The Seattle Post Intelligencer

HIS UNLUCKY YEAR.

REMARKABLE PREDICTIONS OF JOHN HUGHES' MOTHER

Writing from England, She Warned Him of the Nanaimo Explosion and of His Peril at the Hands of Murderous Companions-His Disasters End by Drowning.

John Thomas Hughes fell from the Shore Line Trestle, near Almond & Phillips machine shop into the Sound yesterday morning and was drowned. It seems that Hughes and two companions who are engaged in the ice cream manufacturing business, and who live in a cabin near the foot of Pine street had been up all night in a Front street beer saloon, drinking singing and dancing. They left the saloon about half past three o'clock, and started for home, going by way of the Puget Sound Shore Line trestle. When about half way home, at the point mentioned above, Hughes STUBBED HIS TOE and pitched headlong into the water. He could not swim, and one of his companions jumped in after him. The two struggled together for a time, and both came near being drowned. Finally the companion succeeded in reaching a pile, as Hughes sank beneath the tide. His body was recovered at 10 o'clock and taken to Cross's undertaking rooms, from where it will BE BURIED TO-DAY. Hughes was an Englishman, aged 28 years, and his parents reside at Bradford, Yorkshire, England. Hughes is the same man who last spring, while out walking near Grace Harbor with a friend named Adolph Cortes, had HIS THROAT CUT. And he carries to his grave the scar of the terrible wound which he received. His assailant is doing time in the territorial penitentiary.

HIS MOTHER'S STRANGE LETTER

Mr. J. McGee, who keeps a store on Front street, said to a reporter yesterday "I was in the hospital at the same time Hughes was there with his throat cut, and I got quite well acquainted with him. He had a number of letters from his mother which he showed to me and I declare I almost begin to believe she is a prophet. The first letter which he showed me he received a few days before the great mine EXPLOSION AT NANAIMO a year or so ago. In this letter his mother wrote that if he was working under ground she trusted he would get employment on top, as she had had a dream in which a mine was on fire, and fifty persons were perishing. Hughes was working on the night shift in the mine at the time, but the day before the explosion he changed shifts with a young fellow, and when the terrible explosion took place his substitute was among the killed. While we were in the hospital together a very short time after he was cut, and before his parents could have learned of the trouble he was in, he got another letter from his mother, which I read. She said she had been looking in the almanac, and had found that his birthday came on A VERY UNLUCKY DAY this year, and she feared trouble would come upon him. She urged him to be very careful of the company he kept, as she feared some of his companions had evil designs on him, and she warned him to look out for them. In another letter, she stated that she feared he would not get through this year alive, and urged him to come back to his home in England until after the unlucky year should pass. Every letter that he showed me from his mother was written in the same solicitous tone, and I judged from what she said that her impressions were formed through visions or dreams. The matter impressed me as being so remarkable that when I heard of Hughes' death I made up my mind I would have the facts published, as they made quite an impression on me".