A HATED NUMBER

Evening Star, Issue 20428, 8 March 1930, Page 20

A HATED NUMBER

UNLUCKY THIRTEEN SUPERSTITION DEFIED CLUB’S TRAGIC END. It is believed that members of tho Thirteen Club, sworn to combat superstition in all its forms,, were responsible for the rolling away of the deathstone in -Surrey, which has recently caused the district council, such trouble with its superstitious workmen■ (reports an overseas journal). Tho first Thirteen Club, iT the American Press is to be believed,. itself met a sinister end, * The superstition of sitting thirteen at a table will probably die hardest'out of all the hundreds of fears, relics of ancient tribal taboos, that still trouble well meaning people who walk under a ladder, spill salt, or otherwise offend tho evil spirits. It is popularly attributed to the fact of thirteen sitting down to the Last Supper, but is far more deeply rooted in the heathen past. Norse mythology has a_ story that one night the twelve major gods were seated at table in the Valhalla, when Loki, the evil spirit, came in ■ and made the thirteenth; before the end of supper he had shot Baldur dead with a mistletoe arrow. The Hindu myths include a similar superstition. Tho Thirteen Club was founded in New York, and imitations have since appeared in many countries. The, first was in Hamburg in 1911. In the circular sent out to all who were asked to become charter members, it • was pointed out that'l3 was, a lucky number. Tike case of Wagner was cited, and reference was made to tho success of Leo XIII., and the fact that the ancient Mexicans had 13 gods and a week of 13 days. In spite .of these overwhelming arguments, only eleven of those invited accepted the challenge, and the proposed club fell through.

THE THIRTEENTH ANNIVERSARY

In New York the campaign to reduce superstition has been carried on with great fervour. Recently a dinner was Iveld to celebrate the thirteenth wedding anniversary of two of its supporters. Tho thirteen guests had to walk under a ladder to reach their places at table; they found the salt cellars all overturned, the prongs of the forks pointed the wrong way, and tho forks themselves crossed by knives.

There is perhaps a special reason why Americans do not share the prejudice against the number 13, There were 13 revolted colonies which became tho United States. Even New York, however, omits 13 in numbering the rooms and the floors of ,its skyscraper buildings. In Germany and France the number is left out wherever possible in municipal and hotel reckonings. In Berlin it is omited from all new streets, and in Paris it is changed to 12a or 12]. Italians never use it in making up lotteries, and the Turks never even use tike word for tho hateful number. FIRST 13 CLUB. In anticipation of the modern 13 Cub, a party of Americans in 1890 braved the superstP* i in a manner particularly profane. The story was recently told in the St. Louis ‘GlobeDemocrat,’ under the heading, ‘ God’s Avenging Hand.’ The .talc began with tho finding of a dead man in the gutter of a Birmingham street. Even in death there was a look of terror in the bloodshot eyes. “Tike man,” we’are told, “was tho last of a fated thirteen, and in the death of each and all of them the Christian will read the vengeance of an insulted Deity.”

At a hotel in a southern city in 1805, thirteen Confederate soldiers sat down to dinner. They had returned from tho field of defeat to find their homes destroyed, their slaves freed, their wealth gone, and their friends scattered. After drowning some of their sorrows in drink, they suggested that the meeting of friends who might never meet again, might fitly bo called “The Last Supper.” The suggestion accorded with a reckless mood, tho lights were turned low, and the thirteen men each took the name of an apostle and read the scene from the Bible. Bread was passed round, and the wine was represented by glasses filled with brandy. , Tho thirteen men passed tho next day in a drunken stupor, then parted, never to meet again. -‘From that night,” -The Globe-

Democrat concluded, ‘‘vengeance followed those thirteen men. Everything they undertook failed. Every man of them met a horrible and disgraceful death.

“The man who took the leading part on the occasion of the supper^was drowned in the Brazos lliver, while fleeing on a stolen horse from a vigilance committee. The' St. John was lynched in Texas for murder. Another of the “apostles,” while intoxicated, was caught in a burning building and* perished in the flames. Still another was stabbed to tiro heart by a woman..

“So far as can be learned, not one of them received Christian burial. The man who died in the gutter and was buried in Potter’s Field was the last of the 13.” While these and other foolish stories still gain credence, the superstition of thirteen at table will continue to vex the unfortunate hostess^