COINCIDENCES TRULY REMARKABLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12213, 7 March 1903, Page 2 (Supplement)

COINCIDENCES TRULY REMARKABLE.

Perhaps nothing could be more strange or inexplicable than the coincidences which happen within the experience of some people. Last year, while giving evidence at an inquest on the body of her son, who had been killed by a reaping machine, a woman named Lower, of Piddinghoe, Sussex, made a most remarkable statement. It was to the effect that she had lost two husbands, both of whom had been run over by a waggon and killed, and thai in each case it was the same waggon which caused death. A similar coincidence was brought to light at the inquest on a platelayer named Dean, who was knocked down and killed by a train at Bromley Station, England. The deceased's widow informed the jury that the unfortunate man was her second husband, and that her first was killed by a train at the same spot fourteen years before. It will perhaps be advisable to give the fullest particulars in the following instance for the information of the sceptically inclined. In August, 1894, William Moses, a Wandsworth clerk, left Waterloo Station, London, by an excursion train for Devonport. When the train reached its destination he was found in a dying condition alone in one of the compartments, and a few minutes afterwards expired. At the inquest it was discovered that his father had died suddenly at the same station three years before, and it was the discovery of the elder Moses' death certificate in the pocket of his son that revealed the latter's identity to the railway authorities. While in Mounts Bay, Penzance, England, in December, 1900, the Newlyn fishing boat Dewdrop gave a sudden lurch, by which Edward Ladner, a fisherman, was thrown into the water and drowned.

On the same spot, half a dozen years before; another Newlyn fishing boat, the Arethusa, came to grief, with the result that the captain, who was the father of the above-named Edward Ladner, lost his life in the same way as subsequently did his son.

Not very long ago a couple of weddings were followed by an extraordinary string of coincidences. Both were celebrated on the same day., at the same church, the contracting parties being two brothers and two sisters. ,

About twelve months afterward each sister gave birth to a female child on the same day, the two children receiving the same names and being baptised by the same clergyman. Both subsequently became unwell, were attended by the same doctor, and, despite his attentions, died the same day. They were both buried the same day by the same undertaker and clergyman. Hardly less remarkable is the following : — Some little time since three inquests were held at Kensington, in London, on the bodies of men who all not only bore .the name of Smith but the Christian name of William as well.

Moreover, there was no relationship whatever between them, and all three had died at Notting Hill on the previous Saturday afternoon between the hours of five and six o'clock.