died of starvation in 1938 while attempting a fasting cure and was buried in the Queen Anne Columbarium in Seattle.​