“Moth was a sign of death”
Hull woman’s remarkable story.
Omens of death… queer knockings… “pounds paid to the gipsies”… Such phrases as these formed part of a remarkable story told in Hull Police Court to-day. Mrs Watcham, of West Dock Villas, West Dock-avenue, Hull, was summoned for alleged assault on Mrs Gertrude Adams, of West Dock Villas, on November 25. It was after Mrs Adams had given evidence, and a neighbour was corroborating, that the first strange mention was made. The witness said Mrs Watcham had come to her front door late at night and accused her of “throwing moths at her.”
In the witness-box Mrs Watcham began her strange story by saying: “I had gipsies to try to bottom it, and I think we have got to the bottom of it. I have paid pounds to the gipsies. The nearest I have got is this: ‘You have a spiritualist who comes into your house who is no good to you.'” “Of course I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” she added. She went on to say that she went for a walk and some one threw a stone and also a lighted cigarette at her. Coming back to her house she heard someone say: ‘You can let it go now,’ and a death’s-head moth flew towards them. “And a death’s-head is a sign of death,” said Mrs Watcham.
The house she had been living in prior to coming to her present address had been the scene of strange happenings, she declared. There were peculiar sounds in her coal house, and sometimes cinders were thrown at the windows. Occasionally there was a hissing sound as if a hot cinder was thrown into water. “Then you hear someone knocking nails round your walls,” she said. “Then you hear one, two, three knocks in the coalhouse. I paid a lot of money to the gipsies to come and take it away.”
She came to the present house to get away from the queer happenings, but when she came to her present house, she alleged,”it was worse still.” “I have come to the conclusion that I can blame these people for the whole lot.”
Mrs Watcham concluded by denying that she had assaulted Mrs Adams. She was bound over in her own recognisances to be of good behaviour for the next six months, and was advised, if she was further troubled, to consult the police and not take the law into her own hands.
Hull Daily Mail, 30th November 1936.
So much stuff goes on in Hull, or the atmosphere makes people believe in it and report it??
An old photo of West Dock Villas (Villas being a slightly ambitious description really) https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10209697867462626&set=gm.1289503297762410