SEQUAH’S DEATH

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22831, 16 March 1936, Page 10

SEQUAH’S DEATH

A CONFLICTING REPORT LONDON PAPER’S VERSION (Special to Dailt Times) CHRISTCHURCH, March 15. When and where Seqnah, “ the great healer,” died are two disputed questions. It has been reported from Balfour, a small town in Southland, that his death occurred there over a week ago at the age of 70, following several years of quiet retirement, but now there lias been produced in Christchurch a clipping from a London paper of 1934 announcing that he died at 93 in a little room in a Southampton house. Sequah, from his birth, was destined to be a mysterious man. Even his name is disputed. The Southland report says ho was Charles Frederick Rowley, and the London report that he was Hannaway Rowe, the son of a naval surgeon, and himself a qualified medical man. All over England he was gorgeously dressed as an Indian chief, the London paper says, riding in a gorgeous gilt carriage drawn by four cream ponies and followed by a brass band and a score or so of young men dressed as cowboys.’ Sequah professed to cure people crippled of rheumatism by means of an embrocation of his own preparation. One of his great “stunts” was to extract teeth publicly with a swiftness that was amazing. Ho must have drawn thousands, and it was said that he kept them all as souvenirs. One of his friends, reported by the London paper, said of him: “He had a magnetic personality and his skill in showmanship and his fame drew big crowds'to him in every town and village. He always carried with him a big iron chest containing small silver —shillings and sixpences—and as a preliminary he would scatter these coins among the people who flocked about him. “He was, in fact, a very skilful dentist, and he drew teeth with remarkable rapidity. Nobody ever heard his patients groan or cry out, because during the operation bis brass baud blared away so loudly that it was impossible to hear anything. “ Then came the extolraent of the virtues of his embrocation. He massaged people crippled with rheumatism, and if they used crutches when they went to him he threw them away after his treatment and commanded the patients to walk down from the platform. “ He would often prescribe nourishing food for poor men and women who went to him, but when they said that they could not afford to buy it, he would dip his hand in the iron chest and pull out a handful of silver and give it to them. The end came when the excise authorities stepped in and ruled that the sale of his medicines was illegal. “After that Sequah declined and in his later years, he started a herbalist’s business in Southampton. He did not do very well, and he had practically no means at the finish. Ho was living in one little room by himself at his death.” The London report does not mention a tour in other parts of the world spoken of in the stories from Southland. The Southland story is that he was approached by two Americans at the height of his fame and persuaded to form a company and go to America. Sequah, it was explained, was a word of North American origin signifying “ medicine man.”

It is easy to understand a confusion of the names Rowe and Rowley, but the different apes given in the two stories, 93 and 70, are difficult to account for. The London paper published two photographs of him, one in his Indian dress, and it will be interesting to see if these and any photography from Southland can" be compared. It is recalled that Sequah was here about 35 years ago and made several tours of the Dominion. Incidents are reported of his “ curing ” patients suffering from rheumatism just as the London report describes. There are several points of remarkable similarity about the two stories and they seem to discount the possibility that there might have been two Sequahs.