When a heavy elevator cable crashed through the roof of a car at a St. Louis hotel, it struck 17-year-old Laura Wind directly on the head.
The blow knocked her unconscious, and witnesses initially believed she had been killed. Doctors expected to find a fractured skull, but the girl suffered little more than a scalp wound.
Her unlikely protection came from three “rats” – padded hairpieces hidden beneath her thick golden-brown hair – which had absorbed enough of the impact to save her life.
Rats Save Girl
ST. LOUIS, Missouri. — Three hair rats laid across her head under a luxuriant growth of golden brown hair and saved the life of Miss Laura Wind, 17 years old, of Dixon, Missouri, in the Planters’ Hotel.
The rats served as a buffer against a heavy wire cable, which came down in the wreck of an elevator. The cable crashed through the top of the car and struck the girl on the head. She was knocked insensible, and at first it was believed she was dead.
The physicians in the City Hospital said that undoubtedly Miss Wind owed her life to the rats. She sustained a scalp wound, and was taken still unconscious to the operating room in the hospital. The doctors thought the skull was fractured, but examination revealed that little injury had been done.
It is expected the girl will be discharged from the hospital today.
Sitting up in a cot with the three rats on the coverlet, she said:
“They saved my life, and I’ll never part with them. Only yesterday, mother asked me to discard two of them. If I had, what would have happened today? I will never go without rats again. They are a protection against sudden death.”
Source: The Washington Times. Washington, D.C. February 27, 1908.
