Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1877 — INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS. [ARTICLE]

INCIDENTS AND ACCIDENTS.

—A youth of seventeen, at Utica. N. Y., fatally injured himself a few days ago while trying to turn a back handspring. —A lady in Hazardville, Conn., has lost five husbands by powder-mill explosions, and now she is about to marry her sixth husband, who is also connected with a powder-mill. Moat wives prefer to blow up their husbands themselves, instead of letting the job out to a powdermill. * —A clergyman at Elizabeth, N. J.. was recently asked to escort a young lady to New York. He consented gladly, took up an armtul of packages, pots ot preserves, etc., that lay beside her, placed them in the car, and some time after the train had started, discovered that they didn’t belong to his ctftnpanion. At Jersey City he was arrested on a telegram from Elizabeth, but he succeeded in explaining matters. —A carriage is a strange place to be drowned in, yet Dr. E. H. Reed and Miss Bailey lost their lives recently in that manner while in their carriage. A party of four procured a hack at Trenton, N. J-, and went out for a drive. The night became dark and stormy. The horses ran away and precipitated themselves and vehicle into a canal. Mr. Paxton and Miss Smith escaped, but the other occupants were drowned before they could get out of the hack. —During a thunder-storm, a few evenings since, a young woman, seated at a sewing-aiachine, in a house on Wylie avenue, was frightened from it by peculiar demonstrations of the electric fluid, which seemed to fill the room, and made a hissing sound as it played upon the steel work of the machine. After the |tonn had subsided, it was noticed that the glass in the room windows was cracked, but no crash had been heard or flash observed.— Pittsburgh Commercial Gazette.

Mankind sometimes invents strange methods to escape death. One of the most remarkable plans was tried a few days since by George Brown, of New York, who was haunted by a fear that he would be assassinated. He kept dodging his supposed murderers by continually changing his place of abode, residing one day with his family at 325 Stanton street, and another with his sister at 214 Delaney street, but at last he determined to foil his pursuers, and so committed suicide at the residence of his sister. —A few days ago a woman in Bridgeport, Conn., met with a narrow escape. She went into the woodhouse to get coal, when suddenly the floor gave way, ana left her suspnded by her arms and unable to touch ground with her feet. She was finally rescued from her position, when it was discovered that she had fallen through the top of an old well, long ago discarded, which had a depth of eleven feet, and -ttontained four or five feet of water. Had she fallen through, death would soon have followed, as the place was filled with poisonous gases. —A man named George Martin, who keeps a tavern on Washington street, Sherbrooke, recently drove to a farm he owns in the vicinity, taking with him a bottle of whisky, ana a son aged under six years. After treating his hands, he left the child in the barn, with the remains of the whisky—supposed to have been about a pint. On his return the whisky bottle was empty, and the poor boy lay stupidly drunk and insensible upon the barn floor. In spite of everything that could be done, and without one interval of consciousness, the poor child died in a little over twenty-four hours, with all the distinctive symptoms of alcoholic poisoning.— Montreal Witness.