The Thirteen Club, Fighting Superstition in Turn-of-the-20th-Century U.S.

“Those of us who are about to die salute you,” runs the caption on the banner of this macabre illustration. The skeleton in the foreground sits upon a grave, its arm bent with hand upon skull in a pensive gesture. This image was the cover for the Twelfth Annual Report of the Thirteen Club, whise morbidity was distinctly humorous, meant as a confrontational attack against superstitious beliefs, particularly fear of the number 13.

Still today, many buildings in the United States avoid designating a 13th floor, and you won’t find an airplane aisle with this number. Everyone knows that there is an old tradition of fearing Fridays falling on the 13th. Each of these ideas and practices, however, were only born during the 20th century, the same century which psychoanalysts invented the term “triskaidekaphobia,” or “fear of the number thirteen.” The fear of 13 does precede the 1900s, but in the United States in the decades after the Civil War, beliefs in many superstitions were extremely common.

Enter one Captain William Fowler (1827-1897), a wealthy and influential New Yorker, who decided to make a sort of crusade against superstition. Convening with 12 guests at 8:13 pm on Friday January 13, 1882, he sat down to dine and begin the 13 Club. Suppers with thirteen people were terribly frightening for many at the time, believing that one of the diners would pass away within a year, should the dreaded number of guests tally 13. (One idea of where this came from is that Jesus sat down with 12 apostles and — well, obviously things did not go well for him after that.)

Fowler’s guests lit 13 candles, spilled salt on the table, and dined on lobster salad shaped into miniature coffins. The 13 Club met annually after that, and continued to flout superstitious taboos — they would eat with open umbrellas, walk under ladders, and then count up how many members had died the previous year in order to disconfirm the superstitious omens. The group as a whole had a marvelously healthy track record, as it happened. It also attracted famous people, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland, only petering out in popularity by the 1920s.