A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (34 page)

A Curious Superstition

At Brazcka, in Bosnia, an old superstition has come to life again which resembles the fables of Jewish ritual murders. In Bosnia the people have believed at all times that a bridge could not be firm and lasting unless a human being was walled up in it. Thus there is a legend connected with the handsome Roman bridge at Mostar, which says that the fine arch across the Narenta could not be finished until the architect walled up in it a bridal pair.

Now that a solid bridge is being built across the Save at Brazcka, this superstition is revived. It is rumoured everywhere that gipsies are stealing children to sell them to the contractors, who wall one up in each pillar.

The Yorkshire Evening Post
, August 12, 1893

Singular Superstition: Laying a Ghost

A Newhaven despatch to a New York paper says: In the Roman Catholic Cemetery in Birmingham, early on the morning of the 18th ult., four middle-aged women and two men, the latter armed with spades and picks, entered by the side gate and halted in front of a newly-made grave.

The men set to work, while the women wept, and opened the grave and hauled a coffin up. The lid was taken off, and the remains of a beautiful young girl were revealed. She was the daughter of one of the women, and the mother shrieked loudly when she saw the corpse.

The men stood aside and the four women bent over the coffin, and deft fingers went rapidly through the dead girl’s hair and shroud, and all the pins that could be found on the remains were removed. Then a needle and thread were procured, and the shroud and hair sewn back into their places. The lid was then screwed back on the coffin, and the remains were again lowered into the grave, which was at once filled up.

It was learned that the women were of a very superstitious nature, and that they believed that if a corpse is buried with the shroud pinned up, instead of sewed, the soul will be confined to the grave for eternity, and the persons guilty of the mistake will be haunted till death by the ghost of the victim.

A mistake was made in this case, and one of the women claims that she had seen the ghost for two or three nights successively, and she could stand it no longer; so she got the other women together, and between them they hired the men to disinter the body. The ghost has not been seen since.

The Manchester Evening News
, March 10, 1886

Extraordinary Superstition.

Burning Jews’ Bones for Typhus

In Galicia a trial has just taken place which reveals extraordinary ignorance and gross superstition among the peasantry of that province. It was discovered at Rzeszow some time ago, says a Vienna correspondent, that several Jewish graves had been broken open, and that the bodies of two children were missing.

The police made inquiries, and found out that in a neighbouring village, where typhus fever had broken out, a so-called ‘miracle doctor’ had prescribed, as a cure, the burning of the bones of a Jew in the patient’s room. When the house of this man was searched, human flesh and bones and a child’s skull were found.

The patient had died, notwithstanding the burning of the bones, and the widow of the deceased described how the ‘miracle doctor’ had set about his cure. He had told her that there were two kinds of typhus. One, the Catholic typhus, could be cured by prayer and exhortation; the other, the Jewish typhus, could only be got rid of by the means described.

He brought the bones himself, with water from a well from which no man had ever drunk, and burnt the bones on a charcoal fire, nearly smothering them all with the terrible fumes.

Then while the room was full of smoke he mumbled some strange words, and hunted round the table, pretending to catch the typhus, which he then put into the water-bottle, and made all present partake of its contents. The ‘doctor’ was sentenced to five months’ imprisonment.

The Citizen
, Gloucester,
July 26, 1890

Singular Superstition

Dalziel’s Agency, dating from Sarnia (Ontario), Nov. 11, states: The members of a religious sect known as ‘Israelites’ are preparing to migrate to England, being possessed with the idea that the world will shortly come to an end, and that England is the proper place to be in when that event happens.

The York Herald
, November 14, 1891

Strange Superstition

An extraordinary case of superstition is reported from Sherborne, in Dorsetshire. In Cold Harbour, on Friday last, an old woman, named Sarah Smith, aged eighty-three, was violently attacked by a next-door neighbour, in order that the latter might ‘draw blood,’ on the ground that she had bewitched her neighbour’s daughter, a confirmed invalid.

The old woman, who is well known as a quiet, inoffensive person, was in her garden when she was attacked, and the blood was ‘drawn’ by a darning-needle being driven several times into her hands and arms.

The Liverpool Echo
, September 30, 1884

Shocking Superstition

An Irish paper reports a case of gross superstition disclosed at a trial at the recent Loughgall (County Antrim) Petty Sessions.

A man named Hagan was summoned by his wife, Sarah Hagan, for gross ill-treatment, the cause of which was the loss of a talisman which Hagan believed enabled him to become invisible at certain times and places.

This mysterious power is communicated by the possession of ‘a dead man’s finger.’ It certainly must have once been part of a very bad man, for its possessor seems to have used it for very bad purposes, his wife having sworn that he kept it because by means of it he could enter any man’s dwelling, go behind his counter, and rob his drawers without being observed or detected. This was her evidence, but she could not say if the finger had ever been so employed.

No doubt to a thief such a relic would be valuable. Hagan regarded it in that light; it endowed him with a charmed existence, and, because his wife could not account for it, he gave her a most unmerciful beating, and threatened to take her life. The truth appears to be that the poor woman became alarmed at the conduct of her husband in carrying about the finger, and she buried it in a neighbour’s field and forgot the place of interment.

No excuse could satisfy Hagan. He should have the finger and nothing but the finger; so that the poor woman, failing to discover it, felt the power of his fingers in a very unmanly way. The Bench ordered him to find bail to keep the peace for 12 months.

The Taunton Courier
, September 23, 1863

A Wonderful Story.

Extraordinary Proceedings

A Shrewsbury correspondent has sent to the
Standard
reports of extraordinary occurrences which took place last week at the village of Weston Fullenfield. A servant named Emma Davies, living with Mr Hampson, a farmer, was discharged, that gentleman and his wife feeling anything but comfortable at her presence.

On Thursday week the girl went to assist Mrs Jones, a neighbour, to wash the household linen, but had not long been engaged in this occupation when the bucket in which she was washing jumped about the house, throwing water and clothes in all directions.

The family Bible and other books placed on a side table did the same, narrowly escaping the flames. On attempting to pick them up a boot flew over the girl’s head, striking the mantelpiece.

Later on, when both women went out to place the clothes on the hedge for drying, those that the girl placed jumped over into the road. Mrs Jones, getting alarmed, ordered the girl home.

On arriving there, her presence induced a lump of coal to leap from the fire across the room to a table; and the flowerpots in the window also behaved in an extraordinary manner.

The girl shortly afterwards went out to fetch her father, but before proceeding far she became very ill and fell down in the road. She was conveyed back to her home and a physician called in.

On Saturday afternoon, the correspondent visited the village, and, he says, found sufficient evidence to confirm every detail of the remarkable event. The girl, who is in her thirteenth year, resides in the village with her parents.