Strange Times 130: Mesmerists, Mind Readers and Fortune Tellers
Before we dive into our regularly scheduled strangeness, I would like to take a moment to plug my new novel, Critical Hit: A Gaming Mystery. A rip-roaring mashup of adventure and detective story, it may be the most fun thing I’ve ever written. If you enjoy the unique madness of Strange Times, I am confident you will love this book as well.
Now, on to the show! Today we have an aggressive numerologist, a tragedy in Florida, and a church burgled for the sake of forbidden love. Change your religion with your clothes on…
May 10, 1921
In Georgia, a Black lawyer charges the state’s courts system with discriminating against people of color, while in New York City five activists are charged with disorderly conduct for picketing “The Birth of a Nation.”
The Governor of New York signs laws requiring all public school teachers to make a loyalty oath to the federal and state government, and prohibits the teaching of any doctrine that advocates the overthrow of the government. In Washington, Senator Clayton Lusk, advocate for such “loyalty bills,” publishes a 1,000 page report on the growth of radicalism in the country, and alleges that the nation’s universities are “honeycombed with avowed Socialist professors.”
After the newly-appointed male superintendent of the Bedford State Reformatory for Women removes several of his charges to the “psychopathic ward,” 10 inmates, including several bigamists, flee in protest.
The New York Citizens Union calls for a constitutional amendment requiring a literacy test as a prerequisite for voting, saying that the vote is not “a natural right,” and that “since we have no such race antagonisms (as in the South),” the law would not lead to abuse or discrimination.
The Weather: Fair today and Wednesday; no change in temperature; moderate west winds.
Just your standard story of love undone by religion. The final sentence is an all-time great kicker.
His wife’s too frequent changes of religious faith were the final cause that impelled him to ask the Court to dissolve their marriage, according to the petition for divorce from Mrs. Edith MacDonough of Burke’s Mansion, Ridgewood, which was read before Vice Chancellor Griffin in Jersey City yesterday by Lawyer John J. Walsh for Charles W. McDonough of 17 East Twenty-second Street, Manhattan, a silk salesman.
The McDonoughs were Episcopalians when they were married at Manchester, Vt., Nov. 22, 1893, the petition says. Ten years ago his wife “began changing her religion with her clothes and she persistently harassed the petitioner because he refused to change with her.” First she was a Spiritist and then in succession she was a follower of these religious cults: Economites, Mesmerists, Mind Readers and Fortune Tellers, Christian Scientists, Theosophists, New Thought, Angel Dancers, Numerologists.
“There was nothing in our house at meal time,” the petition says, “but theorizing on dogmatic problems.” She denounced him “in vile and abusive language for his refusal” to co-operate with her in her religious changes, and the home “became a pandemonium.” In December, 1920, his wife sent their daughter to his office with the message, “I have at last found the true religion, Numerology,” and a request for $100 to pay for instruction by a lady teacher in Numerology. He sent the $100.
Soon afterward the wife told him that through the true religion numerology she had leanred by the study of mystical and symbolic numbers she had got the wrong man for a husband. “We were never intended for each other,” she said. “You never do anything right for me.” Because of her hatred and cruelty he had become a nervous wreck and because of violent temper and abuse in December last he “was obliged to leave her.”
He was unable to attend to his business when he left her, and now he felt it would be “improper and unsafe” for him to live with his wife again. His wife has changed her name from Edith to “Ruane,” and their daughter Marian, has changed her name to Rexano. Their children are Marian, 24 years old; Mabel, 20, and Margaret 17.
He has given his wife all of his $3,500 income in recent years, and also gave her 450 acres of land at Camoton, N.H., and property at Ridgewood worth $12,000, but they sold that, and he gave her the cash. His wife, he says, squandered $7,500, and he sold securities for $5,000 and gave her the money “to keep her in a rank and station to which she was not accustomed before their marriage.”
The wife’s answer denies the cruelty and the religious changes except that they were Congregationalists and became Episcopalians. It was at her husband’s suggestion, she said, that she took up the study of the science of numbers with the purpose of using it in earning money. She denies hatred of her husband.
An absolutely horrifying tragedy. Ballinger was one of six Black men lynched in Florida in 1921, and this is one of five known lynchings recorded in Bradford County. For more information about reading newspaper sources on lynchings, I recommend this guide.
STARKE, Fla., May 9.—Sam Ballinger, a negro, who shot and killed Deputy Sheriff H. D. Bennett near Lawley, several weeks ago, was taken from the Bradford County jail here last night and lynched. The mob worked so quietly that the lynching was not discovered until morning when the body was found hanging to a tree.
Bennett was summoned to Ballinger’s home to arrest Chadwick Ballinger, son of Sam. The eldest negro opened fire in the darkness and mortally wounded Bennett and his son, Bennett dying of his wounds several days later. Chadwick Ballinger died a few hours after being shot.
Sam Ballinger was removed to Jacksonville for safe keeping but was returned here Saturday for trial.
The writing of this story is strangely circuitous, as though the material is so scandalous that it simply fried the writer’s brain.
Until a few days ago, the elderly man who used to call upon Adele Gouin, 18 years old, in her boarding house in Perth Amboy, N. J., limited his love making to calling her “angel face” and kissing her on the cheek. At least Mrs. Alfred Knudson, in whose home the girl lived, never saw any demonstration of affection more fervid than that.
Now no one knows where Miss Gouin is, no one knows where Shubel K. Siver of 204 Redmond Street, New Brunswick, is. The police are looking for them both. They only want to question Miss Gouin, but they say her elderly and temperate wooer was Siver, and they want him. If they get him they hope to recover $6,000 in Liberty bonds belonging to the First Reformed Church of New Brunswick, of which Siver has been treasurer for many years.
Meantime the Rev. Dr. Jasper S. Hogan, pastor of the church, and his congregation are trying to figure out how the bonds disappeared from a safety deposit box to which Siver only had access, in company with the Chairman of the Finance Committee, to whom no suspicion attaches. The Chairman, Otto O. Stillman, said he and Siver visited the safe deposit vault together on April 12 to clip coupons from the church’s securities, and he had been confident the bonds were properly replaced in the deposit box. Though the police say they are not there now, they added that Siver’s church funds and accounts otherwise were intact and regular.
At Siver’s home, bemoaning the the scandal that has come upon them, are his wife and his three grown sons, the oldest 23 years old. Since the police alarm for Siver has become public, New Brunswick has been thrilled with the story of Mrs. Siver’s striving to win her husband back from the girl and to induce him to remain steadfast to the home he kept up with the salary of a bookkeeper for the American Foreign Insurance Association at 95 William Street, Manhattan.
In furtherance of that effort Mrs. Siver visited Miss Gouin. She begged the girl to consider the position of Siver’s children, who had expectations from a wealthy aunt in Albany, who had always been good to them and who might disinherit them if disgrace were brought upon the home.
Mrs. Anna Reindale of New Brunswick Avenue, Perth Amboy, with whom Miss Gouin lived for eleven years, told how she too had begged Adele to end the mutual infatuation she had suspected, impressing upon her that Siver could not marry her and begging her not to spoil the career she was just attempting by taking up a business course after having worked for several years as a waitress.
But a few days ago Siver bought a second hand automobile, the police say, and Miss Gouin told her friends she was about to marry a well-to-do man who would take good care of her. And then both disappeared and the church discovered it shortage.
