For details on Conan Doyle’s latter-day belief in spiritualism, see his books In Quest of Truth: Being a Correspondence between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Captain Hubert Stansbury (1914); The New Revelation (1918); The Vital Message (1919); The Wanderings of a Spiritualist (1921); and, not least, The Coming of the Fairies (1922). I also consulted Massimo Polidoro’s very fine book, Final Séance: The Strange Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle, cited in the bibliography, as well as the archives of the American Weekly, the Boston Herald, the Illustrated London News, Light, Magic, the New York World, Punch and the Saturday Evening Post.
Relatively little is known of Evan Powell, the colliery worker turned medium who apparently brought Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Kingsley back to life at a séance held in Portsmouth on 7 September 1919. In later years he seems to have taken up mediumship in Paignton, Devon, where he frequently addressed clients in the voice of an American Indian spirit named Black Hawk. The Scientific American writer and psychic researcher Malcolm Bird later wrote that Powell, even when strapped to a chair, had been able ‘to ring bells [and] have flowers fly through the air’, describing this as ‘the best séance that I had in England’. Conan Doyle continued to believe in Powell’s ability to contact the dead, and the events that night in Portsmouth thus remain an important watershed in his life, if not the moment he abandoned his reputation as a sober-minded Scots doctor author and criminal investigator in the Sherlock Holmes mould.
Conan Doyle wrote to his mother on 9 May 1917, referring to his son Kingsley going to the front line, ‘I do not fear death for the boy, for since I became a convinced Spiritualist death became rather an unnecessary thing, but I fear pain or mutilation very greatly. However, all things are ordained.’
Chapter 7
It is a pleasure to acknowledge the pioneering work done in the Oscar Slater case by the investigator and author Thomas Toughill, to whom I also owe a personal debt of thanks. Toughill’s book Oscar Slater: The ‘Immortal’ Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, cited in the bibliography, is the definitive treatment of its subject. No one who writes about Oscar Slater can fail to acknowledge this ground-breaking and peerless work. I might mention, too, that I was lucky enough to enjoy a sporadic but long-running correspondence with Toughill, who cheerfully answered my questions about Slater without ever making me feel a fool for having asked them.
William Roughead’s The Trial of Oscar Slater, also cited in the bibliography, provides an invaluable transcript of the proceedings held in Edinburgh from 3–6 May 1909 before that formidable judicial figure Lord Guthrie. Conan Doyle was particularly struck by the ‘intemperate’ summing-up of the prosecution’s case by the Lord Advocate, Alexander Ure. Ure drew the jury’s attention to a number of what he called ‘priceless inferences’ which he drew from his ‘forensic’ study of the unfortunate Slater. Among these was the highly contentious view that:
The [murder] was accomplished by a man who was on the hunt for jewels, not money – and who knew how to deal with jewels, how to make away with them when he got them. Jewels [he informed the jury] are difficult things for those who are not experts to handle if they do not come by them by honest means.
‘Some of the Advocate’s other remarks were equally surprising,’ Doyle later remarked with some restraint, before adding of Lord Guthrie’s instructions to the retiring jury, ‘He commented with great severity upon Slater’s general character, concluding with the words, “I suppose that you all think that the prisoner possibly is the murderer. You may very likely all think that he probably is the murderer”’.
As well as Conan Doyle’s own The Case of Oscar Slater, I consulted archives held at the Scottish Record Office (HH 16/109-112), and the Glasgow University Archives (GUA/FM/2B/5). I should particularly thank Barbara McLean of the Glasgow City Archives, and the staff of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow. Among periodicals consulted were the archives of the Herald, The Scotsman, the Edinburgh Evening News, the Aberdeen Evening Express and the Scottish Daily Mail. I’m also deeply grateful to Alex Holmes, who kindly visited the scene of the crime on my behalf.
Conan Doyle’s short stories ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’, ‘The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle’ and ‘The Priory School’ were first published in 1891, 1892 and 1904 respectively.
Doyle’s assault on his teenaged son Adrian when the latter once rashly characterised a woman as ‘ugly’ is described in John Dickson Carr, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (London: John Murray, 1949), p.279.
Chapter 8
For an account of Conan Doyle’s psychic enquiries into the murder of Marion Gilchrist, see those of Doyle’s papers in the archives of the Manuscripts Reading Room of the Cambridge University Library; the Reading Room of the British Library; and in the offices of Portsmouth City Council. The librarian at Longton Spiritualist Church kindly provided information on Doyle’s sittings with the medium Annie Brittain. I also consulted the files of the International Psychic Gazette, Light, the New Republic, Review of Reviews and the Proceedings of the ASPR. I’m further grateful to the archivists at the Bodleian Library, Oxford; the New York Public Library; the Seattle Public Library; the FBI – Freedom of Information Division; the General Register Office; the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin; and the UK National Archives.
Thomas Toughill’s observation, ‘Slater was not a model prisoner …’ appears on p.182 of his book Oscar Slater: The ‘Immortal’ Case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as previously cited. Toughill’s remains by some distance the most thoroughly researched and consistently readable account of the Slater affair to be commercially published, and I warmly recommend it to any reader interested in learning more about the case.
Helen Lambie’s article under the headline ‘Why I Believe I Blundered over Slater’ appeared in the Empire News of 27 October 1927. The rival Daily News published its interview with Mary Barrowman on 5 November 1927. Conan Doyle himself wrote to Stanley Baldwin on 13 November 1927, a letter reproduced in this book by courtesy of Glasgow City Archives. On the same day, Doyle published an article in the Empire News in which he guardedly suggested that Marion Gilchrist’s murder had possibly been less the product of an attempted jewel robbery gone wrong, and more some form of ghastly retribution for a past indiscretion, if true much the same sort of material Sherlock Holmes often worked with. ‘Miss Gilchrist’s behaviour suggests to me,’ Doyle wrote, ‘that there was some romance, some tragedy in this woman’s life, dating perhaps far back, but having consequences now which were becoming manifest in her old age.’
The interview with Dr Francis Charteris appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail of 5 October 1961. Charteris’ possible involvement in the murder would have made him only the latest in a long line of criminally minded doctors to have crossed Conan Doyle’s path over the years, of whom Harvey Crippen was the most notorious.
G.M.A. McChlery’s letter about Arthur Adams having thought Slater likely guilty of murder appeared in the Scotland Herald of 15 December 1993.
By a mild coincidence, the prison chaplain during much of Slater’s time at Peterhead Jail was John Lamond, a friend and later biographer of Doyle. Lamond, too, remained convinced of Slater’s guilt.
Chapter 9
I should again acknowledge the resources provided by the Manuscripts Reading Room of the Cambridge University Library, and the help of its curator Peter Meadows, and also those of the Rare Books Room at the New York Library. Every effort has been made to comply with the copyright provisions involved. The great majority of excerpts from letters exchanged between Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini are taken from Bernard Ernst and Hereward Carrington’s Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship (New York: Albert & Charles Boni, 1932).
Michael Gunton and his colleagues at Portsmouth City Council were able to supply primary source information on Conan Doyle’s dealings with several prominent mediums, among them ‘Eva C.’ and Kathleen Goligher.
Newspaper archives consulted included Collier’s Weekly, Internati
onal Psychic Gazette, Light, Nation, New York Sun, Scientific American and The Times. I also visited 20 Hanover Square.
Arthur Conan Doyle met Harry Houdini at Houdini’s New York home on 10 May 1922. The primary source for the account of the magic demonstration that followed was Bernard Ernst and Hereward Carrington’s Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship, as previously cited. Houdini’s quote, ‘before leaving with [Doyle], Mrs Houdini cued me’, is excerpted from his book A Magician among the Spirits, cited in the bibliography.
Doyle gives an account of the Atlantic City séance of 18 June 1922 in his book The Edge of the Unknown, also as previously cited.
It’s a curious aspect of their relationship that Houdini was then prepared to escort the Doyles to the ship for their return voyage to England, sending them off with a friendly wave and a subsequent telegram that read ‘Bon voyage. May the Decree of Fate send you back here soon for another pleasant visit’, while busily telling journalists, ‘In the twenty-five years of my investigation, I have never seen or heard anything that could convince me that there is a possibility of communication with the loved ones who have gone beyond’, the prelude to an all-out attack on the Doyles and their ‘hoaxing tactics’ at Atlantic City. Houdini’s notarised statement, ‘The Truth Regarding Spiritualistic Séance given by Lady Doyle’ appeared in several New York Area papers on 19 December 1922. Not surprisingly, relations between the two men cooled as a result.
For material on Mina Crandon, or ‘Margery’, see Houdini, A Magician among the Spirits; William Kalush and Larry Sloman, The Secret Life of Houdini (New York: Atria Books, 2006); Daniel Stashower, Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle; Arthur Conan Doyle, The Edge of the Unknown; and examples of Houdini’s medium-baiting taken from The Houdini Souvenir Program, which was supplied by its copyright owners, Dick Brooks and Dorothy Dietrich of the Houdini Museum. Houdini’s quote, ‘Everything that took place was a deliberate and conscious fraud’ appeared in the New York Times on 16 October 1924.
I should again particularly acknowledge the help of the Manuscripts Reading Room of the British Library, and in particular Zoe Stansell. As well as the previously cited books, I consulted a variety of journals, magazines and newspapers, including the American Weekly, the Boston Herald, the British Journal of Photography, Chambers’ Journal, the Chronicle, the Morning Post, the Seattle Times and Variety. I again drew on the resources of the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin, and of the US Library of Congress, which between them house most of Houdini’s magic library, as well as his scrapbooks, photographs, innumerable newspaper cuttings, and journal and diary notes relating to Conan Doyle.
Chapter 10
For details of the Irene Williams case, see W. Lloyd Woodland (ed.), The Trial of Thomas Henry Allaway (The Bournemouth Murder) (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1929). For those of the Caroline Luard case, see H.L. Adam, ‘The Summer House Mystery’ in Fifty Most Amazing Crimes of the Last Hundred Years (London: Odhams Press, 1936), and Julian Symonds, An Edwardian Tragedy (London: Cresset Press, 1960).
Arthur Conan Doyle’s story ‘The Problem of Thor Bridge’, part of The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes cycle, was published in two parts in The Strand magazine in February–March 1922. It has since been alleged that Doyle lifted parts of his plot from a story called ‘The Red Haired Pickpocket’ by Frank Froest and George Dilnot, which appeared seven years earlier.
For the Norman Thorne affair, see Leonard Gribble, Famous Judges and their Trials (London: John Long, 1957); Charles Higham, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle, p.303; and Edgar Lustgarten, Verdict in Dispute (New York: Scribner’s, 1950). An account of Conan Doyle’s involvement in the case was published by an anonymous correspondent in the London Morning Post of 21 April 1925.
For details of the Agatha Christie affair, see Jared Cade, Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, as cited in the bibliography; Horace Leaf, Death Cannot Kill (London: Max Parrish Publishing, 1959); and Patrick White, Flaws in the Glass (London: Jonathan Cape, 1981). There are also newspaper accounts of the case in, among others, the Manchester Evening Chronicle, 20 December 1926; Lloyd’s Sunday News, 1 September 1929; and in retrospect, the Sunday Times, 18 January 1976. Conan Doyle published his own version of events under the headline ‘Sir A. Conan Doyle and Christie Case: Psychometry and Detective Work’ in the Morning Post, 20 December 1926.
For further details of the Umtali Park murder of November 1928, see Arthur Conan Doyle, Our African Winter (London: John Murray, 1929), pp.175–82. Pages 228–29 of the same book contain Doyle’s views on the case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Other documentary material was kindly made available by the Cambridge University Library, the British Library, the Library of Congress, the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas at Austin, and Portsmouth City Council, as previously cited. I consulted journals, magazines and newspapers including the American Weekly, the Boston Journal, the Evening Graphic, the Illustrated London News, Light, London Society, the New York Herald, Pearson’s, Sphinx, the Star (Johannesburg), the Times, Two Worlds and Variety.
I’m particularly grateful to Matt Carpenter of the History Museum at the Castle of Appleton, Wisconsin, and to the staff of the UK Public Record Office and the New York Public Library for their help in obtaining diary notes, photographs or other archive material relating to Arthur Conan Doyle or the occult.
Although all the above institutions and individuals helped in the preparation of this book, I should again stress that none of them had any editorial control over it. I am solely to blame for the contents.
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