ON THE INCREASE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 180, 31 July 1940, Page 12

ON THE INCREASE.

TELLING OF FORTUNES

TREND SINCE WAR STARTED.

"CAN DO LOT OF HARM." (Special—By Air Main.) SYDNEY, July 24. For having professed to tell fortunes, George William Edwards, 28, married, of Potts Point, was sentenced to one month's imprisonment. The magistrate said: "Police state that fortune-telling has increased since the war began. It can do a lot of harm to credulous people." Mrs. Irene 1-Jae, special constable, of the C.1.8., said Edwards told her.: "When I first saw you, I felt as if 1 was sitting on a volcano—that is a good sign. L am not a. fortune-teller. 1 will tell you just what I get from the spirits. By January you will marry and move into a new home by the water. By Xovember you will have a child. You will travel to America, but not at present —you have not enough money now to go to Wollongong."

Mrs. Irene Esther Owen, also a special C.1.8. constable, said Edward# told her: "1 see two wedding rings around your head. 1 see. a death in Deceml>er. Your husband will be killed in an accident. I see you at a dance ill evening dress. A medical man will be there, and you will marry him and be very happy."

Edwards, who wan fashionably dressed, told the magistrate: "I have been a spiritualist since I was 18. Spiritualism is my religion. 1 believe in survival after death. There is no death —only progress to anothe.r life. 1 have a medium's powers —the power to get in touch with persons in the other world. 1 have never claimed to be a fortune-teller or to be able to divine the future. Giving these readings. 1 aot in touch with my dead sister, Dorothy. She is my guide. I just send the messages that come through. Often the control does not operate, and 1 have to send clients away without a message."

Next day a reporter tried unsuccessfully at several places to have his fortune told. Finally lie went into a coffee shop where, after he had paid if, a "psychologist"' added up the numbers of his birth date and letters of his Christian name, and told him that he should not get married this year, and should get a. job. His two children would be affected by a happening in his life in about two months' time. The reporter was married, has a job and has no children.