“THIRTEEN”

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 9 November 1927, Page 7

“THIRTEEN”

SOP TO SUPERSTITIOUS It’s thirteen rank, and follow melt’s three round, blank, and follow me, hollow me, follow me ome. , . . Thus Kipling, in one of his military dirges:. Nevertheless (says the Sydney “Sun”) tho adoption of the thirteen tank- formation at some 'military funerals is not the origin of tho superstition that the number is unlucky. It is merely a perpetuation of a. very, ,„ucli older legend—such a, perpetuation as accompanied the funeral of the fOst commander of the Australian Imperial Force, Major-General William Throsby Bridges, when a. thirtecn-gun salute marked his obsequies. As a matter of fact the origin of the thirteen superstition began with the inception of the Christian Era, and is ascribablc to the fact that there were thirteen at the board at the Last Supper, when Christ told His beloved disciple, John, that He would be betrayed by Judas Iscariot. NEMESIS

• That there is some warrant for the popular distrust of the number 13 wan indicated only recently at., Becantree. where all the occupants of a. house which was numbered 13 in one of the streets succumbed to influenza. The surviving residents petitioned the London County Council to change the number of tho fateful house; but the London Countv Council is nothing if not matter-of-fact, and no action was taken on the request. Some vears ago, in New York, there was a thirteen Club. Its members made it their boast to defy all such popular superstitions as to the belief that - harm would result from spilling the salt, walking under ladders, seeing the new moon through glass, and so forth. They invariably sat down 13 at table at suppers which were held on Friday, the 13th of tho month.' They spilt salt and broke all the other superstitious conventions until a day arrived when the club was struck by lightning, some of its' members being killed and others injured. Thereafter the institution came to an end.

THE-MISSING FIGURE Roughly speaking, either one laughs at the thirteen superstition, or slavishly b.ows to it. Among those who ignore" it are the bright young brides who have recently been insisting on the 13th of tho month, with 13 bridesmaids, dressed in green. That such people as these are, however, not in the majority is indicated by the fact that the force of public opinion has induced the Loudon and North-eastern Railway Company to abolish No. 13 on its sleeping cars. This fact recalls that many hotels in America have no thirteenth floor, so numbered, and no No. 13 on the door of any of their rooms. The difficulty wa3 overcome by numbering tho floor above 12 as 14, and adopting the same expedient with what otherwise would have been the thirteenth room. VARIOUS VIEWS

An official of the railway company which has thus deferred to popular feeling explains that there have been several cases in which , superstitious passengers have requested an exchange of berths with people who are not afraid of No. 13. In many of the London hotels, a similar superstition prevails. No. 13, for instance, has been abolished entirely from the Savoy Hotel, because so many of the American guests who form a large proportion of its clientele object to sleeping in a room so indicated. Nevertheless, some famous generals were fond of No. 13, and among people who did not object to it were the poets Keats and Shelley'. Owing largely to the objections of women, the No. 13 has been done away with at several well-known London clubs. At public lodging houses, however, the authorities do not exercise so nice a consideration. At Rowton House, for instance, there are several cubicles numbered 13, and those dwellers bn the' .bread-line who* frequent this establishment know that it is better to spend the night in a cubicle bearing the unlucky number than to have recourse to the Embankment.

Continuing the subject, /with regard to railways, tho.‘London, Midland, and Scottish Line avoids the difficulty with which they would otherwise be faced by numbering their berths from 1 to J2 only, while the Great Western Railway have no sleeping cars with as many as thirteen berths. . Underground trains'and London electric trams and buses seem to havo no superstitious scruples for, everyone of them has No. 13 and its multiples.

SOME DO-SOME DON’T Let us turn to the sea—the homo of superstition. Waiving tho coincidence that the crews of two steamers wrecked recently—the Beatty Rose, off the Casquets, and the Neville, off Land’s End —numbered 13 in each caSe, the superstitious may find support for their misgivings about No. 13 in the elimination of tho Royal Mail Steam Packet liners of this number on any, of the cabins. The only vessel of the Cunard Lino which has a. cabin numbered 13 is tho Gercngaria. The Peninsular; and Oriental Lino rises superior to superstition, and has cabins which bear the unpopular enumeration. Searching for collateral evidence, an earnest seeker after truth has ascertained that , many houses numbered T 3 remain . unlet until .their number has been changed to 12a. And yet many people regard 13 as lucky, and ask' for it in sweepstakes. There was a daredevil air pilot in the war who went out of the way to paint No. 13 on liis machine. He went right through without, a scratch.