MOTHERS "EVIL EYE."

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10848, 15 December 1906, Page 5 (Supplement)

MOTHERS "EVIL EYE."

™Kee < children 1 die on their Seventh birthday.

GENEVA, November 1. . A strange story is told of an elderly gipsy woman who is at present travelling with a tribe of Bohemians m the canton of Berne.

The woman has had six children, four boys and two girls, all of whom have died on reaching the age of seven — the last dying a few days ago. . Three of the children died on their seventh birthday, and the others a day or two after. It is stated that all the children fell ill as every birthday approached, but the mother took no notice of their illnesses until the critical seventh year was reached, when she nursed them devotedly. The women of her tribe shun her, believing that she- possesses the "evil eye," and is responsible for the death of her children, but the unfortunate woman's husband is devoted to her. After the death of her sixth child the tribe became so hostile, that her husband has decided to take his wife away, and will shortly return to Bohemia.

The children died from no .particular disease, and seemed simply to have wasted away. The doctors who signed the death certificates never, traced the cause of decease.