Lucky Number 13

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
How or why the number thirteen has acquired a connection to bad luck is not quite clear, but this superstition dates back hundreds of years to the Vikings, the Romans and even to the present day when many buildings don't have a 13th floor. However at the end of the 19th century a club was formed, whose purpose was to fly in the face of all superstitions including the dreaded number 13. 

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Knickerbocker Cottage with Captain Fowler inset

​ The club's inaugural meeting took place on Friday, January 13, at eight-thirteen in the evening in room 13 of the Knickerbocker Cottage. (It was on Sixth Avenue and Twenty-Eighth; apparently nothing had been available on Thirteenth Street.) The following appeared in the Philadelphia Recorder in June, 1892:

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Thirteen Philadelphia young men have banded themselves together, if rumors are true, in what timid superstitious ones will call a suicide club. This Club of Thirteen, as its name hints, has been organized in contempt of almost all knows popular superstitions. The club meetings occur on Friday evenings, and on the 13th of the month, in room 13 of a house number 13. The fiery-headed member is the first to enter the hall; all pass under a ladder raised in the room. On taking his seat, the president opens an umbrella handed to him by the cross-eyed janitor, and sits under it during the session. The sergeant-at-arms opens the proceedings by breaking a looking glass.

​A skeleton sits opposite the president at all feasts and two black cats stalk around the room. The walls are adorned with peacock feathers. Every member is under solemn oath to always to spill salt, looks at the moon over his left shoulder, stumble whenever alighting from a journey, walk between couples on the street, and when together pass on either side of a post. They are eager just now to purchase a raven and rent a haunted house to hold their meetings in. 

Theodore Roosevelt's honorary certificate of membership in the 13th club. c.1903

​​Captain William Festus Fowler (1827-1897), founded the club, since in his own lifetime the number 13 had proved to be lucky for him. He went on to adopt the number as his own personal talisman.

By the 19th century, the number 13 had developed an ominous reputation for different reason. One of them was the Last Supper, where the thirteenth person was associated with Judas Iscariot the betrayer of Jesus.

Victor Hugo was said to leave a dinner table if there were thirteen guests seated.

Captain Fowler leased a landmark tavern and inn known as the Knickerbocker Cottage. He decided to disprove the superstition against the number 13, by establishing a club that defied all the traditions that were said to rain bad luck on a person. During these years, "club life" with different themes were a popular way to meet like-minded friends, enjoy a lavish meal and they proliferated in New York.

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Annual Ladies' Roof Garden Dinner of the Thirteen Club c.1899

Bad luck did occasionally rear its head. At one club meeting, a waiter fractured his skull when the traditional indoor ladder collapsed on him. Another time, someone blew up the New Jersey clubhouse with dynamite (the members inside escaped with bruises).

Captain Fowler faced his first challenge, when he found he couldn't find twelve men from among his associates, not only to join the club, but to sit down to a dinner with thirteen guests. Fowler was a Freemason who fought in the Civil War, and went on to design several landmark buildings, however from among his well-heeled acquaintances who were well educated, many would beg off at the last moment. Fowler also had to convince persons to work at the events, since servers and cooks feared they would be visited with bad luck as well.

Captain Fowler designed the menus to reflect the morbid theme of the club. Wine lists were shaped like gravestones, and the meal had thirteen courses. Members were dressed totally in black like an undertaker, and on the way to the dining room they walked under a ladder that had been brought indoors, and did all the things that were associated with a run of bad luck.

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Members of the 13th club on an excursion

After the first dinner, none of the attendees were struck down within the first year, which was the superstition when seating 13 at a dinner table. Eventually the club had honorary members like Grover Cleveland, Chester A. Arthur and Theodore Roosevelt.

​The club members went on to carry the 13th tradition even outside of meetings, by insisting to only be sat at tables of 13.

An 1886, the meeting in Coney Island drew in 400 members and chapters soon sprang up in France, Chicago, England and other countries.

In April, 1888, five years after Captain Fowler had given up the lease on the Knickerbocker Cottage, the roof of the building and several walls fell in a heap. The property was in the process of being demolished, and several workmen were on site. One man was killed and three others were injured. The newspaper promptly reminded their readers this had been the 13 Club meeting place for many years.

In 1891, the New York club invited women to a dinner, and they were gifted with perfume bottles in the shape of a skull. A couple of years later 13 women opened their own chapter in Iowa.

​By the 1930s many of these social clubs, including the 13 Club started to peter out, but not altogether. In 1957, the 13th Club in Philadelphia had the following menu: sugared bumble bees, fried grasshoppers, fried ants, lotus flower roots, salted cherry blossoms, fricasseed whale skin, roasted caterpillars, fried worms and rattlesnake meat. The food was brought from Japan by a food importer who was a member of the club.

No doubt their digestive systems were believers in the curse of 13.

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