On This Day, 29 June 1917

Birmingham Mail

Friday 29 June 1917

BIRMINGHAM FORTUNE-TELLER FINED.

CAUSED TROUBLE BETWEEN HUSBANDS AND WIVES

Charlotte Baker, 8, Cottage Place, Hope Street, was to-day fined £5 by the magistrates in the Second Court of Birmingham Police for pretending to tell fortunes by predicting the future.

The police had received complaints from people in quite another part of the town, namely, Bloomsbury Street. It was stated that as a consequence of visits of women the defendant’s house husbands and wives had been variance and domestic strife had been occasioned.

In the public interest two women were sent to the house on June 15. Defendant took a pack of cards and informed the younger of the women that her husband was prisoner of war in Germany. She would see him again, but would be a widow in three months. This was untrue, as the man was a discharged soldier and at the time home in Birmingham.

Defendant informed the elder woman that she was coming in for some money which had been left her 16 years ago through the death of a grey-haired woman, who was dying, and would give her the papers. She further told the visitor that her husband would meet with an accident, but she could not say that she would lose him.

Sir Thomas Barclay (presiding magistrate) warned the woman that she was capable of causing great mischief and that she had rendered herself liable to a fine of £25 or three months’ imprisonment.

For more on WW1 and fortune-telling, see Owen Davies, Witchcraft, Magic and Culture, 1736-1951 and Michael Snape, God and the British Soldier: Religion and the British Army in the Era of the two World Wars.