Evil Eye Witch in Chicago

Printed Saturday the 12th of October 1901 in the Washington Bee out of Washington D.C. 

CHICAGO HAS A WITCH.

Thomas Kelly Discovers a Woman with and Evil Eye and Is Arrested for Stoning Her.

The curse of Salem is on Chicago: According to Thomas Kelly, the same old witchcraft that used to cause the good Puritans of the colonial town to lie awake nights is exercised by a woman who is his near neighbor.

“Her vengeance is awful,” Kelly said to a Chicago American reparter. “Her curse is the curse of Satan. Only recently she had a quarrel with Mrs. Cohen, another of my neighbors.  Mrs. Cohen won and the witch put a curse upon her.

“First Cohen’s horse died. That was a few days after the curse was pronounce. Cohen was almost helpless without the horse. Then Mrs. Cohen became ill. There was grief in the house. No work for the man and the wife sick. To cap all Cohen became paralyzed in one side.”

This Chicago witch was acquired the city’s commercial spirit. The curse did not last forever. Mrs. Cohen finally became well. Then, according to Kelly, she offered the witch $10 to remove the curse. But the witch demanded $30.

Kelly’s blood boiled. He determined to punish the witch for her witchcraft. He made himself a martyr for the ills of the Cohnes. He could not throw the witch into a pond, bound to sink or swim. He could not burn her at the stake, according to the most approved custom. So he decided to stone her. This was a course almost as well sanctioned by precedent as burning.

The woman of uncanny powers was in the house when Kelly went to stone her, so he threw the stones through the windows. She had him arrested, and he was taken before Justice Sabath, where the story came out.