“He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive.”

A hypnotist is accused of dereliction of duty and cuckoldry in an article in the February 8, 1903 New York Times. The story:

“Passaic, N.J.–Prof. Lawson Herman, a hypnotist, put Samuel Powell to sleep in a coffin at the Empire Theatre on Thursday night at midnight. A big crowd was on hand to witness the reawakening of Powell, but the professor failed to put in an appearance.

It turned out that Manager Sohl of the Passaic Opera House, with ire in his eye and a revolver in his pocket, was looking for Hermann with the avowed intention of shooting him on sight. The professor, earlier in the night, had heard of Manager Sohl’s quest, and incontinently had slipped out of the theatre and the town without apprising anyone of the departure.

At the witching hour when the yawning coffin was to give up Powell. Hermann could not be found. The big audience became impatient, and Manager Stein of the Empire became alarmed. The manager hustled around, and after some trouble secured Prof. Tony Frylinck. Prof. Frylinck worked all night before he could awaken the sleeper, and by that time the few weary spectators who had waited to see the upshot were so sleepy themselves that they lost all interest in Powell, and some of those who had dozed off rather resented his return to consciousness of his surroundings, for Powell when he learned that Hermann had abandoned him was at first greatly alarmed and then waxed exceeding wroth, and expressed his opinion of the professor in language that was as loud as it was emphatic. He says he will never again permit himself to the buried alive.

Manager Sohl’s lust for Hemrnan’s gore, it appears, was aroused by the fact that for the second time his wife had disappeared, and he accuses the hypnotist of hypnotizing her and taking her away. She disappeared on Thursday, and he says he raced her and Hermann to Newark. The first time she ran away she was found in Herman’s apartments in New York, and Sohl had the professor arrested.”