COOK AS ALLEGED WITCH.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1907, Page 13

COOK AS ALLEGED WITCH.

AMUSING STORY OF SUPERSTITION. At Marylebone Police Court, London, on Wednesday, May 15, a Swiss waiter, Oscar Follml, was charged on remand with obtaining money by menaces from a fellow waiter, Henry Thoma. Thomas story was that while in service -at 46, Welbeck-street, he introduced Follmi to the cook there—Mary Ann Hewitt. Follmi became friendly with the cook, and assured Thoma that she was a witch—had to do with evil spirits, could get through keyholes, and could get money out of locked boxes. Thoma believed this implicitly, and, for safety, handed Follmi five shillings of his wages every week to keep for him. He also gave him a sum of money which, he was told, the cook demanded. Are you a witch? Mr Piowden asked th« cook, Hewitt, when she was called. She laughed heartily, and. replied that she was not clever enough. She had never received money from prisoner or the prosecutor, nor did she ever tell either of them that she was a witch. On one occasion, after she and the other servants had got tired of playing at "guessing," she asked them if they had ever seen how horned one looked when dressed in white and seen behind lighted methylated spirit and salt. They said they hadn't, so she showed them. The gas was put out. She left the room, put some salt into a shovel, poured methylated spirit over it, and having wrapped a teacloth rounc her head, returned with the methylated' spirit and salt alight. "There," she said, as she went close up to them, "doesn't it j look horrid? Isn't it terribly green?" | But the prosecutor did not witness this incident. j

Mr Piowden: Very good thing he did not; he would probably have been killed by fright (Laughter.)

Continuing, the witness said that when Thoma was told she had looked just like a ghost, "Oh!" said he, "I am so frightened of ghosts. I don't want to 6ee ghosts. I hope I don't." Follmi remarked that he had heard of spirits getting through keyholes, and this greatly frightened Thoma, who said he hoped they would not get through his keyhole. Mr Piowden, iv remanding the case, suggested that the cook should become bail for her "young man's" appearance. "Anything as regards to that" (the courtship), replied Hewitt, "was all off; but she did not think he would run away." Mr Piowden: Not as long as you are here.