One of our listeners, Colette O'Kane, wanted to find out the truth behind a legendary story about her mind-reading grandmother when she heard of Papers Past.
O’Kane joins Jesse Mulligan to tell him about her family’s interesting history and her findings after searching the online database of digitised historic newspapers.
Colette O'Kane's grandmother's court appearance was reported on in this old 1938 issue of the Otago Daily Times, now ditigised online. Photo: Otago Daily Times / Papers Past / National Library
O'Kane's grandmother died before she was born, but one story about her arrest for fortune telling in 1938 always stuck out.
"The family story went that the Magistrate's [Court] said to my grandmother that 'if you can tell me what my wife has prepared for my lunch, then I will let you off on this charge' and it was said she told him and got off on the charge."
So upon hearing about Papers Past on Afternoons, O'Kane launched her own hunt for her grandmother's story.
"I did go online but because the incident happened in Invercargill, I figured that it would be in the Southland Times but the Southland Times wasn't listed and so I sent [the National Library] an email and the article was actually in the Otago Daily Times."
O'Kane says she was really surprised when the story was found.
"I was surprised at the length of the article, which is not huge, but it was more than I thought it would be."
The article revealed that an undercover police matron had a stakeout to collect evidence, during which she had brought along her nephew the second time too.
"My grandmother said something about him having the opportunity for a government position and also about being careful about a boat trip," O'Kane says.
Her grandmother's defence was she wasn't telling the future, and told her clients she spoke only of the past and present as well as reading minds, to which the magistrate responded: "That's not very interesting, is it?"
In the end, the charge against her was dismissed.
While there was no mention of the legendary story of predicting the magistrate's lunch, O'Kane still believes it could have happened behind the scenes.
"That was the part that was really disappointing to me, but I did like her smart retort. She was obviously quite a personable character.
"[Even though the article] didn't say that [about the magistrate], I thought it could be something that happened at the end of it all."
Another story about her grandmother, she says, was that she even knew who had died in World War II before the telegram arrived at the family's door.
O'Kane believes she may have picked up a bit of her grandmother's talent, which she says her mother also had.
"It's simple things and people want to make it magical and mystical and it's not really like that.
"I'm not like my mother, my mother spoke to people I couldn't even see.
"But she wasn't sitting down and getting herself into place, she'd just occasionally turn to somebody and nod and say something and we'd always say to mum 'oh for God's sake mum, who are you talking to?' and she'd just say 'oh just my friends'."
