Paralyzed Bridegroom: January 15, 1888
Paralyzed Bridegroom: January 15, 1888
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Newspaper stories from the nineteenth century United States shed light on the attitudes and beliefs of the times. This short newspaper tale illustrates superstition surrounding death-bed promises. And ghosts. (Victorians loved ghost stories. One prime example: Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.)
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The Sunday Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (per dispatch from Bethel, Ky [Kentucky]), on January 15, 1888:
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The Sunday Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, January 15, 1888. Part 1.
The Sunday Leader of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, January 15, 1888. Part 2.
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A Cautionary Tale
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Viewing this cautionary tale through a twenty-first century makes the connection between paralysis and the ring laughable. Modern science suggests no stronger connection than stressing over a broken promise, which could’ve caused the man’s blood pressure to spike. We know excessively high blood pressure leads to strokes.
But viewed through the eyes of a person born in the mid-1800s, born and bred in northern Kentucky, this cautionary tale meant far more.
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Examples of Kentucky Superstitions:
The loss of a wedding ring is thought a prediction of a calamity.
To lose a wedding ring within the first month of marriage augurs great misfortune.
~ Kentucky Superstitions, published 1920
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Other Newspaper Articles:
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Other Related Articles:
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Speaking of Victorian-American superstitions…
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Updated February 2021
Copyright © 2017 Kristin Holt LC
