A Burglar Caught by a Skeleton & Other Singular Tales from the Victorian Press (41 page)

An Amusing Scene in Sheffield

Yesterday a crowd gathered on the canal bank, near Messrs. Turton’s bridge, to witness the issue of a singular wager.

A man named Carrol had made a bet that he could pull a cat across the water, and the wager had provided ample food for bar-parlour gossip. Carrol stood on one bank of the canal, and the cat was held on the other. Pussy had a rope round its body, and the other end of the rope was placed round Carrol’s waist.

At a given signal, when Carrol began to pull at the cat, some wags on the opposite bank seized the rope and dragged Carrol himself into the water, so that he not only lost the bet, but was the object of much mirth, although the ‘carol’ to which he gave expression when he got out of the canal had little that was joyous about it.

The Sheffield and Rotherham Independent
, August 27, 1883

A Mad Wager

A curious wager with fatal results was recently decided at Siepring, in Bavaria (says
Vanity Fair
). A notoriously strong man, named Freytag, betted that a horse could not move him from the door of his house.

The horse was brought, and Freytag put his hands and feet against the door-posts, whilst Stern, the man with whom the bet was made, fixed a rope round Freytag’s neck.

At the first pull the rope broke. A new rope having been brought, Stern plied his whip with all his might, when Freytag gave a scream, and, letting go, was dragged along for some yards. His neck was broken.

The Citizen
, Gloucester, August 25, 1890

An Extraordinary Wager

The eccentric individual who a short time since undertook for a wager of a thousand francs to travel from Romorantin to Paris on foot, escorted by fifty rabbits, and accomplish the distance in the space of five days, encouraged by the successful issue of his first enterprise, has just announced his willingness to start on a second expedition of a similar nature.

The difficulties he encountered on the first occasion were not slight. A fortnight before starting he selected, he says, 25 male and 25 female rabbits, which troop he endeavoured to accustom to the work cut out for them by training them to the required indifference to dogs, carriages, and other objects liable to alarm their timid nature.

At the outset the rabbits proved distressingly refractory. At every noise, every sound, they scampered away right and left, helter-skelter, refusing to be coaxed back into order, causing thus much precious time to be lost.

In despair at the prospect of losing both the wager and his reputation, their leader tried the effect of a stimulant; to each rabbit he administered a small dose of eau-de-vie, which appears to have supplied the troop with a courage foreign to their nature.

No longer timorous, they bounded forward with such speed that their owner had some difficulty in keeping up with them, arriving in Paris some hours before the expiration of the time fixed for the singular excursion.

Proud of his achievement, he has just offered to accept bets with any one disposed to make them for his second enterprise. This time, confident in his rabbits, especially when under the influence of brandy, he proposes to perambulate the Paris Exhibition at midday on any given Sunday, and to make his exit without there being one of the animals lacking.

After the accomplishment of this feat he backs himself, and invites others to back him, for an excursion to Berlin, which city he promises to reach in twenty-two days with his troop of rabbits intact.

The Edinburgh Evening News
, June 19, 1878

A Suicidal Wager

The prevalent mania for performing insane feats of endurance appears to have ‘caught on’ in India, with results that might have been anticipated.

With an ardent desire for fame and with stupid originality, a Mahommedan made a wager with a co-religionist that he would stand gazing at the Indian sun for 10 hours on end.

On the appointed day, at eight o’clock in the morning, the aspirant to immortality took up his position face to face with the sun-god. As the hours went by a vast crowd of excited sportsmen surrounded the man and eagerly looked on while he was suffering visible defeat.

At three o’clock he fell down in a fit, beaten by three hours, and very shortly afterwards he died.

Supplement to the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser
, October 23, 1886

Death Follows a Wager.

A Story with a Moral

The London
Mail
’s Paris correspondent says that two men in a tavern in the Latin quarter were boasting of their drinking powers, and one wagered twenty francs with the other that he could drink twenty-four absinthes.

He won the bet, and proceeded home. Shortly afterwards his companion, who lived in the same house, left the tavern for his house. As he mounted the staircase he found the drinker dead, hanging over the banisters. He was so horrified that he fell down the stairs and broke his leg.

The Midland Daily Telegraph
, Coventry, February 3, 1899

Extraordinary Brutality

We are informed that on the afternoon of Thursday last, a village not a hundred miles from Kegworth was the scene of a most extraordinary, and, at the same time, most disgusting incident.

A man, it is alleged, made a wager that he would kill a rat by worrying it to death with his mouth. The bet was at once accepted; upon which a live rat was produced and placed upon the table of a public house, and its escape prevented by a cord of the length of three-quarters of a yard being placed round its neck, and fastened to a nail inserted in the wood.

The fellow thereupon commenced his pursuit of the frightened animal, and it was only with considerable difficulty that it was at length secured. The man’s object was to seize the rat with his mouth by the back of the neck; and for this purpose he made a series of lunges with his head. One snap, however, having failed, the rat at once buried its teeth in his cheek, making it bleed most profusely.

This unexpected rebuff at once aroused the rage and fury of the assailant, who immediately renewed the attack, and plunged his teeth in the belly of the animal, which still clung to his face.

The consequence was that the rat was compelled to relax its hold; fell upon the table half-dead; was once more attacked by its inhuman foe, bitten on the back of the neck, and speedily thereafter dispatched.

Incredible as it may seem, it is stated that the same fellow, and another equally brutal, have offered to test at no distant date which can thus cruelly massacre the largest number of such vermin in a specified time; but it is earnestly to be hoped that the police will interfere to prevent more of such cruel and ferocious so-called ‘sport.’

The Leicester Chronicle and Leicestershire Mercury
, February 26, 1876

A Fatal Wager

One day last week, says the Spanish paper
Eco del Navarra
, a wager was made between two men, which ended in the death of one of them and the narrow escape of the other.

The object of the bet was to see which of them, after remaining a day without food, should be able to drink 17 glasses of strong wine, and then walk from Pampeluna to Eransus, a place about 6½ miles distant.