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.

Friday the 13th and 12-12-12

1912

TODAY WAS LAST OF THE HOODOO DATES

Friday the Thirteenth Will Not Come Again Until June 1913 a Genuine Jonah Day.

. .B-e-w-a-r-e! This is Friday the 13th! But, thank goodness, it is the last "hoodoo" day we will have this year. Next year only one Friday falls on the unlucky number. It is June 13, 1912.

Yesterday was Dec. 12, — or, written in business form, 12-12-12. No triple set of numerals will be seen again until Jan. 1, 2001, which may be written 1-1-1.

Christmas shoppers took warning and kept their clutches tightened on handbags and pocketbooks.

The superstitious dread of the number 13 seems to have spread over the earth. It is said Italians never use it in making up the numbers for their lotteries; that the thirteenth card in one of their games bears the figure of Death, and that no house in Paris is No. 13. The Quatorziemes are persons known in Parisian society who hold themselves in readiness to go to any dinner which otherwise would have the fatal 13 at the table.

—Janesville Daily Gazette, Janesville, Wisconsin, Dec. 13, 1912, p. 14.


Today Friday, Thirteenth and Yesterday, 12-12-12

Today is Friday the thirteenth, the last unlucky day of its kind until the second week of June, which the superstitious believe will be especially unlucky on account of the year being 1913. Yesterday the date could be Written "12-12-12," and it will be 88 years before the similarity is duplicated. January 1, 2001, can be written "1-1-1."

—Colorado Springs Gazette, Colorado Springs, CO, Dec. 13, 1912.


THURSDAY WILL BE 12-12-12

Making the Last of Such Combinations for 88 Years.

Thursday, when the "tired business man" and the busy stenographer dash off a letter headed by 12-12-12 on the date line, few will recognize the fact that it is a calendar peculiarity, the last of a series of twelve such which will not recur again for 88 years, or until the dawning of a new century.

The superstitious may draw satisfaction from the fact that the following Friday is the last that will occur in his lifetime falling upon the thirteenth and having the sum of the numerals of the year likewise make the fateful thirteen.

—The Mansfield News, Mansfield, Ohio, Dec. 10, 1912, p. 8.

How Wealthy Woman Is Trying to Evade Witch's Hoodoo

Washington, D.C., 1905

HOUSE WITHIN A HOUSE.

How a Wealthy Woman Will Evade Witch's Hoodoo.

Washington Star: A palace built literally around a superstition is Washington's newest marvel, and one may safely say that nothing to match it has ever been seen anywhere. Baronial castles, as well as edifices of other kinds, often gain resident spooks or acquire curses as incidents of their history, but it has not been the fashion hitherto to provide in the architect's plans against such troubles, and the notion of embodying a hoodoo killer in the very fabric of a mansion is wholly novel.

The owner of this remarkable house, which as yet is not quite half finished, is Mrs. R. H. Townsend of Philadelphia. Before her marriage she was Mary Scott, a daughter of the late Col. "Tom" Scott, of Pennsylvania railroad fame. Her wealth runs into the millions, and the mansion aforesaid will cost her about $400,000. It will be nearly twice the size of the famous Leiter house, on Dupont circle, being 125 feet in width and 123 feet in depth. Mrs. Townsend is building it, she says, for her youngest daughter, now 17 years of age, and almost ready to enter society. It will be the scene, doubtless, of some of the most gorgeous entertainments ever given at the national capital.

Now, once upon a time — a very proper way to begin such a story as this — Mrs. Townsend interviewed a witch. It was a remarkably clever witch, and, in revealing the future to her lady patron, she predicted a number of events since realized with astonishing accuracy in Mrs. Townsend's life. It was a very bright and cheerful picture she drew, on the whole one may command a good deal of brightness and cheerfulness if one possesses millions of dollars — but there was one unpleasant prognostication. This was that if Mrs. Townsend ever occupied a dwelling which had never been lived in before she would die within six months after moving in.

This prophecy struck Mrs. Townsend as grewsome, to say the least, and up to now she has carefully avoided all risk of incurring the penalty suggested. Though anxious for some time past to move her residence to Washington and build a home here, she has been restrained from the accomplishment of this desire by the witch's ominous vaticination. She had thought of buying a house, but could find none that was large enough or adequate in other respects for her purposes. At length, however, she hit upon an ingenious method of evading the hoodoo and getting what she wanted at the same time. She decided to purchase the old Hillyer mansion on Massachusetts avenue, and to construct a palace around it. This she is doing in such a manner that while occupying the new mansion, she will actually live in the old Hillyer house, the skeleton of which is retained as a middle portion of the revamped structure. Her bedroom, her dressingroom and bathroom and her boudoir will be in the ancient dwelling, the original floor joists and framework, as well as the roof, being kept intact.

Thus the hoodoo will be defeated, inasmuch as the construction on which the builders are now engaged comes under the head of "alterations," technically speaking, and Mrs. Townsend may consider herself safe against the fulfillment of the conditional threat recorded against her in the book of fate.

—Daily Iowa State Press, Iowa City, IA, Nov. 3, 1899, p. 2.