Two Husbands Killed by Same Rattlesnake

1916

Woman Made Widow Second Time — Reptile Is Then Captured and Slain.

HATTIESBURG, Mississippi. — W. C. Cole, Hattiesburg grocer, has just received a dead rattlesnake which he says was responsible for the death of two husbands of a woman in the logging camps of Mississippi.

"I do not want to mention the woman's name," said Mr. Cole, "as she begged me not to. Some two years ago her husband was killed by a snake while logging. He was bitten, the fangs of the snake penetrating a high top boot.

"After his death another lumberman married the woman. Being poor, she offered him her dead husband's high top boots. He accepted them. He died a few days later from snake poisoning. It was found that the fang of the snake was imbedded in the boot and had penetrated the flesh of the second husband, also poisoning him."

Mr. Cole says this is the first case of the kind he ever heard and that several hunters captured and killed the snake.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Sept. 16, 1916, p. 7.