Democratic Sentinel, Volume 12, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 January 1889 — FATHER DOUGHERTY’S CURSE. [ARTICLE]

FATHER DOUGHERTY’S CURSE.

Misfortune Attends Those Who Fall Under a Priest’s Displeasure. [Springfield (Mass.) dispatch.] “Another victim of Father Dougherty’s curse," was the exclamation heard on hearing of ex-Mayor O’Connor’s death in Holyoke, Forty years ago a Catholic priest in Springfield, Father Dougherty, was charged with the betrayal of a young lady. The Sunday following the exposure a crowd of forty or more excited parishioners gathered at the church door and refused the Father admission. The angry priest thereupon cursed those whose hands were turne’d against him, and it is declared that nearly all of those cursed have died unnaftiral deaths, while their children have not been exempted from suffering. Three or four of the “accursed” are still alive. Among them is Owen O’Connor, of Springfield. Two years ago O’Connor’s youngest son. Dr. P. J. O’Connor, committed suicide; another son, ex-Mayor O’Connor, of Holyoke, died of apoplexy. Dr. Swazey fell through a bridge near Northampton and was killed; John Cardiff fell down a flight of stairs and died; John Topping fell.thirty feet in an icehouse and was instantly killed; John Madden, one of the leading saloonkeepers of New England twenty years ago, came under the ban. Misfortunes crowded in upon him and from a prosperous merchant with a SIOO,OOO bank account he died almost a pauper. Edward Bile died of paralysis, his •"daughter became insane, and his bon, Edward Rile, now violently insane, raves in his delirium about Father Dougherty’s curse.