Newspaper Clipping of the Day

Via Newspapers.com

A fine advertisement for sundials appeared in the “Washington Evening Times,” December 27, 1895:

Brooklyn, Dec. 27. An ordinary eight-day clock owned by John Chase, of South Brooklyn, has gained a reputation as a hoodoo during its career of thirteen years past.

What its previous experience was no one knows, but its history has been preserved since it was purchased in 1862, from a Bowery second-hand dealer, by J.D. Scott, a Wall street broker, living in Orange, N.J. For over a year the clock made a record for itself as a time-keeper. Scott depended on it and never missed a train. One night the clock started on its fiendish work and ran slow. Mr. Scott arrived at the depot just in time to see his train moving out. He ran to catch it, fell under the moving train and was crushed to death.

The clock began to lose its good record and finally stopped. Mrs. Scott sent her young daughter with the time-piece to a neighboring jeweler, but while crossing the street the girl was knocked down by a runaway team and one of her hands was so badly crushed it had to be amputated. Shortly afterward Mrs. Scott was compelled to sell her household goods and the clock came into the possession of a liquor dealer in Newark, N.J. Afterward the purchaser failed in business and he worried so over his losses that he ended his life with a bullet.

The next owner of the clock was a brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad named Gibson. After he had possessed it for about two years he suddenly disappeared and has never been heard of since.

Gibson's mother sold the clock to a Simon Donelly, who lived in Harlem. Shortly after Donelly’s body was found in the Harlem River. It is said he went into a swimming race and was drowned.

John Chase, the present owner, bought the clock six years ago. He is now worried over numerous financial reverses. He told a reporter today that when the clock would go everything was all right, but it had a tendency to stop at intervals and when it did something always happened. He took the clock to several expert clock-makers, but they failed to find anything wrong with its workings. He is afraid to break it or throw it away and he won't give it to any of his friends.