Ghoul Brittania

by Andrew Martin

  In a lecture of 1866, Home gave what might be regarded as a politically correct defence of his work. ‘I believe in my heart that this power is being spread more and more every day to bring us nearer to God. You ask if it makes us purer? My only answer is that we are but mortals, and as such liable to err; but it does teach that the pure in heart shall see God. It teaches that He is love, and that there is no death.’

  Home now attracted the attention of the distinguished scientist Sir William Crookes, who, as we shall see, was also involved in the Low Point of British Spiritualism. In 1861 Crookes had discovered the chemical element thallium; he was a fellow of the Royal Society, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Science, and he looked like a distinguished scientist to the point of parody: lean face, abundant white hair, high forehead, small round glasses. He subjected Home to a ‘scientific appraisal’ and in 1871 published in his journal reports of tests upon Home that he had conducted along with a Dr William Huggins, another fellow of the Royal Society, and with Serjeant Cox, a barrister sitting in to observe. An accordion enclosed in a cage was observed to play. Home made a pointer turn without touching it.

  In the late 1870’s, Home retired from mediumship. He was never caught out in any trickery, and a sceptic might say that this was his main achievement. Two magicians of the time – Canti and Bosco – who attended his séances could not say how the phenomena were produced. More than a hundred people attested in writing to having seen him levitate.

  THE LOW POINT OF BRITISH SPIRITUALISM

  If Daniel Dunglas Home was the golden boy, his female counterpart, for a while, was Florence Cook. She was born, in the East End of London, in 1856, and first ‘turned’ a table at a tea party when she was aged fifteen. She went on to a career in mediumship. Like D.D. Home, she was good-looking, nicely spoken, willing, in certain circumstances, to perform in good light. She also would not take money for her séances, in which the masochistic element of female mediumship was strongly present. The spirits would pull at her dress, or remove it entirely. In order to prove that her effects were achieved by purely spiritual means she would ask to be tied up inside a cabinet, and I’m sure there was no shortage of Victorian gentlemen willing to go about the task.

  Imagine the cabinet as a sort of Punch and Judy booth, with a small ‘stage’ at the top. Here palely glowing, ghostly faces would manifest themselves between gauze curtains – in particular the face of a spirit identified as Katie King. As a spirit, Katie King had ‘form’. She had manifested in American séances in the 1850’s, identifying herself as the daughter of a pirate called Henry Morgan, who died in Jamaica in 1688, and who himself had manifested at séances – first in Ohio in 1852.

  By 1873, Florence Cook’s bravado and/or her psychic powers had increased to the point at which she was capable of producing full figure manifestations of Katie King. While Florence was still, as far as the sitters could tell, tied up inside the cabinet, Katie King would walk the séance room in white robes. On December 9th 1873, Cook was giving a séance hosted by the Earl and Countess of Caithness, and Katie King duly appeared. Now it was considered a breach of etiquette for any sitter to attempt to touch any manifestation. But on this occasion a young man called William Volckman was crass enough to grab hold of Katie King’s wrist, which turned out to be very palpable, and attempt to drag her towards a source of light. There was a struggle. Some of the other sitters came to Katie King’s aid, and Volckman got a bloodied nose. A man called Henry Dumphy, one of those omnipresent monitoring barristers, asserted that Katie King escaped from Volckman with an uncanny leaping motion reminiscent of a seal, but Volckman argued that there was nothing incorporeal or even seal-like about her.

  Since it would have been difficult for Florence Cook to smuggle an accomplice into the séance room, the suspicion among the sceptics had always been that Katie King was in fact Florence Cook, and the two did look similar. But when the cabinet was checked after Volckman’s lunge, Florence Cook was found to be still there, still tied in ropes, and with the signet ring of the Earl of Caithness, which had been used as a seal on one of the knots, still in place. Her clothes were apparently in slight disarray, but it was the reputation of Volckman that really suffered. His action was ungallant to begin with, and his account of it was made questionable by the discovery that he was engaged to be married to medium who was a rival of Cook.

  At this point, the above-mentioned William Crookes, his interest piqued by his experiments on D.D. Home, turned his scientific beam on Florence Cook. He arranged a séance at his own home, at which Katie appeared, graciously taking Crookes’s arm, and showing him the medium, lying in a trance behind the curtain that had, in this case, taken the place of the cabinet. Crookes, a married man, then created a society scandal by moving Florence into his house.

  She and he and the ghost formed a strange ménage. It was rumoured that Katie King would walk about the house for hours, quite outside séance conditions. Crookes was given to holding her hand and embracing her when she did appear. He noted that while she was similar in appearance to Cook, there were significant differences. For example, Cook’s ears were pierced, whereas Katy’s were not. He took fifty-five photographs of Katie King in his house. The originals were destroyed by his heirs, but one famous surviving copy shows Crookes arm in arm with Katie King, and Cook standing to one side with her face wrapped in a shroud considered by Crookes to be ectoplasmic.

  Oddly enough, Katie King’s palpability made it more rather than less likely that she was a genuine spirit as far as Crookes was concerned. But it has been suggested that being in close company with Florence and Katie, who were both attractive young women, even if one of them was theoretically dead, put him in a sort of erotic daze.

  Florence Cook’s reputation, and that of mediumship in general, was further undermined in 1880 when, after a period of retirement, she began channelling a new young female ghost: Marie. It was as if the assault of Volckman seven years before had set a precedent, and Florence Cook’s spirits had become fair game, because another bounder, by the name of Sir George Sitwell, grabbed Marie at a séance held on January 9th 1880. She was discovered to be Florence Cook, wearing her underwear and a flannel petticoat. After this, Cook was damaged goods, even though she would occasionally still produce Marie for séance goers, and it was reported that she could do this while not only tied up in the cabinet or behind a curtain but with a gentleman-observer tied to her.

  SPIRITUALISM AND RADIO

  William Crookes wrote to Florence Cook’s family in 1904 expressing his sincerest sympathy at the news of her death. As far as I know she has not been heard of, or from, since, but Katie King is reported to have manifested at a séance held in Rome in 1974.

  Crookes himself teamed up with another medium, Rosina Showers, whose mediumship was as implausible as her name – in fact a genuine one – somehow suggests. Even though she failed the scientific tests that Crookes subjected her to, he found that ‘the evidence in her favour is very strong.’

  She then admitted that she’d been faking. Crookes offered a deal: he would not expose her if she gave up the cheating, and this was misinterpreted by Rosina Showers’ mother as an attempt at blackmail with a sexual motive. Mrs Showers began circulating scandalous stories about Crookes, in response to which he started a legal action, which he withdrew on receipt of a written retraction from Mrs Showers.

  And then Crookes finally gave up on Spiritualism. He wrote to the irreproachable D.D. Home, who was now cutting a very lonely figure as the last untainted medium, that ‘were it not for the regard we bear you, I would cut the whole Spiritual connection, and never read, speak, or think of the subject again.’ He went back to science, and notwithstanding his embarrassments at the hands of the spiritualists, he was knighted in 1897, and awarded the Order of Merit in 1910. He died in 1919.

  William Crookes’s work with vacuum tubes would prove important in the development of electronics and radio systems, the scientific writers inform me. In his book on the development o
f radio, Signor Marconi’s Magic Box, Gavin Weightman observes that ‘Crookes had predicted with remarkable foresight the development of wireless telegraphy up to the point Marconi had taken it by 1901’: ‘Rays of light will not pierce through a wall, nor, as we know only too well, through a London fog; but electrical vibrations of a yard or more in wave-length will easily pierce such media, which to them will be transparent. Here is revealed the bewildering possibility of telegraphy without wires, posts, cables or any of our present day appliances…’

  Another brilliantly imaginative scientist and over-credulous psychic researcher of the time was Oliver Joseph Lodge, who had been educated in spiritualism by his aunt, who he believed returned to speak to him in a séance after her death from cancer. In 1881, he became the first Professor of Physics at Liverpool University. He was a pioneer of X-rays, and the inventor of an electro-magnetic means of collecting dust in factories. The parallels between psychic research and the development of wireless telegraphy – the fascination with invisible means of communication – are even more evident in Lodge’s case, since he and Marconi were once neck and neck in the race to be recognised as the begetter of radio. But Lodge’s mind was on higher, or still higher, things. Gavin Weightman writes: ‘The distinguished former rival of Marconi, Sir Oliver Lodge, had continued his pursuit of the spirits while Marconi was discovering the power of short waves, which cracked the problem of daytime transmission at a distance.’

  The problem referred to here was that long radio waves had been found to travel further in the night time. Weightman dryly observes that Marconi’s breakthrough ‘finally put paid to the theory of the writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle… that the greater distances achieved by Marconi at night were proof of the mysterious “powers of darkness” which spiritualist mediums exploited.’ (But I have no right to laugh at Doyle, not having the remotest idea how radio waves work. For all I know, a text message might be sent by supernatural means, and when I look along a railway carriage, at all the passengers staring in awe at their mobile phone handsets, I can’t believe I’m alone.)

  SCEPTICISM TRIUMPHS: SPIRITUALISM IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

  As already stated, the First World War brought a commercial boom for the spiritualists. When Rudyard Kipling’s son, John (or Jack, as he was known), was killed at the Battle of Loos in September 1915, Kipling was bombarded with the calling cards of mediums. Spiritualism was becoming an industry, and increasingly viewed with distaste.

  The above-mentioned Oliver Lodge did nothing for the cause with the publication of his book, Raymond: Or Life and Death, an account of his re-connection, via Spiritualism, with the eldest of his six sons (he also had six daughters). One medium reported, on behalf of Raymond, ‘He lives in a house – a house built of bricks – and there are trees and flowers and the ground is solid. And if you kneel down in the mud, apparently you get your clothes soiled…’ and so ploddingly on.

  While it might be at the peak of its popularity as a form of therapy, Spiritualism had lost its intellectual credibility by the 1920s, and the psychical researchers were more concerned with thought transference or telepathy, as we shall see. There had been too many scandals, and the standard response of the believers – that any genuine medium might be driven to fakery once in a while by the pressure to produce results – had been heard too often. As Dickens and Trollope had pointed out, the spirits, when contacted, seldom said or did anything original, or even vaguely interesting. The shades of dead First World War soldiers would send their best wishes to friends and family, signing off with a wish for world peace. Could it be that banality was the defining characteristic of the dead? The defence was not attempted.

  Spiritualism declined gently throughout the century, and sank from being a pursuit of society drawing rooms to a much humbler, more suburban business. The last time it was newsworthy was in 1944, when an overweight, not-at-all-ethereal-looking Scottish medium called Helen Duncan was prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

  At a séance given in Portsmouth in 1941, Duncan had channelled a young sailor who said that his ship, HMS Barham, had been sunk. Or at least, he might have said that, because accounts of the séance were blurred. HMS Barham had been sunk, but the government had not yet released the information. Her Spiritualist defenders argued that Duncan was prosecuted for being right, but the Home Office considered her profession bad for morale, and she was given ten months in Holloway. By now spiritualism was a music hall joke, or would have been if the music halls hadn’t also been dying. Whereas the sceptics once challenged the spiritualists, often in the hope of ceasing to be sceptical, they now mocked them.

  THREE SATIRES ON SPIRITUALISM

  1. In the film London Belongs to Me, directed by Sidney Gilliat in 1938 but not released until ten years later, Alistair Sim plays a seedy medium called Mr Squales. He is a sepulchral figure, with a single dyed-black lock of hair. He affects an other-worldy manner. He says that he has ‘no thoughts for food’ but when offered a plate of bacon and eggs gets through it at lightning speed while cackling delightedly. He lives on commissions to ‘give the voice’ at seances in south London, where lobster paste sandwiches are served – or at least what purport to be lobster paste sandwiches. But he has to supplement his income by hocking his belongings. Given notice by his landlady, he leaves the rent on the mantelpiece, ‘Six shillings short, I’m afraid – it was all I could get for my propelling pencil.’ He is uncovered in a deception. As one indignant official of a psychic society says, ‘The facial features shown in what he said was an astral projection of the late Lord Birkenhead turned out to be those of a well-known professional footballer.’

  2. Mediums attempting to manifest the spirits of the famous were always on dangerous ground. The comedian Michael Bentine, the veteran of many séances, once noted that a sure sign of a fraudulent medium was that they would conjure up Napoleon – who would then insist on speaking English. Bentine remained a believer, however, and in his psychic autobiography, The Door Marked Summer (1981), he satirises the sitters rather than the medium…

  Medium: [of the spirit that has been contacted] He says that he was your stepfather by your mother’s third marriage – and that her maiden name was Miranda Delgado.

  Sitter (grudgingly): Mm! What else does this so-called entity say?

  Medium (getting annoyed): He’s telling me that your younger brother’s name is Aloysius Lawrence, and that he was named after your maternal grandfather, who was a well-known amateur astronomer and an acknowledged authority on asteroids.

  Sitter: Can he be more specific?

  Medium (exasperated): Yes! He says that he was lost at sea on the Titanic and that he left you his collection of butterflies and rare sea shells. He also says you had a dog called Bonaparte, a cat named Hildegarde and a West African parakeet that could whistle ‘Ave Maria’.

  Sitter: In what key?

  3. From Nigel Williams’s novel, They Came From SW19 (1992)…

  ‘They always have their séances in the back parlour – a small, drab room looking out over the back garden. It was here, a couple of years ago, that Mrs Quigley talked to my Gran. Never has there been such a low-level conversation across the Great Divide.

  ‘Are you all right, Maureen?’

  ‘Oh yes. I’m fine.’

  ‘Keeping well?’

  ‘Oh yes. On the whole. Mustn’t grumble. You?’

  ‘We’re fine. How are Stephen and Sarah?’

  ‘Oh they’re fine. They’re all here and they’re fine.’

  It really was difficult to work out who was dead and who was alive.’

  At the aforementioned College of Psychic Studies, the portrait of D.D. Home, greatest of spiritualists, may have pride of place but according to my guide, the administrator, ‘It’s all crop circles and feng shui these days.’ She was a sensible, brisk woman in cardigan and pearls; she might have been a GP, or even a JP, but she spoke with affection, like a mother who says that her daughters are all into Facebook these days. She herself was a ‘s
ensitive’, as mediums are generally called today. They operate in the College behind ‘Do Not Disturb’ signs, in small consultation rooms decorated with flowers and (slightly alarmingly) boxes of tissues. The ‘sensitive’ raises her vibrations and sees what comes in. There might be a message from some late friend of the client that suggests the possibility of survival, or, more usually, some less specific form of consolation couched in the language of therapy.

  Mediumship, I was told, has moved ‘from the particular to the general’, much to the relief, presumably, of the mediums. The bar has been set lower; there is no longer the requirement of raising ghosts. But in the basement of the College are stored the photographs from the heroic, high-Victorian days, each one a reproach to the waffly modern business. In the photographs, the medium sits slumped, exhausted having given birth to the pillar of light or floating upper half of a human form, or ectoplasmic extrusion.

  ‘Amazing aren’t they?’ said the administrator, rather distractedly. ‘But the thing is,’ she went on, as I continued leafing through the ghosts, ‘that these manifestations would often take hours to appear, and with everyone rushing around these days, people just haven’t got time to sit down and do it.’ Her implication was that people can’t be bothered to raise the dead anymore; that they have other, more important things to do than disproving the known laws of the universe.

  THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

  For more than a hundred years, the Society for Psychical Research (the SPR) has attempted to bring ‘disciplined experimental methods and standardised methods of description’ to psychical research, and its members have sometimes seemed more sceptical than the sceptics.