“MIRACLE WORKER"

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 November 1927, Page 8

“MIRACLE WORKER"

GETS EXORBITANT PROFITS.

The police have arrested at SanBartolomeo in Galdo, a village neai Naples, an old woman who for many years had openly practised magic. Her reputation not only for predicting the future, but cures of desperate diseases, had spread to an extent that crowds of people from the neighbourhood daily formed queues in front of her residence. As no complaints had ever been made against the witch, who took great care to keep on the right side of the law, she was allowed to .carry on her “profession” unmolested by the police and the local medical practitioners.

A few days ago, however, she was denounced to the police by a peasant, who complained that she had threatened to murder his children unless he paid the exorbitant fee she demanded for her services.

The police intervened, and overcoming with great difficulty the reticence of her clients, ascertained that the fees charged by the witch were enormous. She had made an old lady pay about £l3O to be cured of headaches; a poor woman was charged £l4O for having her husband cured of dropsy; while a fond mother paid £45 for the cure of her only child of bronchitis. The woman must have been coining money for many years. Yet the police found hardly any money in her possession when* they arrested* her, and it is concluded that she must have invested her illegal earnings very secretly and carefully.