Tenants Scare Landlady To Death; She Thinks House Haunted

1907

SILLY JOKE FRIGHTENS A LANDLADY TO DEATH

Mischievous Tenants Literally Scare the Life Out of an Aged Woman in a Paris Lodging House

PARIS, Jan 6.—Several tenants of a house in the Quartier Saint Lambert now express sincere regret for some practical jokes they practiced on their landlady, Madame Mayet, aged 83. Madame Mayet was literally frightened to death.

Some weeks ago she approached the police commissary of the quarter and said:

"I ask you to help me drive out the bad spirits which infest my house. They haunt it night and day and disturb me by rapping on the wall. They even enter the apartments of my tenants, one of whom has given me notice this morning that he will quit if the nuisance does not cease."

The police commissary concluded that the old lady was slightly unbalanced, and a summary inquiry by two policemen confirmed his view. Two days later, however, Madame Mayet was found dead in her bed with every indication that she had died of fright.

At her funeral the tenants sent a magnificent crown of flowers, with the inscription, "Many regrets." The police commissary questioned them closely and they admitted that they had been the rapping spirits. They wanted the old lady to go elsewhere and imagined that the best way to get rid of her was to frighten her. They were sorry for the tragic result.

The police reprimanded them severely and warned them that the next time a crown of flowers and words of regret at a funeral would not be sufficient atonement.

You Can't Even Be Born These Days!

1920

Landlords Put Clause Against Babies in Lease

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The old-fashioned landlord who refused to let an apartment to a family including very young children was a gentleman, scholar and philanthropist, E. W. Engel, a Brooklyn attorney, says, in comparison to a new variety of landlord which has sprung up in parts of the Brownsville district and adopted the rule:

BABIES ARE FORBIDDEN TO BE BORN ON THESE PREMISES.

Attorney Engel, who represents the Tenants' Union of Brownsville, exhibited a new form of lease wherein the landlord lets and the tenant hires an apartment for one year, "to be used and occupied for dwelling purposes only by father, mother and not more than two children."

"In my opinion," said Mr. Engel, "there isn't a court in christendom that would sustain a lease with this clause in it. Without question it is against public policy. But it serves to show the spirit animating a certain percentage of the profiteering landlords of today, who will have to be brought to book pretty soon if New York is to escape serious trouble.

—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, March 20, 1920, page 1.