Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology. Editor: J Gordon Melton. 5th Edition, Volume 2, Gale, 2001.
Spiritualism was introduced from the United States to England within a few years of its emergence in New York. The transition from mesmerism into Spiritualism was effected in Britain under the impetus of visiting American mediums, the first being Maria B. Hayden, who arrived in 1852. Her way had been prepared by the publication the previous year of William Gregory’s book Animal Magnetism, which contains records of supernormal occurrences, and by the accounts published from time to time in the mesmerist journal Zoist.
Table turning soon became epidemic in Britain, and society invitations, it is said, were extended to five o’clock tea and table turning. An early controversy arose when prominent scientist Michael Faraday suggested that the table movements were caused by unconscious muscular action. Another theory suggested they resulted from “unconscious cerebration.”
Hayden herself was treated with derision by the press and returned to the United States in 1853. Yet, besides acting as forerunner for the great medium D. D. Home, she registered important conquests: Robert Owen, the veteran socialist; Robert Chambers, the publisher; and Agustus de Morgan, the famous mathematician. Sir Charles Isham and John Ashburner mostly owed their conversion to a belief in survival and communication with the dead to her limited powers. One Mrs. Roberts, a second American medium, and later Pascal B. Randolph and J. R. M. Squire left comparatively slight impressions.
Without Home, Spiritualism in England would probably have made but little further headway. He was received in the highest society and was visited by famous people of the day. Some of them (including novelist William Thackeray, Anthony Trollope, Robert Bell, Bulwer Lytton, and Lord Brougham) were said to have been deeply impressed but kept quiet for fear of public ridicule. Some figured in press sensations when they vented their anger for having become associated with Spiritualism before the public (e.g., Sir David Brewster and Robert Browning). Others, including William Howitt; J. Garth Wilkinson; Lord Adare, the earl of Dunraven; the Master of Lindsay, Nassau Senior; Cromwell Varley; and Alfred Russel Wallace, braved the scorn of the public.
Home first visited England in 1855 at age 23, having acted as a medium for some four years. He made an impression before returning to America in 1856. During Home’s tour in 1855, London solicitor John Rymer and his wife, gathered friends at their home in the suburb of Ealing to experience the medium’s gifts. Famed poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning, a devotee of the spiritualism movement, and her husband, Robert Browning, who disdained spiritualism, managed to receive an invitation to this exclusive gathering. In 1859 medium Thomas Lake Harris visited England. As early as 1854, the trance utterances of a medium named “Annie” were recorded by a circle of Swedenborgians presided over by Elihu Rich. The first British professional medium, Mary Marshall, began to offer séances, but less successfully than D. D. Home and his American colleagues. British Spiritualists, however, did not seek publicity, but practiced for the most part anonymously.
The phenomena at these séances resembled those in America—playing of instruments by unknown means, materialization of hands, table-turning, and so on, but on a less sensational scale. It was not so much these physical manifestations that inspired early British Spiritualists as it was automatic writing and automatic speaking. Although at first rare, it soon became a feature of séances.
In 1860 a new Spiritualist era commenced and the whole subject came into greater prominence. This enhanced attention was caused by an increase in the number of British mediums and the emigration to Britain of many American mediums, including the stage performers the Davenport brothers, who did not claim to be Spiritualists but were hailed as such.
Kate Fox of the original Fox Sisters who caused the whole movement to rise, married and settled in England as Mrs. Jencken. It is said that her child became a writing medium. Thomas Lake Harris, Emma Hardinge Britten, and Cora L. V. Richmond were remembered for inspirational addresses; Charles H. Foster for rather dubious pellet-reading and skin-writing phenomena (see dermography); the Davenport Brothers for noisy telekinetic demonstrations; Lottie Fowler for trance communications and predictions; and Henry Slade for slate-writing demonstrations.
British mediums were rather slow to arise. Mary Marshall was, for a long time, the only professional medium. In October 1867 the journal Human Nature knew of only one more, W. Wallace. The number of private mediums, however, was considerable. Mrs. Thomas Everitt was considered the most powerful. Edward Childs was also credited with strong powers.
William Howitt, William Wilkinson, and Mrs. Newton Cross-land developed as automatists (see automatism). Agnes Nichols (later Agnes Guppy-Volckman) presented mysterious apport phenomena and the first materializations in England. The partners Frank Herne and Charles Williams produced impressive if suspect phenomena.
Frederick A. Hudson introduced spirit photography to London, and others followed in his footsteps. Marvelous things were reported to occur in the séances of Florence Cook, W. Stainton Moses, William Eglinton, Annie Eva Fay, F. W. Monck, Mary Showers, Arthur Colman, Elizabeth d’Esperance, C. E. Wood, Annie Fairlamb, Cecil Husk, and David Duguid.
Organizational Efforts
Because British mediums were slow to arise, Spiritualism as a movement was delayed until comparatively late. The Charing Cross Spirit Circle was the first experimental organization. In July 1857 it was superseded by the London Spiritualistic Union, a year later renamed the London Spiritualist Union, and in 1865 the Association of Progressive Spiritualists in Great Britain was formed. The Spiritual Athenaeum of 1866 was a temporary institution, established mainly to offer D. D. Home a paid position. The first really representative body, the British National Association of Spiritualists, was not born until 1873. In 1882 it was renamed the Central Association of Spiritualists and in 1884 the London Spiritualist Alliance.
The tardiness in organization was also manifested in the field of Spiritualist periodicals. The Spirit World, published by W. R. Hayden during his wife’s visit in May 1853, was issued only once. Robert Owen’s The New Existence of Man Upon the Earth, published in 1854, was spiritual but not Spiritualist. In April 1855 the Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph was established by D. W. Weatherhead in Keighley, the chief provincial center of British Spiritualism. In 1857 it was renamed the British Spiritual Telegraph but was discontinued the next year.
Toward the end of 1860 The Spiritual Magazine was founded by William Wilkinson and became the leading organ. It ran until 1875. Thomas Shorter and William Wilkinson were the editors for the greater part of its existence, and William Howitt was the chief contributor.
The Spiritual Times ran from 1864 to 1866. In 1867 James Burns founded Human Nature, a monthly that ran until 1877, and in 1869 he brought out a weekly, The Medium, which absorbed the provincial Daybreak, founded in 1867, and was continued under the title The Medium and Daybreak until 1895.
In 1869 W. H. Harrison’s paper The Spiritualist Newspaper entered the field. Under the later abbreviated title The Spiritualist, held its own until 1881. The Christian Spiritualist began its month-long run in 1871. The Pioneer of Progress lasted for ten months, appearing weekly from January 1874. In 1878 Spiritual Notes was founded and ran until 1881, the year in which Light appeared.
Light is the oldest British Spiritualist journal. It was founded by Dawson Rogers and W. Stainton Moses. Later editors included E. W. Wallis and David Gow. It was the official organ of the London Spiritualist Alliance but is now published quarterly by the College of Psychic Studies, London.
The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research and the society’s Journal had their inception in 1882. The Two Worlds began publication in 1888 at Manchester. It is now the second-oldest Spiritualist journal in Britain. (Address: Headquarters Publishing Co., 5 Alexandria Rd., West Ealing, London W13 ONP.)
Emma Hardinge Britten’s Unseen Universe ran from 1892 to 1893; W. T. Stead’s Borderland ran from 1893 to 1897; and, J.J. Morse’s The Spiritual Review was published from 1900 to 1902. The Spiritual Quarterly Magazine was started by the Two Worlds Publishing Company in October 1902. An English edition of the Annales des Sciences Psychiques was published between 1905 and 1910 under the title Annals of Psychic Science.
In addition to Light and Two Worlds, the most important of surviving Spiritualist journals is Psychic News, founded by Maurice Barbanell in 1932 and now published at 2 Tavistock Chambers, Bloomsbury Way, London, WCIA ILY.
The Rise of Psychical Research
Although Spiritualism arose in the United States, the effort to investigate it started in England. There was plenty to investigate. Mrs. De Morgan, Lord Adare, and Alfred Russel Wallace published the first important books. In 1869 the London Dialectical Society delegated a committee to investigate. After its favorable report, which brought the testimonies of many important people before the public, Sir William Crookes stepped to the fore and announced an investigation. His findings, which were published in 1871, and later in 1874, simply stupefied the contemporary savants.
W. Coxfounded the Psychological Societyof Great Britain in 1875; the British National Association of Spiritualists appointed a research committee in 1878; and the year 1882 witnessed a historic event, the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR).
The development of Spiritualism in Britain has been closely associated with the work of the SPR; but it has often been an uneasy relationship. Indeed, many early Spiritualists claimed that the society’s initials really meant “Suppression of Psychical Research.” From time to time the skepticism of some members of the SPR has seemed hostile. Still, the society has had a wide range of membership and is not tied to a sponsor’s opinion on the genuineness of claimed phenomena.
The SPR was formed in 1882 to investigate psychic phenomena in a scientific and impartial spirit, free from the bias of preconceived ideas. The first president was Henry Sidgwick, and the council numbered among its members Edmund Gurney, Frank Podmore, F. W. H. Myers, William F. Barrett, Stainton Moses, Morell Theobald, George Wild, and Dawson Rogers, the latter four individuals being Spiritualists. However, avowedly Spiritualist membership in the society gradually declined over time.
Other notable presidents of the society were Balfour Stewart, A. J. Balfour, William James, Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, several of these being among original members of the society.
The initial scope of the SPR was defined by the areas of investigation mandated to six committees: (1) thought transference; (2) hypnotism; (3) Reichenbach phenomena; (4) apparitions; (5) physical (Spiritualist) phenomena; and (6) the history and existing literature on the subject. The scope of the society was further enlarged in later years when a committee headed by Richard Hodgson conducted an inquiry into the claimed phenomena of Theosophy.
To find alternative explanations for Spiritualist phenomena, members explored psychological theories and studied automatism, hallucinations, and thought transference. Some members were also instrumental in detecting a great deal of fraud in connection with mediumistic performances, particularly in the field of slate writing.
Many individuals had declared slate writing to be such a simple and straightforward phenomenon that fraud was impossible. But S. T. Davey, a member of the SPR, attended séances by the well-known medium William Eglinton and considered them fraudulent. He began to study the rationale for slate writing and emulated Eglinton’s phenomena by conjuring methods. He then gave a number of pseudo séances, which Richard Hodgson carefully recorded.
Davey’s techniques were so successful that none of the sitters could detect the fraud, even though they had been assured in advance that it was simply a conjuring trick—indeed some Spiritualist sitters refused to believe that the performances were fraudulent. After that, slate writing declined in Spiritualist circles and, like the phenomenon of spirit photography, was largely discredited.
Excellent work was done by the society in collecting evidence relating to apparitions of the dead and the living, reported in the monumental Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, by F. W. H. Myers (2 vols., 1903) and Phantasms of the Living, by Myers, Frank Podmore, and Edmund Gurney (2 vols., 1886).
A statistical inquiry on a large scale was undertaken by a committee of the SPR in 1889, and some seventeen thousand cases of apparitions were collected. The main objective in taking such a census was to obtain evidence for the workings of telepathy in apparitions; to make such evidence of scientific value, the utmost care was taken to ensure the impartiality and responsible character of all who took part in the inquiry. From the results it was concluded that the number of apparitions coinciding with a death or other crisis greatly exceeded the number that could be ascribed to chance alone.
There was much to encourage belief in some “supernormal” agency, especially in the last decade of the nineteenth century. The two mediums whose manifestations led many in Britain, the United States, and Europe to conclude that the spirits of the dead were involved in their phenomena were the Italian medium Eusapia Palladino and the American Leonora Piper.
In 1885 William James of Harvard began a study of Piper, and he was joined a few years later by Richard Hodgson, who had moved to the United States to be the secretary of the American branch of the SPR. Of all the trance mediums, Piper offered the best evidence for spirit agency. The skeptical Hodgson himself declared his belief that the spirits of the dead spoke through the lips of the medium, and among others who held that fraud would not account for the revelations given by Piper in the trance state were James, Sir Oliver Lodge, F. W. H. Myers, and James H. Hyslop.
Frank Podmore, while not admitting any supernormal agency, suggested that telepathy, probably aided by skillful observations and carefully conducted inquiries concerning the affairs of prospective sitters, might help to explain the matter. Eleanor Sidgwick also suggested that Piper probably received telepathic communications from the spirits of the dead and reproduced them in her automatic speaking and writing.
The other medium, Eusapia Palladino, after attracting considerable attention from Cesare Lombroso, Charles Richet, Camille Flammarion, and others on the Continent, went to Britain in 1895. Several British scientists, including Lodge and Myers, had already witnessed her powers on the Continent, at Richet’s invitation. Lodge, at least, said he was satisfied that no known agency was responsible for the remarkable manifestations of Palladino. The British sittings were held at Cambridge, and because it was proved conclusively that the medium made use of fraud, the majority of the investigators ascribed her “manifestations” entirely to that. Later, in 1898, more séances were held at Paris, and they were so successful that Richet, Myers, and Lodge once more declared themselves satisfied of the genuineness of the phenomena.
Perhaps the most convincing evidence for the working of some paranormal agency, however, was to be found in the famous cross correspondence experiments conducted in the early twentieth century. F. W. H. Myers had suggested before he died that if a spirit control were to give the same message to two or more mediums, it would go far to establish the independent existence of such control.
On the deaths of Sidgwick (in August 1900) and F. W. H. Myers (in January 1901) it was thought that if mediums were controlled by their spirits some agreement might be looked for in the scripts. The first correspondences were found in scripts of Rosina Thompson and a Miss Rawson, the former in London, the latter in the south of France. The Sidgwick control allegedly appeared for the first time to these ladies on the same day, January 11, 1901.
On May 8, 1901, the Myers control appeared in the scripts of both Thompson and Margaret Verrall, and later in those of Piper and others. So remarkable were the correspondences obtained in some cases where seemingly there could not possibly have been collusion between the mediums, that it is difficult to believe that some discarnate intelligence was not responsible for at least some of the scripts.
Toward the end of 1916 a great sensation was caused with the publication by Sir Oliver Lodge of a memoir about his son, Lieutenant Raymond Lodge, who was killed near Ypres in September, 1915, during World War I. The book, titled Raymond, or Life and Death, is divided into three parts, the first of which contains a history of the brief life of the subject. The second part details numerous records of sittings, both in the company of mediums and at the table, by Sir Oliver Lodge and members of his family. It was claimed that considerable evidence of the personal survival of his son were obtained in these sittings. The third part of the book deals with the scientific material relating to life after death, which is reviewed and summarized in a spirit of great fairness, although a natural bias toward belief in immortality is obvious.
Notwithstanding much useful work by the SPR on the phenomena of Spiritualism, there was frequent antagonism from Spiritualists during the first half-century or so of the society’s existence. The pioneer Spiritualist W. T. Stead fulminated against it, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, after several disputes, resigned his membership as a public protest shortly before his death in 1930. Controversies over the phenomena of “Margery” (American medium Mina Crandon) also reached across the Atlantic to involve the society in London.
Meanwhile, many independent research organizations had been formed. In 1920 the British College of Psychic Science was founded by prominent Spiritualists Hewat McKenzie and his wife Barbara. It was a source for information, advice, and guidance for consultation of reputable mediums and the investigation of psychical phenomena. The McKenzies assisted in the development of the psychic faculties of the medium Eileen J. Garrett, who was to become world-famous. Garrett was invited to the United States by the American Society for Psychical Research in 1931 and took part in parapsychological investigations with William McDougall and J. B. Rhine. In 1951 she founded the Parapsychology Foundation in New York.
Meanwhile the British College of Psychic Science performed useful work for a number of years, finally closing in 1947. Similar work was carried on by the College of Psychic Science, London (not to be confused with the former organization), founded in 1955, which grew from the London Spiritualist Alliance, which in turn was an outgrowth of the British National Association of Spiritualists, founded in 1896.
In 1970 the College of Psychic Science was renamed the College of Psychic Studies. It publishes the long-established journal Light and maintains an excellent library, organizes lectures, and conducts other activities associated with Spiritualism and psychical research.
The National Laboratory of Psychical Research was founded by Harry Price in 1925 as an independent research body and conducted investigations with such mediums as Rudi Schneider, Eleonore Zügun, Stella C., and Helen Duncan. In 1936 the laboratory, with its library collected by Price, passed to the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation. Although laboratory work ceased, the library remains at the University of London.
Ever since the famous experiments of Sir William Crookes with the mediums Daniel Dunglas Home and Florence Cook beginning in 1871, Spiritualists had hoped that science would validate the phenomena of Spiritualism. The overall trend of psychical research tended to be skeptical and sometimes hostile, however, particularly as careful investigation disclosed mediumistic frauds. The different viewpoints of researchers and Spiritualists were largely irreconcilable, because Spiritualists operated within a framework of religious belief and researchers from a largely agnostic stance.
Some interesting Spiritualist organizations did not survive the passage of time. Julia’s Bureau, associated with W. T. Stead, was absorbed by the W. T. Stead Borderland Library in 1914 but closed in 1936. Other ephemeral groups included the Jewish Society for Psychical Research; the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures; the Link Association of Home Circles; and, the Survival League.
Spiritualism Today
The British Spiritualist movement as a whole continues to flourish. The exposure of famous mediums in the past as fraudulent or partially fraudulent proved largely irrelevant to the less-publicized activities of nonprofessional mediums in home circles and churches. The larger Spiritualist organizations are now careful to apply the strictest scrutiny to mediums and to regulate their activities through professional organizations. Any unsatisfactory conduct is firmly controlled, frauds exposed, and only the highest standards of integrity permitted.
As a result, British Spiritualist mediums and public demonstrators of evidence for survival are the most famous in the world. Such personalities as Doris Stokes became international figures on television and radio programs as well as in public demonstrations but remained dedicated to the Spiritualist cause and did not become rich. There are now more than four hundred Spiritualist churches in Britain.
Many of the Spiritualist organizations founded in the nineteenth century have continued into modern times, and new organizations have also grown up. The Marylebone Spiritualist Association, founded in 1872, became the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain, and is claimed to be the largest of its kind in the world. It is located at 33 Belgrave Sq., London, SW1.
The British Spiritualist Lyceum Union, founded in 1890, was amalgamated with the Spiritualists’ National Union (SNU) in 1948. The SNU had been founded in 1891. It is now located at Britten House, Stanstead Hall, Stanstead, Essex, CM24 8UD.
White Eagle Lodge grew from the mediumship of Grace Cooke. It was founded in 1936 and includes a publishing trust. It has branches in Edinburgh, Bournemouth, Plymouth, Worthing, and Reading, as well as in New Jersey. Headquarters address: New Lands, Rake, Liss, Hampshire, GU33 7HY.
The Greater World Christian Spiritualist League was founded in 1921 around the mediumship of Winifred Moyes. It has more than 140 local branches throughout Britain, as well as in a dozen foreign countries. Headquarters address: 3 Landsdowne Rd., Holland Park, London, W11.
Associated with the Spiritualist movement are healers, represented by talented individuals and organizations. One of the most famous was Harry Edwards, who died in 1976. He claimed the assistance of spirit helpers and established a healing clinic, which is now carried on by Joan and Ray Branch, whom he had designated as his successors. Edwards had published several books on healing and the magazine The Spiritual Healer, which continues publication. The address of the Harry Edwards Spiritual Healing Sanctuary is Burrows Lea, Shere, Guildford, Surrey, GU5 9QG.
The National Federation of Spiritual Healers is located at Shortacres, Churchill, Loughton, Essex. There is also a World Healing Crusade at 476 Lytham Road, Blackpool, Lancashire, and a Churches’ Council for Health and Healing at 8-10 Denman St., London, W1.
Spiritualism and the Established Churches
Throughout the history of Spiritualism in Britain the established churches have been largely antagonistic. In 1881 Canon Basil Wilberforce was the partisan of Spiritualism before the Church Congress. The reception was hostile and denunciatory.
The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland was three times petitioned, by the Reverend W. A. Reid, to investigate psychic phenomena. On the first occasion, a committee was appointed, which reported that psychic phenomena did occur. Subsequent appeals, however, resulted in no fresh investigation.
Books have been published by Catholics insisting that Spiritualism is the work of evil spirits. In the period of postwar permissiveness, active opposition declined, and still today there are occasional fulminations from dogmatic clergymen that Spiritualism is the work of the Devil. The obsession with themes of possession and exorcism during the occult boom of the 1950s and 1960s confused many people.
In 1953 a group of interested clergymen led by Reginald M. Lester founded the Churches’ Fellowship of Psychical and Spiritual Studies, which investigates paranormal healing, psychic phenomena, and mysticism in a sympathetic manner and publishes the Quarterly Review. Address: The Rural Workshop, South Rd., North Somercotes, Nr. Louth, Lincs., U.K. LN11 7PT.
One of the greatest obstacles to Spiritualism was the cruel, archaic legislation under which mediums were persecuted. Mediums found themselves accused under the witchcraft laws of 1735 for “pretending to communicate with spirits.” Throughout the interwar years mediums were frequently brought into court under provisions of both the Witchcraft Act of 1735 and the Vagrancy Act of 1824. Disguised policewomen, posing as bereaved parents, would approach a medium, begging for some consolatory message. A small sum of money would be offered as a “love offering,” and if this was accepted the medium was prosecuted and often fined or imprisoned for up to three months. This punitive legislation was finally repealed in 1951 and replaced with the new Fraudulent Mediums Act, which, although not wholly satisfactory to the Spiritualist community, implicitly acknowledged that there might be genuine medium-ship.
The matter was by no means settled at the turn of the twenty-first century. The Spiritualists’ National Union recently warned its churches about the possibility of prosecutions under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which was only partially amended. The act has recently halted plans for a large commercial enterprise to combine fortune-telling with computer technology. This has revived fears that mediums are still not adequately protected by law.
Research organizations that continue to thrive were the Religious Experience Research Centre, at Manchester College, Osford; the Brain and Perception Laboratory, at the medical school of the University of Bristol; the International Institute for the Study of Death, UK Branch, Hampnett, Northelach; the Parapsychical Laboratory, Downton, Wilshire; and, the Society for Psychical Research, London.