Titanic Tales - 3rd time unlucky

On of the most unusual tales from the Titanic sinking is the story of survivor Helen Bishop. As Helen and other survivors escaped in one of the lifeboats many of the female passengers were hysterical at the thought that the lifeboat might be sucked down by the sinking ship. To put their minds at ease Helen recounted a true story of a recent encounter she had had with an Egyptian fortune teller. The fortune teller told her that she would survive a shipwreck and an earthquake, before being killed in a car accident. For the prediction to come true she would surely have to survive this ship disaster.

Helen Bishop did survive the Titanic shipwreck but the coincidences did not stop there.

Later that year Helen gave birth to a child who died the next day. As part of her emotional recovery doctors recommended a vacation. Helen and her husband took their advice and in 1913 holidayed in California. While there they experienced a minor earthquake. Both reflected on the prophecy of the fortune-teller who had now accurately predicted that Helen would survive two disasters. It didn't end there!

Towards the end of 1913 Helen was returning with friends from a party when the car in which they were travelling skidded on ice and crashed into a tree. The other two suffered minor injuries but Helen was not so lucky. She was thrown out over the front of the vehicle, through a mass of branches before landing on her head on a cement walkway over 30ft away. Helen's skull was crushed and she suffered a number of internal injuries. Her condition was critical; portions of her skull and brain were later removed in hospital.

Despite this trauma and initial fear that she might die, Helen's condition improved. She then had revolutionary surgery where a silver plate was fitted over her skull to protect the damaged section of brain. Finally, after months of recovery and rehabilitation she was discharged from hospital.

Helen had cheated death and, ultimately, the fortune-teller's triple prophecy; she had survived to tell the tale. She was the ultimate survivor who survived the Titanic, an earthquake and a near-fatal car accident...or had she!

Her luck, unfortunately, ran out; a number of years later Helen tripped over a rug in a friend's sitting room and she fell, head first, against a sharp hard surface. Of course it was the silver plate that took the impact and the resulting trauma to the head initiated a brain haemorrhage which, ultimately, killed Helen. It seems that the fortune-teller in Egypt had been right after-all, and her final demise would be a result of a car accident....in a way!

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