CURIOUS COINCIDENCES.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 66, 15 September 1894, Page 1 (Supplement)

CURIOUS COINCIDENCES.

In connection with a recent suicide at the Mumbles, in South Wales, an extraordinary coincidence is reported. On exactly the same afternoon, and almost at the same hour, Mr. John Evans, chemist, the former owner of the business which Mr. Ivor Evans, the suicide, was to have purchased on the day he poisoned himself, was, whilst crossing a crowded thoroughfare in the Metropolis, run over by a 'bus and killed. Mr. Evans, who was a comparatively young man, was employed in the Naval and Military Stores, an appointment which he accepted soon after leaving the Mumbles. Within a fortnight, three chemists, all interested in the same shop died, one from natural causes, the other by an act of selfdestruction, and the third through an accident. Another remarkable thing is that the shop has been successively carried on by Eees, Evans, Kees, Evans. A very curious affair occurred lately at Lyons. The report of firearms was heard in one of the streets, and when the police arrived on the scene they found the corpse of a woman lying on the pavement and a -negro running away, who, on examination, was ascertained to have just received a bullet wound in the left arm. The constables naturally imagined that the negro had committed a murder, but, as was soon discovered, the two cases had nothing to do with each other. The woman, who lived at St. Etienne, had been spending the day with a friend, and while in a state of delirium she had thrown herself out of a window, death being instantaneous. As for the negro, who is a native of Khartoum, and had been brought to France for some performances at the Lyons Exhibition — he had accompanied several men to a cafe, and when be declined to pay for all the refreshments had been assaulted, a revolver being fired at him as he took to his heels. Unluckily for him, the affair occurred at thu very moment when the poor woman was falling from the window, and, being ignorant of any but a few words of French, he had the utmost difficulty in making himself understood. He waa marohed for hours through the streets of Lyons until he recognised the cafe where he had been attacked, and, his story having been confirmed by the landlord, he was set at liberty. His aggressors, two workmen, were arrested.