The Follies And Frauds Of Spiritualism

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

I. Science and Spiritualism - - 1

II. The Fox Sisters and Spibit-Eapping - 9

Chapter I

To surround anything, however monstrous or ridiculous, with an air of mystery is to invest it with a charm and power of attraction which to the crowd is irresistible. False priests, false prophets, false doctors, false patriots, false prodigies of every kind, veiling their proceedings in mystery, have always addressed themselves at an immense advantage to the popular credulity, and have been, perhaps, more indebted to that resource, in gaining and keeping for a time the upper hand of truth and common sense, than to any half-dozen items in the whole catalogue of imposture. — CHARLES DICKENS, Barnaby Budge , ch. xxvii. N

At the present time we are being inundated by one of those periodic waves of superstition to which the human race is so liable. The Crusades and the witchcraft mania are typical examples from history ; and in more recent times there was the craze for Spiritualism which swept over America, and from there to Europe, between 1848 and 1885. This arose from the “physical phenomena ” produced by the Fox Sisters, Slade, Home, Eusapia Palladino, Madame Blavatsky, and others. Forty years ago, as Mr. Frank Podmore observes, “ the number of avowed Spiritualists in this country and the States at that time might be reckoned probably by tens of thousands; some Spiritualistic writers claimed millions.” 1 After repeated exposures of the frauds

1 Podmore, Studies in Psychical Research (1897), p. 2. Mr. Podmore is recognized as one of the highest authorities on the subject of Spiritualism.

practised by mediums, the epidemic subsided. But the superstition was only scotched — not slain; and to-day we are witnessing a great revival of Spiritualism. Not, it is true, of the old discredited performances with tables and chairs — although these have not been altogether wanting — but of the “ psychical ” variety — namely, messages purporting to be received from the spirits of the dead. The War was largely responsible for this reaction. Anxiety about relatives killed or missing drove large numbers of people, mostly women, to the mediums in the desperate hope of obtaining information denied by the ordinary channels.

The revival also owes a great deal to what, Dr. Charles Mercier says, “ may fairly be called a raging, x tearing propagandism in favour of Spiritualism, telepathy, clairvoyance, crystal gazing, and all forms and manifestations of occultism ,” 1 by Sir Oliver Lodge, whose last book on the subject, Raymond , has “ sold in tens of thousands of copies, and continues, I am told, to sell at a great rate.”

Dr. Mercier also observes that “the advertisements of mediums in the papers devoted to Spiritualism became very numerous until the prosecution of some of the more notorious, when the advertisements suddenly ceased to appear. The public is so thoroughly permeated and excited with the propaganda that at the trial of one notorious medium it was stated that, if the matter was pushed, half London would be implicated. Cardinal Bourne and

1 Dr. C. Mercier, The Hihbert Journal , July, 1917, p. 598.

Father Vaughan have found it necessary to warn their flocks against the prevailing heresy. People in trains, tramcars, shops, restaurants, and clubs are all talking Spiritualism. The thing has caught hold in a way and to a degree that has not happened for more than a generation ; indeed, it is doubtful if a parallel could be found more recent than the witch-mania in the seventeenth century.” 1

The object of this book is to collect the facts regarding Spiritualism in a convenient form for those who have neither the time nor the opportunity to search them out for themselves.

We are often asked — not only by Spiritualists, but by open-minded inquirers — how we can account for the fact that so many famous scientists have given their adhesion to Spiritualism if there is no truth in it, and if it is founded upon fraud ? This is a legitimate question, and deserves a reasoned answer. It is an undoubted fact that many scientific men have become convinced of the truth of Spiritualism. Zollner, the famous professor of astronomy, and Professors Fechner, Screibner, and Weber, were converted by the physical manifestations of the notorious medium Slade. Professors Bichet and Lombroso, Dr. Ochorowicz, Sir Oliver Lodge, and F. W. H. Myers all declared for the genuineness of the physical phenomena produced by that archimpostor, the medium Eusapia Palladino. Sir William Crookes, the famous physicist, fell to the wiles of Florrie Cooke, who actually materialized a

SCIENCE AND SPIKITUALISM female spirit who allowed Sir William to walk about the room with her, arm-in-arm, and also, after obtaining permission, to embrace her ! Wallace, the great naturalist, endorsed the same superstition.

Here we have an imposing array of names, and Spiritualists make the most of them. No one will deny that they were really great men in the department of science to which they had dedicated their lives. There are, however, many proofs 1 that a man may reach the highest eminence as a scientific investigator, and yet go deplorably astray in matters outside his special studies. As Professor Jastrow has well observed: “ There is a very broadspread notion that anybody can go to Spiritualistic seances and give a reliable opinion as to whether what he or she may chance to see is explicable as conjuring or not”; but “it is probably not an exaggeration to maintain that most such claimants are about as competent to form a trustworthy opinion on such a subject as they are to pronounce upon the genuineness of a Syriac manuscript.” And he concludes that “ it is not at all to the discredit of any one’s powers of observation or intellectual acumen to be deceived by the performances of a conjurer, and the same holds true of the professional part of mediumistic phenomena. Until this homely but salutary truth is impressed with all its importance upon all intending investigators, there is little hope of bringing about a proper attitude towards these and kindred phenomena .” 2

1 W. Mann, The Religion of Famous Men.

4 Prof. J. Jastrow, Fact and Fable in Psychology (1901), pp. 147-43.

How can a man who cannot detect the sleight-ofhand of a common conjurer, performed in the full glare of the footlights, expect to see through the tricks of a professional medium performed in partial or complete darkness ? As Dr. Ivor Tuckett remarks in commenting on Sir William Crookes's adventure with the materialized spirit : “ The fact of the matter is that scientific men, who are accustomed to accurate laboratory conditions and instruments, which do not lie or give rise to error — at any rate consciously — are no match for the subtle degrees of deception practised by Home, Moses (Stainton Moses), and Eusapia. Because the latter appear in their daily intercourse to be reliable, honest persons, the former cannot admit of their being on other occasions the authors of fraud.” 1 The soul of truthfulness themselves, they are quite incapable of attributing fraud to others. Mr. Podmore also observes : “ The untrained eye is no match for the trained hand of the conjurer. The kind of observation demanded of the investigators at a Spiritualistic seance — an observation which is alive to the various artifices employed to distract it, and which, if not actually unremitting, is at least aware of its own lapses — is a quality not called for and not exercised in the investigations of the physical laboratory, and not to be acquired, even to a moderate extent, except by education of a very special kind .” 2

Herbert Spencer, the personification of pure intel-

1 Dr. Ivor Tackett;, The Evidence for the Supernatural (1911), pp. 62-63.

lect, if ever there was one, surprised his friends by observing that he thought he would be “an easy dupe at a Spiritualist seance .” x Probably he was right ; but in any case the candour of his confession is a rebuke to those who rush in and deliver judgment upon questions which they are utterly unqualified, either by nature or training, to discuss.

Helmholtz, one of the very greatest scientific minds of the nineteenth century, recognized this clearly. When he was on a visit to England the Psychical Society sought to interest him in the case of two little girls, the daughters of a clergyman, one of whom held up a playing-card behind a closed door, while her sister on the other side described it. When told of this performance by a college professor who had experimented with the children; Helmholtz could hardly take him seriously. The Professor, somewhat nettled, named some of his eminent colleagues in the investigation, and said they should be credited with enough common sense to test a thing like that ; but, finding Helmholtz still incredulous, he asked : “ Would you believe it if you saw it yourself ?” “ Certainly not,” answered

Helmholtz ; “ in my investigations, if anything peculiar appears, I do not accept it on the evidence of my eyes. Before any new thing can be even provisionally accepted, I must bring it to the test of many instruments, and if it survives all my tests, then I send it over here to Tyndall, and to investigators in other countries. No, I would not believe

1 Athcnaum , July, 1908. (Review of Duncan’s Life of Spencer.)

any abnormal phenomena on the mere testimony of my eyes .” 1 * Moncure Conway, who narrates this, adds : “ The scepticism of Helmholtz was justified in the case of the clergyman's daughters, who were detected in their clever trick.” And it should be remembered that Helmholtz knew more about the mechanism and limitations of the eye than any other man of his time. It was he who invented the ophthalmoscope, by means of which the examination of the living retina was first made possible.

Mr. William Marriott, an expert conjurer who has unmasked the frauds of the mediums, writes as follows : —

I say advisedly that scientists, however eminent, are emphatically not the people to investigate these matters. If Lombroso and Zollner could return again from the dead, and sit, with Sir William Crookes, as a committee to investigate, say, the mysteries worked by Mr. Maskelyne, either on his own ground or on theirs, does any one suppose that they would detect a single one of his secrets? Spiritualists may think so, but conjurers know better. The scientist who sits where he is told to sit and looks where he is told to look is the ideal subject for the wiles of the conjurer or the medium, and before him effects can be brought off that would be impossible before an audience of schoolboys . 3

What is required to test a Spiritualist seance is not a scientist fresh from the laboratory, but an expert illusionist and conjurer like Mr. J. N. Maskelyne, who has assisted at the exposure of

1 M. D. Conway, Autobiography , vol. ii, p. 310.

3 William Marriott, “On the Edge of the Unknown,” Pearson's many mediums. He declares emphatically in his book, The Supernatural : “ There does not exist, and there never has existed, a professed medium of any note who has not been convicted of trickery and fraud ” (p. 183).

It should be borne in mind that a great number of equally great men have given their verdict emphatically against Spiritualism. Among them we find Darwin, Mill, Faraday, Sir David Brewster, Professors Huxley, Tyndall, and Clifford, Herbert Spencer, Helmholtz, Sir Ray Lankester, Sir Bryan Donkin, and Lord Kelvin. Few people, we imagine — outside his circle of personal friends — would consider Sir Oliver Lodge, as a physicist, the equal of Lord Kelvin. Neither is Wallace regarded as the equal of Darwin ; for, although Wallace was the codiscoverer of Natural Selection, he frankly admitted that he could not have written Darwin’s great work, The Origin of Species . Few competent judges would consider Sir William Crookes the scientific equal of Helmholtz, to say nothing of Faraday and Tyndall.

Chapter II

A deep longing for some direct proof of existence after death has made hundreds of people accept the grossest impostures of “ Spiritualism,” impostures which contradict the most massive experiences of the race, and which had nothing to support them save this emotional credulity acting where direct knowledge was wholly absent. — G. H. LEWES, Problems of Life and Mind (1879),

Whoever seriously thinks that superhuman beings have ever given our race information as to the aim of its existence and that of the world is still in his childhood. There is no other revelation than the thoughts of the wise. — SCHOPENHAUER, Religion and Other Essays , p. 117.

Table-rapping is one of the commonest phenomena of the Spiritualist seance. Once the knack of producing the raps has been acquired, it is the most mystifying, the easiest, and the safest of all the medium’s bag of tricks. It requires no apparatus, and there is no danger of discovery ; hence its popularity among mediums. Table-turning and table-rapping generally form the introduction to the greater marvels of Spiritualism. Once the beginner is firmly grounded in a belief in these phenomena as the work of spirits, the rest is easy ; he abandons his critical attitude, and is ready to accept any tricks the medium cares to play.

Although the phenomena are known as table-rapping, the raps are in fact not produced on the

9 B t table. The name itself is a fraud, for it leads the sitters to concentrate their attention upon the table and upon the medium’s hands, though the production of the raps is due to neither. As a matter of fact, the inventors of this fraud — the Fox sisters, in America— first produced the mysterious raps while lying in bed. It is to these two sisters, aged respectively twelve and fifteen, that Podmore ascribes the birth of modern Spiritualism. From the “ Rochester knockings,” he says, 11 arose the whole movement of modern Spiritualism.” 1 Although they were not the first to profess to communicate with spirits, the interest created by the performances of these two children spread like a prairie fire. Professional mediums sprang up in all directions. As we shall see later, Daniel Dunglas Home, one of the greatest of mediums, received his first impulse towards Spiritualism from this source. In fact, the movement started by these two girls became worldwide.

It was in a small farmhouse at Hydesville, a village in the township of Arcadia, Wayne County, New York, that the mysterious rappings were first heard. The house was then occupied by a Methodist farmer, John D. Fox, who had entered upon the tenancy during the previous year. The household consisted of the farmer, his wife Margaret, and two unmarried daughters, Margaretta and Katie. There

1 Studies in Psychical Research (1897), p. 9. Mr. J. N. Maskelync says “little Katey Fox will ever be known as the real founder of the physical manifestations of modern Spiritualism ” (Modern

Spiritualism , by J. N. Maskclyne, p. 28).

were also a married son, living about two miles away (he plays no part in this history), and a married daughter, Mrs. Fish, afterwards successively Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Underhill, living in Rochester, N.Y.

Mrs. Fish appears to have been the real author of all the mischief, although it was through the two girls that the public first became acquainted with the rappings. According to Podmore : “ On the evening of March 31, 1848, the Fox family, who, by their own account, had passed several disturbed nights previously by reason of the raps and other noises in the house, went to bed early, in order to make up their arrears of sleep. What follows is based upon the testimony of the Foxes. The girls were already in bed, and their parents — who occupied another bed in the same room — were about to follow when the raps were again heard. On this occasion, in reply to a challenge given by one of the girls, the raps repeated, sound for sound, the noises which she made by snapping her fingers, and again and again gave the number of raps asked for. At this proof of an intelligent cause for the raps, Mrs. Fox, prescient that the matter was one of no ordinary moment, resolved to call in her friends and neighbours, that they also might bear witness.” 1

On the two following days hundreds of people came to witness the marvel, and in the course of the next two or three years the rappings spread throughout the greater part of the Eastern States. In 1851 it was estimated that there were a hundred

1 Podmore, Modern Spiritualism , vol. i, p. 180.

mediums in New York City, and fifty or sixty private circles in Philadelphia. “ The Fox family — the mother and the three daughters ” — says Podmore, “ practised no unwise parsimony of their spiritual gifts. In the course of the years 1849 and 1850 they appear to have given demonstrations of their power in several large towns before considerable audiences. Their claims to supernormal power did not, of course, escape challenge. Again and again committees were appointed to examine the subject and report. But for some time the source of the rappings remained inexplicable.” 1

Horace Greeley publicly testified to the genuineness of the girls’ performance. Commenting on a visit they paid to New York in August, 1850, he says in his paper, the New York Tribune , that during a stay of several weeks in New York they were subjected to every reasonable test ; their rooms at the hotel had been repeatedly searched ; “ they have been all unconsciously placed on a glass surface concealed under the carpet, in order to interrupt electric vibrations ; they have been disrobed by a committee of ladies appointed without notice, and insisting that neither of them should leave the room until the investigation had been made, etc. ; yet we believe no one to this moment pretends that he has detected either of them in producing or causing the rappings ” ; and he concludes : “ Whatever may be the origin or the cause of the ‘ rappings,’ the ladies in whose presence they occur do not make them.

We tested this thoroughly, and to our entire satisfaction.” 1

But the day of detection was at hand. A fraud cannot be publicly exploited for ever. The very success which at the beginning carries everything before it contains the seeds of ultimate defeat. A small circle trained to implicit belief in the supernormal phenomena may be kept permanently at that stage, but when the medium appears before the world and challenges public inquiry the rationalminded begin to apply the scientific method to these marvels, and they melt like ice before the fire.

In December of the same year the Fox girls came to Buffalo, N.Y., where they stayed for some weeks, giving public exhibitions of their marvellous powers. Among those who visited them were three doctors — Flint, Lee, and Coventry. These gentlemen wrote a joint letter to a local newspaper, pointing out that the rappings could be explained by movements of the knee-joints, and stating that a lady of their acquaintance had actually produced similar sounds by that means. Mrs. Fish, the married sister of the Fox girls, promptly challenged the doctors to prove the truth of their theory at a personal interview, confident that nothing could prevent the raps from being heard, and trusting in the well-known difficulty always experienced in locating a sound unless the object causing it can be seen in motion. In the matter of preventing the rapping, they utterly deceived themselves ; the three doctors were skilled anatomists, and came prepared with a very definite and, as it proved, successful test.

The two Fox girls were seated on a sofa, and immediately began business with a series of loud raps in rapid succession. The spirits were then asked whether they w T ould respond to questions ; to which they rapped out an assent. The report continues as follows : “ The two females were then seated upon two chairs placed near together, their heels resting on cushions, their lower limbs extended, with the toes elevated, and the feet separated from each other. The object of this experiment was to secure a position in which the ligaments of the knee-joints should be made tense, and no opportunity offered to make pressure with the foot. We were pretty well satisfied that the displacement of the bones requisite for the sounds could not be effected unless a fulcrum were obtained by resting one foot upon the other, or on some resisting body. The company, seated in a semicircle, quietly waited for the ‘ manifestations 9 for more than half an hour, but the 4 spirits/ generally so noisy, were now dumb.

On resuming the usual position on the sofa, the

feet resting on the floor, knockings very soon began to be heard. It was then suggested that some other experiment be made. This was assented to, notwithstanding the first was, in our minds, amply conclusive. The experiment selected was, that the knees of the two females should be firmly grasped, with the hands so applied that any lateral movement of the bones was made perceptible to the touch. The pressure was made through the dress.

The hands were kept in apposition for several

minutes at a time, and the experiment repeated frequently for the course of an hour or more with negative results ; that is to say, there were plenty of raps when the knees were not held and none when the hands were applied, save once. As the pressure was intentionally relaxed (Dr. Lee being the holder), two or three faint, single raps were heard, and Dr. Lee immediately averred that the motion of the bone was plainly perceptible to him. The experiment of seizing the knees as quickly as possible when the knockings first commenced was tried several times, bat always with the effect of putting an immediate quietus upon the manifestations.” 1

Thus, by a couple of simple scientific tests, the secret was revealed. “ One Chauncey Burr,” says Podmore, “ earned some fame at this time by giving lectures on Spiritualism, in which he demonstrated that the raps could be produced by the toe-joints.”

Three doctors — Flint, Lee, and Coventry — were, as we have seen, associated in the public exposure of the Fox girls ; but, according to Dr. Carpenter, it was Dr. Austin Flint who first sought for a physiological explanation of the raps. He seems to have owed his discovery to the fact that a patient of his own was able to produce an exact imitation of the Rochester rappings. Dr. Austin Flint’s explanation subsequently received full confirmation from Professor Schiff, since of Florence, who not only

1 Cited by Podmore, vol. ii, pp. 184-85., acquired the power of producing the raps, by the repeated displacement of a tendon which slides through a sheath behind the external protuberance of the ankle, but exhibited this acquirement to the French Academy of Medicine in April, 1859, baring his legs, and producing the raps without any apparent movement.” 1

A few weeks after the public detection of the Fox girls further proof of the fraud was made public. Mrs. Norman Culver, a connection by marriage of the Fox family, stated that one of the girls had confessed to her how the raps were produced. Mrs. Culver’s statement, written out on April 17, 1851, and attested by two witnesses (a doctor and a clergyman), was published in the New York Herald . The raps were produced by the knees and toes.

Mrs. Culver says that she had for two years believed the raps to be genuine, but latterly, noting some suspicious circumstances, she had offered to assist Catherine. Catherine — her sister being absent — had gladly accepted the offer, and Mrs. Culver, under Catherine’s instruction, became fairly adept in producing the raps by means of the toe-joints. The statement continues : —

Catherine told me how to manage to answer the questions. She said the reason why they asked people to write down several names on paper, and then point to them till the spirit rapped at the right one, was to give them a chance to watch the countenance and motions of the person, and in that way they could nearly always guess right.

1 Dr. W. B. Carpenter, 'Mesmerism, Spiritualism , etc., Historically and Scientifically Considered (1877), p. 102.

She also explained how they held down and moved tables. (Mrs. Culver gave us some illustrations of the tricks.) She told me that all I should have to do to make the raps heard on the table would be to put my foot on the bottom of the table when I rapped, and that when I wished to make the raps sound distant on the wall I must make them louder, and direct my own eyes earnestly to the kpot where I wished them to be heard. She said that if I could put my foot against the bottom of the door the raps would be heard at the top of the door. 1

Mrs. Culver learned from Catherine that Mrs. Fish’s little daughter Elizabeth had actually discovered how to make the raps by playing with her toes against the footboard of the bed. Now, Mrs. Fish was a married sister of the Fox girls, and, as she accompanied them on their public performances, it is probable that she was the moving spirit of the whole fraud.

In the autumn of 1888, says Podmore, “ Mrs. Kane (Margaretta Fox) and Mrs. Jencken (Catherine Fox) made public, and apparently spontaneous, confession that the raps had been produced by fraudulent means. Mrs. Kane even gave demonstrations before large audiences of the actual manner in which the toe-joints had been used at the early seances. Mrs. Jencken, at any rate, if not also Mrs. Kane, afterwards recantpd her confession.” 2 Whether they recanted or not, they werp thoroughly unreliable characters, and nothing they afterwards said or did

1 Podmore, Modern Spiritualism, vol. i, pp. 185-86.

2 Ibid, vol. i, p. 188. The confession of the Pox girls appeared in the New York Herald for September 24, 1888.

I could alter the damning proof, publicly exhibited by Margaretta Fox, of the manner in which the raps were produced.

In their confession the Fox sisters declared that they were led into the fraud by their elder sister, Leah Fox Underhill (formerly Mrs. Fish), whose little girl, as we have seen, first discovered how to produce the raps. On October 15, 1888, they authorized Mr. E. B. Davenport to write their confession, and it was published as A Death-blow to Spiritualism. The Fox girls, like Slade, were confirmed inebriates — Slade had been confined in an asylum for inebriates — fell into great poverty, and eventually returned to Spiritualism. Their old followers were the only persons who would assist them. After an interview with Mr. Newton, the millionaire Spiritist, they recanted their confession, but they never recovered their old success. They remained victims of the drink habit, and ultimately died in great want.

So the plain fact emerges that the trickery of a little girl was the means of launching this gigantic fraud which overran America, and ultimately the world, reaching its culminating point in the rank jungle-growths of superstition, as illustrated by the physical phenomena of the dark seance !

It may be as well to deal here with the phenomena of table-turning. Most of us have met people who have taken part in table-turning, and who assure us that the table really did move without any pressure being exerted through the hands resting on the table.

Table-turning became very popular in England in 1853. It was introduced from the Continent, where it had broken out in the previous year. The usual method adopted was for a number of people to seat themselves at a round table, upon the edge of which they rested their fingers, spread out so that the little fingers of neighbouring sitters were in contact. After a certain period of waiting the table would execute various movements which appeared to be independent of the volition of the people concerned.

The table-turning mania reached such dimensions that several scientific men turned their attention to it. A committee of four medical men made an investigation, and, says Mr. Podmore, “ they found, as the result of several trials, that when no expectations were formed of any probable result, and the attention of those sitting round the table was diverted by conversation or otherwise, the table did not move at all. Again, no results followed when half the sitters expected the rotation to take place in one direction and half in another. But when expectation was allowed free play, and especially if the direction of the probable movement was indicated -beforehand, the table began to rotate after a few minutes, although no one of the sitters was conscious of exercising any effort at all. The conclusion formed was that the motion was due to muscular action, mostly exercised unconsciously.” 1

Dr. Braid, who also investigated the subject, declared that at “ all the experiments at which he had assisted some one had always announced beforehand the direction in which the table might be expected to move, and had thus helped to bring the unconscious expectations of the sitters into unison.”

But this was too simple an explanation of the mystery to commend itself to the multitude, who revel in the mysterious and unexplainable. The Spiritualistic interpretation found its strongest advocates among the clergy, who declared that the tables were tilted by diabolic agency.