Hearse Seen on Way to Wedding is an Ill-Omen: 1904

classical hearse 1904

Hearse Met on Way to Wedding: Death Follows.

A strange wedding tragedy was the subject of investigation by the Plymouth, England, coroner yesterday.

On Wednesday Mary Dicker, the wife of a laborer, set out with her husband and daughter for the church where the latter was to be married to a young man named Menhennitt. On their way the wedding party met a funeral procession, and Mrs. Dicker was so much affected by this evil omen that she trembled violently all the way to the church, and declared that some calamity was bound to follow.

In the evening the bridegroom’s father gave a wedding party, and Mrs. Dicker, who seemed by that time to have recovered form her fright and to be in the best of spirits, was asked to sing a song. She did so, while still sitting in her chair.

In the middle of the song she fell forward and it was thought that she had fainted. She was carried into an adjoining bedroom, and a doctor was sent for, but before he arrived the morning’s ill omen had been fulfilled and she was dead.

It appeared that she had suffered a good deal from heart trouble, though the symptoms had disappeared during the last 12 months. Dr. Croft Symons stated that death was due to syncope brought on by the excitement of the morning.

A verdict of “death from natural causes” was recorded.

Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 18 February 1904: p. 5

It was a popular superstition that seeing a hearse or a mourning coach on one’s wedding day was a deadly omen for the marriage. There was also a belief that a bride who saw a hearse on her wedding day would lose all of her children.

On a foggy morning last week…a bridal party consisting of two young women with enormous bouquets, and two very nervous looking young men, drew up in a four-wheeler at the entrance to a registry-office, situated in one of the meanest of the mean streets off Islington. Just as they were all alighting, a hearse, meandering along in the fog, collided with the cab, and for the moment the wheels became interlocked. Bridegroom, bridesmaid, and the best man were in no way disconcerted. But, alas! For the poor little bride the harmony of the day was broken. Bursting into tears she declared that nothing would induce her to get married “with a hearse for an omen.” And neither laughter, chidings, nor entreaties served to shake her resolve. Back into the cab she got, bouquet and all, and in a few minutes the very woe-begone quartet drove off. Inangahua Times, 7 April 1897: p. 4

The Islington bride sensibly postponed the festivities, while the following bride did not. A word to the wise…

BRIDE’S FATAL SUPERSTITION

Portsmouth, Eng. While a Portsmouth woman was going to church on her wedding day her taxicab overtook a funeral procession. She regarded it as an ill omen and was disposed to postpone the ceremony, but was dissuaded by friends. The bride, however, was depressed. A fortnight after she became ill and died. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 16 September 1920: p. 16

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Father’s Ghost Fetches the Dying

For Fathers Day weekend, a fatherly “fetch” tenderly carries off two family members.

A Danbury Ghost Story

Woman Saw Dead Father Carry Her Mother Away – The Mother Found to Have Died at the Same Time.

Danbury, Conn., March 19. As Mrs. C. W. Lee of 55 Jefferson Avenue, this city, lay on a bed of sickness, it is declared that she saw the apparition of her father, Oliver B. Pettit, formerly of Brooklyn, who died sixteen years ago, enter the room across the hall, where her mother was, and carry her out in his arms.

Mrs. Lee avers that she distinctly saw her father walk through the hall, and heard him call his wife by name, and ask her to go away with him, pleading with her until she consented. At first, the wife, Mrs. Margaret Pettit of 39 Grove Street, Brooklyn, refused, but her love for her husband evidently overcame her fear, and the daughter saw the stalwart form of her father emerge from the room and disappear with his wife in his arms.

Mrs. Pettit had been visiting her daughter, and, although not ill, was in the habit of spending the morning hours in bed. Yesterday she remained in her bed later than usual, and it was at noon that her daughter saw the vision. Calling for her husband, Mrs. Lee told him what she had seen, and Mr. Lee, hurrying to the room of his wife’s mother, found her dead. Her death must have occurred at exactly the moment when Mrs. Lee saw her father enter the room. A physician later said that Mrs. Pettit died from heart failure. The New York Times 20 March 1900: p. 1

I thought this was an interesting version of a “fetch” story, where the ghost was seen literally carrying off the dying. The story appears in The Ghost Wore Black. A few months ago, while researching background for The Victorian Book of the Dead, I was surprised to find a sequel.

HER FATHER’S SPIRIT

Beckoned to Her, and Though Recovering, She Soon Died.

When Mrs. Charles Lee died, at Danbury, Mass., last week, it was in peaceful resignation and with the conviction that her father’s spirit was bearing her away.

She had been waiting for five days for his coming—ever since she saw the ghostly visitor bear away her mother in that strange vision. That it was not the malady from which she had been suffering that caused Mrs. Lee’s death there is the testimony of the doctors. She was convalescing from an operation, and, so far as it was concerned, was out of danger.

That Mrs. Lee became conscious in some mysterious way that her mother, Mrs. Margaret Pettit, was dying, there can be no doubt. Mrs. Pettit left her home at No. 39 Grove Street, to go to nurse her daughter in Danbury. When Mrs. Pettit went to bed on Saturday night she was apparently in excellent health.

Her daughter gave the first news of the mother’s death. She told her husband that something had happened—that her mother was dead—and then Mrs. Lee swooned.

When Mrs. Lee had partly recovered she told those about her of her vision. She said she had seen the spirit of her father, who has been dead for 16 years, enter her mother’s room and say:

“Margaret, come with me.” She had seen her father take her mother in his arms, and, as they moved away they paused before Mrs. Lee, she said, and her father paused and beckoned to her, saying she would soon follow them.

Since that vision Mrs. Lee has hovered on the borderland between life and death. A great part of the time she has been delirious or in a state of coma. But in her lucid intervals she talked constantly of the vision and of her own summons.

Nothing could shake her conviction that her father’s spirit would return for her. When she was perfectly sane she said she was only waiting. She knew she would never get well.

She spoke of it when her husband and son were called to her bedside, and she said good bye to them. She told them she believed that they would soon join her, that the summons was for all of them, and that the family would be united in the beyond.

She died with her mother’s name on her lips. Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 28 March 1900: p. 3

Other Fathers Day posts: about a ghostly image of a father and daughter appearing in a window after his death. A father who followed his child, literally, to the grave.

Winning a Widow: 1892

woman in deep mourning holding a purse 1895 — Woman in mourning with purse, c. 1895 http://collections.eastman.org/objects/508472/woman-in-deep-mourning-holding-purse?ctx=d44de10e-d6d8-455e-9ecb-56dc744f3663&idx=16

WINNING A WIDOW

EVERYBODY WAS AT THE WEDDING EXCEPT MISS BECKETT

A Story of a Village Courtship from Indiana—The Wedding Excited a Deal of Interest Because the Groom Was an Undertaker, Who Had Buried Many.

Undertaker Samuel Pavey and Mrs. Sarah Milliken, who has been known in Aristotle, Ind., for twenty-five years as Achilles or Kill Milliken’s widow, were married recently in the presence of everybody in this village except old Miss Beckett. Miss Beckett would have been present if she had not left her sickbed last week to call on Mrs. Milliken and inquire into the particulars of the engagement. After this imprudence she had a relapse and has been unable to leave her bed. She was propped up at the window all the afternoon, however, and saw everybody that went in or out of church.

Undertaker Pavey has buried all of the dead here for the past sixty years. He is now a tall, thin man. with close cropped white hair and smooth shaven face, and always dresses in black, as becomes an undertaker. Only the oldest citizens can remember when he looked any different from the way he looks now. His wife died forty years ago, and he has kept shy of all maidens and widows ever since. Years ago he was abandoned by the most persistent match makers as a hopeless case.

The widow of Kill Milliken is an estimable lady, a great maker of cakes for the church festivals and clever at crocheting worsted tidies, with a large number of which the chairs and the sofa in her front parlor are adorned. As there has been a good deal of curiosity about her engagement and marriage, she has consented to a public statement. She is a short, fat woman, with hair of a peculiar shade of yellow, which she got by using the hair dye which was advertised extensively in connection with her picture and letter of recommendation. She says that Mr. Pavey had never shown any signs of preference for her whatever, nor had she thought of him as the successor of Kill until ten days before the marriage.

About that time he knocked at her front door at half past 11 in the morning. It was a Wednesday and the Widow Milliken was deep in the dough, as that is baking day through this whole town. She looked out through the blinds of the window next the front door and saw who it was. As she had known Mr. Pavey so many years she just wiped the flour off her hands upon her apron and opened the door.

Mr. Pavey went into the parlor and sat down in the cane-seat rocker with the green worsted tidy with blue ribbons through it. He set his tall hat carefully on the floor beside him and then said: “Good morning, Sarah Milliken.”

“Good morning, Mr. Pavey,” said Mrs. Milliken. She said that she accented the Mr. so that Mr. Pavey might understand that she had noticed his not calling her Mrs. Milliken, as he was accustomed to do. Mrs. Milliken also says that she had a sort of premonition that something was coming.

“It can’t be that the Gompers girl is dead?” she said anxiously.

“No,” said Mr. Pavey. “But life is uncertain, Sarah Milliken.”

“No one should know that better than you, Samuel Pavey,” said the widow with one of her sly laughs.

But Mr. Pavey did not laugh as he went on: “Sarah, you are getting along in years. You will soon be in need of my services.”

“I haven’t even sent for the doctor yet, and I won’t need you till he’s done with me,” said the widow, bridling and pouting.

“Do you remember the first Mrs. Pavey?” said the undertaker, paying no attention to her and pursuing his own gloomy reflections.

“I was a little girl when she died,” said Mrs. Milliken.

“Yes,” said Mr. Pavey, “you had just married the late Mr. Milliken five years before. You remember that she had the best funeral this town ever saw, not excepting old Captain Lander’s funeral, which cost five dollars, as I should know, if anybody. As I said, Sarah, you are getting old. If you marry me I will do as well by the second Mrs. Pavey as I did by the first.”

“You always would have your joke, Sam,” said the widow. “What will everybody say?”

“We are both getting old,” said Mr. Pavey, still paying no attention to what the widow was saying. “Life is uncertain. There is no time to lose.”

So Mrs. Milliken said, “All right, Samuel; whenever you say.

“Ten days is long enough. I’ll see the pastor this afternoon.”

Then they shook hands, and Mr. Pavey put on his hat and went away, looking quite gay and chipper as soon as the door closed on him, for he did not know that Mrs. Milliken was watching him through the blinds. Two minutes afterward she had called Mrs. Meek, her next door neighbor, to the back fence and had told her all about it. Ten minutes afterward by the clock on the court house Mrs. Meek, having left her bakery in charge of her daughter Lizzie, had on her bonnet and shawl and was bearing down the street, telling everybody she met. Cor. New York Sun

The Durham [NC] Daily Globe 30 June 1892: p. 3

Courting in the Graveyard: 1882

tredegar iron works cast iron cemetery bench 1910 — Cast iron cemetery bench. https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/bench/YQFceqvcUyV79A

Courtships in Old Graveyards

“I don’t think there is as much genuine love-making in Saratoga nowadays as there used to be years ago,” said old Sexton Palmerston, as he leaned on his spade. “They all seem to be going for money. Why, I haven’t had four genuine love cases in the graveyard this year. Now, when a man is going for money you don’t see him bringing his girl over here.”

“How does he act when he is going for money?” I asked.

“Why, he spends his time around the florists, he heaps presents on her, keeps her room full of flowers, hands chairs on the balcony, always stands ready with a music programme, looks after her mail, always compliments her clothes, and___”

“And what else?” I asked, impatiently.

“Why, the courting-for-money lover even looks after his sweetheart’s table. He even goes and bribes the head cook to send her chicken livers en brochette, woodcock and Spanish mackerel. The cooks always have these delicacies for guests provided and they are well paid for them. O! he gives his girl an elegant time, but there’s no love in it.”

“But how does the all-for-love young man go to work?” I interrupted.

“Why, he don’t fool around at a distance,” said the old sexton, “with bouquets, and chairs, and programmes, and nice breakfasts. He just quietly walks his sweetheart over to the graveyard, and, sitting on one of those benches out under the trees yonder, he takes her hand. He sits right down and attacks her heart. He don’t fool around buying flowers for her eyes, nor candies for her tongue, nor perfumes for her nose; he just gets his arm right around her heart, and when it begins to throb, and when her cheek gets red and warm he knows that girl is hisn’. (Don’t stand so near the grave or it’ll cave in.) Why, that girl would rather have one hour of our warm graveyard courting than 400 years of such iceberg courting as I see going on over in the States parlors. I’ve seen this courtin’ goin’ on for forty years. (By jiminy, there’s a bone! I’m getting too near that other grave.) I see old grey-headed men every day riding up here in carriages who courted their wives in this graveyard forty years ago. There’s R.L. Stuart, the wealthy sugar refiner__”

“But he’s an old bachelor,” I interrupted.

“Never mind that. I tell you, my benches could tell why he never got married. He loved the girl well enough, and__”

“But who else do you remember seeing here?” I asked.

“Why, there was Mr. Winston of the Mutual Life. He used to walk around here thirty years ago, with a beautiful blonde girl. I can see him now kissing that girl—but I’m not going to tell all I know. Andrew H. Green, he married a girl he courted in my graveyard. Fernando Wood used to have a seat here, and Charles A. Dana, he used to know, forty year ago, all about flirting in a graveyard. Old General James Watson Webb used to walk the young ladies up here forty years ago, and his son, the Doctor, why he could never get along at all in courting Miss Vanderbilt till he got her away from the stuck-up States Hotel, and found himself one day in one of my seats. I knew Vanderbilt would lose a daughter that night. I tell you, these graveyard seats mean business every time. Dd I ever have any Senators or Governors on my seats? Why, of course. Senator Kernan courted two girls at once in this graveyard, and President Arthur knows where all the best seats are. They needn’t be ashamed of it either, for Hamilton and DeWitt Clinton used to do the same thing when they were boys. Boys will be boys,” continued the old man, as he jumped out of the grave, “and girls will be girls. Girls with big hearts like to be loved, and fellows with big hearts will kiss and love them. I don’t care how straight their parents make them sit up and down at the States, they will occasionally get away and come up here in the graveyard to act natural, and I’m the last man to hinder ‘em. Why I often keep these graveyard gates open till nine o’clock when there are genuine lovers enough around to warrant it. I don’t mean flirters. I mean real, genuine lovers.”

“But how do the lover manage down at Long Branch and over at Newport, where they have no graveyards handy?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but they have mating places somewhere. I ‘spect they sit out in the sand under the bluffs, or sit around under umbrellas in the pavilions, or get in dismal corners on the balconies. They’ve got to—by gosh, they’ve got to!”

That’s what the old Saratoga graveyard philosopher said. Saratoga Cor. N.Y. Commercial Advertiser.

Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 6 September 1882: p. 10