Ghosts, spirits of the dead, hauntings, the occult, mind control—all have become established themes in the genre of horror. But during the Victorian era, which saw the beginnings of cinema, a very real belief in spiritualism had taken hold of the western public—first in the United States and then crossing over to Britain. In the Georgian and Victorian eras, serious scientific studies were being conducted to research such paranormal happenings, inspiring a new level of awareness and interest in the western public’s consciousness. Many of these scientific studies are direct ancestors of modern psychology. That scientific standards weren’t really established yet, at this time, meant that these forms of therapy were often exploited by charlatans.
Mesmerizing. Animal magnetism. Both terms relate to the work of Franz Anton Mesmer, an 18th century German physician from the Swabian [SWAY-bee-an) region of southwestern Germany. During this time, medical electricity, which involved using electric currents to restimulate half-dead bodies or paralyzed parts of bodies, became a craze. (Turner, 2006) In his 1766 dissertation while at the University of Vienna, Mesmer proposed his theory of “animal gravitation”, claiming that there is an invisible, magnetic fluid—which Mesmer referred to by the Latin fluidum—which is a type of cosmic life force that is a part of all living beings, nature, and the universe, and, like ocean tides, is subject to the gravitational forces of the planet. (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022)
In 1775, Mesmer revised his theory, renaming it “animal magnetism”, claiming that fluidum, or life force, behaved according to the laws of magnetism. Mesmer claimed that, through animal magnetism, a proficient “magnetizer” could activate and manipulate one’s fluidum with the use of any magnetized object. (Radovancevic, 2009) Through the sweeping, “magnetic passes” of one’s hands (Health Sciences Library System, 2022), the practitioner could manipulate the fluidum and direct it to areas of the body affected by disease, which he believed was due to the obstruction of the flow of this fluid. (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022)
Some treatments involved Mesmer, who was supposedly well-endowed in his own supply of animal magnetism, transferring some of his own fluidum to the patient by squeezing the patient’s legs between his knees, stroking the patient’s limbs, and staring deeply into the patient’s eyes. (Turner, 2006) Treatments usually involved the practitioner putting the patient or client into a trance, which Mesmer called “crises” and often ended in convulsions. (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022) This could then restore the fluidum’s balance within the body; thereby, creating harmony within the body and curing the patient.
Mesmer had difficulty finding acceptance within the Viennese scientific community, where Mesmer later stated: “I was being taxed with eccentricity … my tendency to quit the normal path of medicine was being construed as a crime.” Luckily for Mesmer, the publication of his memoir spread his reputation throughout Europe, and, on his arrival in Paris, Mesmeromania, as the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig called it, had already reached France. With up to 200 people a day attempting to see Mesmer, Mesmer invented an instrument, a baquet, with which to accommodate multiple patients at once. (Turner, 2006)
The baquet was a tub-like vessel made of oak with a polished lid from which eight iron rods protruded, which were inserted into cylinders with magnetic bases. The vessel contained ground glass on which 16 glass bottles were placed, magnetic iron filings, pounded sulfur, and magnetized water. Mesmer’s patients would press their afflicted body parts against the iron rods. The patients would then hold hands to complete an electric circuit.
There was a high degree of theatricality involved in Mesmer’s treatments. The air in the half-lit room was scented with incense; and the room itself was filled with astrological symbols, mirrors, and heavy drapery. The glass harmonica was played as a soundtrack to the treatment’s proceedings. Into this already-energized and electrified environment entered Mesmer, like a rock star entering the arena—wearing, according to Christopher Turner of Cabinet Magazine:
… flamboyant gold slippers and a lilac silk robe. He would prowl around the expectant, highly charged circle, sending clients into trances with his enthralling, brown-eyed stare. By slowly passing his hands over patients’ bodies, or with a simple flick of his magnetized wand, Mesmer would provoke screams, fits of contagious hysterical laughter, vomiting, and dramatic convulsions. These effects were considered cathartic and curative. When a patient’s seizures became so exaggerated as to be dangerous or disruptive, Mesmer’s valet, Antoine, would carry him or her to the sanctuary of a mattress-lined “crisis room” where the screams would be muffled. (Turner, 2006)
Mesmer became powerful and wealthy, and, as a lover and patron of the arts, commissioned Mozart’s first opera. He was adored by the wealthy, with seats at one of his baquets costing as much as tickets to a fashionable opera and requiring to be booked far in advance. Mesmer was also somewhat generous, reserving one of his four baquets for use by the poor, and even magnetizing trees to allow the overflow of potential patients to find some relief if they did not have access to the baquets. He even started a training program entitled the Society for Universal Harmony: “On the eve of the French Revolution, the Society had 430 graduates, with thriving satellite organizations in every major French city (6,000 unsanctioned Mesmerists operated in and around Paris alone in 1785).” (Turner, 2006)
But, through his attracting of the attentions of very powerful individuals and his own arrogance, he met his downfall by the mid-1780s. While some, like the Marquis de Lafayette, admired Mesmer’s powers; others, like Thomas Jefferson, saw something lascivious in the manner of Mesmer’s treatments. Indeed, the erotically suggestive aspects of Mesmer’s treatments, including mesmeric massage, which focused on the upper abdomen, found that Mesmer, and his famous clientele, were satirized in political cartoons and popular songs of the day. (Turner, 2006) Meanwhile, his arrogance meant that when Marie Antoinette offered him a large pension and salary to remain in Paris, after he threatened self-exile, he publicly rejected the offer, suggesting the amount should be higher.
The scientific community in Paris was concerned about Mesmer’s popularity (Health Sciences Library System, 2022) and the Academy of Sciences stated that his theories were “destitute of foundation and unworthy of the smallest attention.” (Turner, 2006) In 1784, King Louis XVI formed a royal commission, headed by Benjamin Franklin, to investigate Mesmer’s claims. (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, 2022) Mesmer found this highly insulting and refused to cooperate with this commission. The commission discredited Mesmer, believing that the cures patients of Mesmer experienced were the result of patients being sensitive to suggestion and excitement, versus a magnetic fluid. A private addendum to the report that was sent to the king states that there is also the suggestion of a sexual element to some of the patients’ responses. (Turner, 2006) In one political cartoon from 1784, Mesmer is shown as a witch fleeing on a broom, with a flying bat near the brooms, while Benjamin Franklin righteously displays a copy of the commission’s report.
Mesmer gets the Hollywood treatment in this 1994 film directed by Roger Spottiswoode and starring Alan Rickman as Mesmer.
But despite the royal commission’s report and Mesmer’s eventual death in 1815, animal magnetism, commonly called mesmerism, initially derisively, continued to thrive in Europe in the Georgian and Victorian eras. It became popular in Britain much later than in other parts of Europe, with a series of experiments in London in 1838 first gaining the British public’s attention. The Scottish surgeon, James Braid, having seen a demonstration of animal magnetism, and believing in the legitimacy of something physically altering having taken place to the patient during the demonstration, developed hypnotism. Mesmerism had a great influence on Victorian society, somehow influencing both the scientific and intellectual discourse of the day, while also being appreciated by lay people. It was also being exploited by charlatans and being used as theatrical entertainment—and at times, it was difficult to discern what and who was legitimate in terms of science and medicine, with the period of its greatest popularity paralleling the Reform Acts of 1832 and 1867. (Winter, 2000)
According to Alison Winter, in her book Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain, mesmerism allowed for the challenging of Victorian society itself, calling into question its definitions of what constituted class and race:
… because there were often pronounced class and gender differences between mesmerist and subject, the volatile relations that developed in the experiments seemed to offer testimony about relative status. [In one case,] the trance would inspire one frail young maidservant to tell her prestigious physician (and an audience numbering in the hundreds) that he was a pathetic fool. Alternatively, displays of new cognitive abilities became showcases of the kind of progress that could (one fancied) be achieved in the most utopian of educational schemes. The question of whether the effects were natural or supernatural made experiments a testing ground of faith and doctrine. In making their way through a mesmeric trial, people found themselves exploring the major problems of the age. Writ large, Victorians were not merely testing the reality of a particular phenomenon or the veracity of a particular person; they were carrying out experiments on their own society. (Winter, 2000)
What constituted legitimate science during this period was debated by the scientific community, though there had been attempts since the 1830s to define, structure, and organize the sciences. The 1858 Medical Act served to standardize medicine, defining who constituted “legally qualified medical professionals” and creating a regulatory medical council to monitor credentials and behavior. (Roberts, 2009) A little more than a decade later, university reforms created clear distinctions and divisions between the scientific disciplines. (Winter, 2000)
Telegrams From the Dead (1994) is an interesting PBS documentary chronicling the phenomenon of spiritualism in 19th century America.
Spiritualism, a transplant from the United States, arrived to accompany mesmerism in Britain during this time. In fact, Spiritualism had so greatly taken over the United States during the mid-19th century that, by the end of the Victorian era, the planchette, which were boards initially used by mediums to contact the dead, had been filtered through popular culture to be commercialized and become the Elijah Bond-invented parlor game, the Ouija Board.
The start of the nineteenth century had seen the evangelical revivals of the Second Great Awakening spread throughout the United States. Progressive reformers led the calls for the end to slavery and women’s rights. Into this environment arrived an interest in communicating with the dead. Then in 1848, two sisters, aged 12 and 14, in a village near Rochester, New York, claimed to be able to communicate with spirits. The spirits would respond by knocking, with patterns of raps signaling yes, no, and eventually, letters in the alphabet. As in Edgar Allen Poe’s story of The Tell-Tale Heart published five years prior to the start of the sisters’ claims, the sisters claimed, and their neighbors believed, that a murdered peddler had been buried in the basement of the family home and was making the raps heard by the household. The interest of the Rochester-based Post family, who were Quaker abolitionists, in the 12 and 14-year-old Kate and Margret Fox, allowed the sisters’ reputation for communicating with spirits to spread. The Posts were reformers, with their friends and acquaintances including Frederick Douglass. Their house in Rochester hosted intellectuals, reformers, and fugitive slaves traveling on the Underground Railroad. (Braude, 2001)
This served to align spiritualism with progressive causes. Indeed, in the 1880s, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in History of Women’s Suffrage that Spiritualism had provided equal opportunities for women to speak and hold leadership positions: “The only religious sect in the world … that has recognized the equality of women is the Spiritualists.” As Ann D. Braude of Harvard Divinity School states in her book, Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-century America: “Not all feminists were Spiritualists, but all Spiritualists advocated woman’s rights, and woman were in fact equal to men within Spiritualist practice, polity, and ideology.” (Braude, 2001)
The extreme death that was a consequence of the American Civil War helped to further the desire for contact with the dead. An estimated 620,000 men, or roughly 2% of the United States’ population, died during the American Civil War. (American Battlefield Trust, 2022) According to the American Battlefield Trust: “While photographs of earlier conflicts do exist, the American Civil War is considered the first major conflict to be extensively photographed. Not only did intrepid photographers venture onto the fields of battle, but those very images were then widely displayed and sold in ever larger quantities nationwide.” (American Battlefield Trust, 2022) This created an effect like that of the Vietnam War being brought into Americans homes through television broadcasts, as images of war and death could now be seen as it truly existed through their publication in newspapers.
During this time, spirit photography also became popular. Charlatans like William H. Mumler, who created the spirit photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with her deceased husband, exploited the death of the American Civil War by claiming to be able to produce photographic evidence of ghosts. Like the Fox Sisters supposed communications with spirits, spirit photography provided a form of comfort to those who had lost loved ones.
But in addition to this need for comfort, Spiritualism and spirit photography provided a tangible alternative to science’s increasingly secular findings. As Darwinism challenged previously-held religious beliefs, Spiritualism allowed the public to regain the comfort of believing in life after death. Even the scientists themselves were often proponents of Spiritualism and mesmerism. The British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who conceived independently of Darwin the theory of natural selection, and who, with Darwin, jointly published a paper on natural selection with Darwin in 1858, was a proponent of Scottish-born, American-raised psychic, Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced Hume). Home, like the Fox Sisters, produced raps supposedly provided by the spirits with whom he was in communication. He also claimed to be able to levitate. Home became such a popular figure in society that at the age of 25, he married into Russian nobility, with Alexandre Dumas, the French author of The Count of Mont Cristo, as his best man. (Blum, 2006)
The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace also inspired other scientists’ interests in Spiritualism, with the chemist and future president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, William Crookes, known for his discovery of thallium, becoming a fan of both Home and Florence Cook, a young medium in her 20s who wore tight black dresses while communicating with the dead. Sex, after all, always sells. (Blum, 2006)
Darwin was embarrassed by Wallace’s public beliefs in the paranormal, fearing they could undermine Wallace’s scientific work, and, through him, Darwin’s own work. Wallace believed that science and evolution functioned within a larger concept of the universe, with God, or a supernatural godlike “overruling intelligence”, being responsible for the unexplained parts of our world. (Blum, 2006)
Indeed, many influential figures were members of the Society for Psychical Research, including Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain, John Ruskin, and Alfred Tennyson. (Blum, 2006) We will be discussing the Society for Psychical Research in detail in this episode, as the filmmaker on whom we will be focusing, G.A. Smith, was an influential part of the Society. We briefly discussed G.A. Smith’s film, Mary Jane’s Mishap, on the previous episode. Smith’s background in Spiritualism and mesmerism informed the later film work that he produced, including one of the earliest-known portrayals of ghosts in cinema, 1898’s Photographing a Ghost. Indeed, the genre of horror was greatly impacted by the Spiritualist and psychical interests of the time.
Films originally portrayed ghosts as they appeared in spirit photography. Through the Fox Sisters and Daniel Dunglas Home, and advanced by the writings of Edgar Allen Poe, rapping became a common way for spirits to be portrayed as communicating their presence—implying an automatic haunted quality. As Edgar Allen Poe writes in The Raven: “… suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ‘Tis some visitor,’ I muttered, ‘tapping at my chamber door—only this and nothing more.” (Poe, 2022) And Stoker used mind control, as introduced by Mesmer, complete with mesmerism’s sexual innuendo, in his creation of Dracula.
Interestingly, early cinema’s treatment of ghosts is in a comic fashion. Most of these films would not constitute horror films; and, yet their establishing of the initial look and behavior of ghosts was hugely influential on later films which dealt with hauntings.
George Albert Smith, often credited as G.A. Smith, is a fascinating figure. Beyond being a filmmaker, he was an astronomer, being a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, an inventor, a hypnotist and psychic, charlatan, and possibly involved in the death of the most important English hypnotism researcher of his time.
Was it MURDER MOST FOUL?
Nope, not really. But it has been suggested that the discovery of Smith’s deceit caused the researcher to take his life. But more on that in a moment.
And just to avoid confusion, I’d like to note that the filmmaker George Albert Smith shares his name with the religious leader and one-time president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, George Albert Smith, who was born only six years later than the filmmaker and died within the same decade.
George Albert Smith was born in London in January of 1864. After his father’s death, the family moved to Brighton, where his mother ran a boarding house. By the age of 18, Smith was already performing on the stages of Brighton as a mesmerist and telepath. According to his partner in the hypnotism act, Douglas Blackburn, occultism and spiritualism swept England, and Brighton, in particular, became what Blackburn called a “happy hunting ground for mediums of every kind.” (Blackburn, 1912) Douglas Blackburn was a 24-year-old journalist editing the scandalous and polemic weekly journal, The Brightonian, with supposedly a focus on exposing so-called mesmerists, when he met the 18-year-old George Albert Smith. (Gray, 1999)
Nearly 30 years later, beginning in 1908, Douglas Blackburn published a number of confessions of the hoax he and George Albert Smith allegedly perpetrated, culminating in a 1911 confession in the Daily News, a daily newspaper in the UK that was founded by Charles Dickens in 1846 (The Rossetti Archive, 2022) and in 1901, came under the control of the Cadbury family, of the famed Cadbury Chocolate. (The Glasgow Herald, 1948)
In his confession, Blackburn details how he and George Albert Smith met and why they created the hoax:
In 1882, I encountered G.A. Smith, a youth I found giving a mesmeric entertainment. [Sensing] a fraud, I proceeded to investigate, made his acquaintance, and very soon realized that I had discovered a genius in his line. He has since been well known as a powerful hypnotist. He was also the most ingenious conjurer I have met outside the profession. He had the versatility of an Edison in devising new tricks and improving on old ones. We entered into a compact to “show up” some of the then flourishing professors of occultism and began by practicing thought reading. Within a month, we were astonishing Brighton at bazaars and kindred charity entertainments and enjoyed a great vogue. One of our exhibitions was described very fully and enthusiastically in, [Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research] … and [Frank] Podmore called on us and asked for a private demonstration. As we had made a strict rule never to take payment for our exhibitions, we were accepted by the Society as private, unpaid demonstrators, and as such remained during the long series of searches. It is but right to explain that, at this period, neither of us knew or realized the scientific standing and earnest motive of the gentlemen who approached us. We saw in them only a superior type of the spiritualistic cranks by whom we were daily pestered. Our first private séance was accepted so unhesitatingly, and the lack of reasonable precautions on the part of the “investigators” was so marked, that Smith and I were genuinely amused and felt it our duty to show how utterly incompetent were these “scientific investigators”. Our plan was to bamboozle them thoroughly and then let the world know the value of scientific research. It was the vanity of the schoolboy who catches a master tripping.
… To this day, no conjurer has [succeeded] in approaching our great feat by which Smith, scientifically blindfolded, deafened and muffled in two blankets, reproduced in detail an irregular figure drawn by Mr. Meyers and seen only by him and me. The value of a contribution such as this should be not so much in describing the machinery as pointing out how and where these investigators failed so that future researchers may avoid their mistakes. I say boldly that Messrs. Meyers and Gurney were too anxious to get corroboration of their theories to hold the balance impartially. Again and again, they gave the benefit of the doubt to experiments that were failures. They allowed us to impose our own conditions, accepted without demure our explanations of failure, and, in short, exhibited a complacence and confidence which, however complimentary to us, was scarcely constant with a strict investigation on behalf of the public.
… I am the sole survivor of that group of experimentalists, and so no harm can be done to anyone—but possible good to the cause of truth—I with mingled feelings of regret and satisfaction, now declare that the whole of those alleged experiments were bogus and originated in the honest desire of two youths to show how easily men of scientific mind and training could be deceived when seeking for evidence in support of a theory they were wishful to establish. And here let me say that I make this avowal in no boastful spirit, within three months of our acquaintance with the leading members of the [Society for Psychical Research], Smith and myself heartily regretted that these personally charming and scientifically distinguished men should have been victimized, but it was too late to repent. We did the next best thing. We stood aside and watched with amazement the astounding spread of the fire in a spirit of mischief lighted.
Firstly, Blackburn’s article was rife with mistakes, including stating George Albert Smith to be dead at this point. Indeed, Smith outlived Blackburn by 30 years and, during the period that Blackburn’s confessions were published, Smith was involved with the successful color film process he invented, Kinemacolor, and received the silver medal from the Royal Society of Arts in 1909 for this work. It seems curious that Blackburn should make such a mistake about Smith, who was obviously somewhat of a public figure—and whose status as alive or dead should have been easily verifiable. Sir William F. Barrett was also alive enough to respond with a rebuttal to Blackburn’s assertions.
Indeed, far from “sensing a fraud” and investigating when first seeing G.A. Smith, as Blackburn states in his confession, Blackburn actually gave Smith a rave review in the weekly paper for which he was editor, The Brightonian, in June of 1882: “The most amusing, remarkable entertainment in Brighton this week is that being given by Mr. G.A. Smith … and it is astonishing that anyone after witnessing his experiments can doubt his genius”. Teaming up with Blackburn and devising new wonders for his act was essential for Smith, as his audience was shrinking and noticing the same subjects being used multiple times. Blackburn was kept in the background during their act and often not even mentioned in advertisements, to retain the illusion of journalistic integrity. (Wiley, 2012)
The growth in the amount of research conducted and advancements in the understanding of spiritualist practices and methods had progressed to the point that by the early 1880s, the spiritualist community found itself divided into two groups—one of believers and one of skeptics. The Society for Psychical Research is a scientific organization searching for truth through psychical research, but with a critical eye—carefully conducting experiments with controls meant to guard against and/or discover magic tricks posing as supernatural events. The society was responsible for exposing many famous mediums; indeed, Lucifer, the journal published by Theosophical cofounder Helena Blavatsky, stated it was “a society bent upon giving the lie to its own name.” (McCuskey, 2021)
On the other side of the divide was the London Spiritualist Alliance, which produced the British weekly periodical, Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research. This was considered the community of true believers. (McCuskey, 2021) In fact, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle eventually left the Society for Psychical Research because he believed that it was anti-spiritualist, while he regularly published articles and letters in the London Spiritualist Alliance’s periodical, Light, (The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, 2022) which was founded and edited by Edmund Dawson Rogers, incidentally a founding member of both the Society for Psychical Research and the British National Association of Spiritualists. (UCL Bloomsbury Project, 2011)
Light had positively reviewed Blackburn and Smith’s act—which attracted the interest of Frank Podmore. Frank Podmore was one of the three individuals specified by Blackburn at the beginning of his confession as having been directly victimized and duped by Smith and Blackburn; the other two being Frederic W.H. Myers and Edmund Gurney. Frank Podmore was a founding member of the British democratic socialist organization, the Fabian Society, which he himself named after the 3rd century BCE Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosis. Prominent figures of the time involved in the Fabian Society included British suffragist Emmeline Pankhurst, H.G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw.
Oxford-educated, Podmore was a prominent member of the of the Society for Psychical Research, and published many scientific papers along with Frederic W.H. Myers and Edmund Gurney, both of whom were founding members of the society. While he spent much of his efforts at the Society for Psychical Research disproving various mediums and spiritualists as frauds, Podmore genuinely believed in telepathy, which was defined by the society as sensory channels that existed outside the scope of the accepted norm.
He used a telepathic experiment in which the alleged telepath’s normal functions are blocked as an illustration of how he defined and viewed telepathy: “If, under such conditions, [the alleged telepath] correctly names the concealed card, the result may be due to reading our thoughts, it may be due to communion with the world soul, or the direct interposition of the Deity. In any event, we have agreed provisionally to call the result telepathy.” (Oppenheim, 1985) Indeed, Podmore believed that ghosts were actually what he called “telepathic hallucinations” (Vaschide, 1902); (Podmore, 1909); or, a hallucination taking the form of a living person that is experienced by an individual because of the telepathic transfer of thoughts from the one individual to the other—according to Podmore, a census conducted by Edmund Gurney on behalf of the Society of Psychical Research illustrated one in 60 of these hallucinations is associated with the death of the person seen (Podmore, In Defense of Phantasms, 1892).
The late historian, Dr. Janet Oppenheim, wrote of Podmore’s belief in and fascination by telepathy: “It is tempting to speculate that Podmore, to an extent which he could not articulate, ultimately invested in the concept of telepathy some of the hopes he had once entertained of contributing to the renovation of human society. In telepathy, perhaps, he came to perceive a chance for deeper understanding and sympathy among people than utopian communities, Owenite or Davidsonian, could ever hope to inaugurate.” (Oppenheim, 1985)
Because of the previously mentioned positive review that Smith and Blackburn had received in the British periodical, Light: A Journal of Psychical Occult and Mystical Research, Podmore requested a private demonstration by Smith and Blackburn. The demonstrations for Podmore were such a success that in early December of 1882, the previously-mentioned Frederic W.H. Myers and Edmund Gurney, who were founders of the Society for Psychical Research, traveled to Brighton to witness for themselves the wonders of mesmerism and telepathy as produced by Blackburn and Smith, with the committee stating: “The results of these trials give us the most important and invaluable insight into the manner of mental transfer of a mental picture we have yet obtained.” (Wiley, 2012)
As Blackburn states in his confession, Smith and Blackburn cleverly chose not to ask for remuneration for their private demonstrations, which not only engendered trust in Blackburn and Smith, but also coincidentally fell in line with the rules of the society—as Podmore stated, “The Society for Psychical Research … decided that it could offer no remuneration whatever to informants, holding it essential to avoid any inducement to the production of false or doctored evidence.” (Podmore, In Defense of Phantasms, 1892)
Blackburn and Smith impressed the Society for Psychical Research to such a high degree that they became associate members of the Society, which allowed them to become regularly salaried. This was especially beneficial for Blackburn, whose scandalous poem about a local wealthy magistrate, whom Blackburn implied was corrupt, caused the paper for which he was the editor, The Brightonian, to be sued for libel in 1882, depleting its revenue. (Gray, 1999) With these financial failings, Stephen Gray claims in his book, Free-lancers and Literary Biography in South Africa, that Blackburn actually advertised his and Smith’s act in The Brightonian with the intention of attracting the interests of the scientists investigating claims of telepathy. (Gray, 1999)
By February 1884, Blackburn described himself in a court proceeding as the former editor for The Brightonian, which was being sued for libel by Henry Munster. (Old Bailey Proceedings Online, 2018) Indeed, in May of that year, The Brightonian folded because of the many claims of libel. (Wiley, 2012) During this period, Blackburn was named as co-respondent in a divorce case heard at the Old Bailey. (Gray, 1999) Blackburn then attempted what Stephen Gray calls “a one-man satirical sheet” in the publication of The Brighton Figaro, but this also failed within a month due to a lack of financing.
Blackburn and Smith continued to be paid to perform experiments for the Society until after the 37th Experiment of Inversion, when Blackburn suddenly departed from the society. (Wiley, 2012) Whether he quit or was fired or was avoiding debtors is unknown. Following this, Blackburn’s movements become difficult to trace, until he later showed up in South Africa. (Gray, 1999) The sudden departure of Blackburn did nothing to shake the trust the Society had in Smith. In fact, the Society trusted Smith to the extent of not questioning why the subjects used by Smith were virtually all young, male acquaintances of Smith from Brighton. (Wiley, 2012)
The second part of this transcript will be posted soon, with more supplemental pictures and videos. If you enjoy this post, we will attempt to post these transcripts for every episode.
Please subscribe to Rhapsody in 35MM wherever you listen to your podcasts. Also, subscribe to this website so you will be alerted to new postings such as this. Please make sure to follow us on the social media platform of your choice -- the links can be found on this website. Please make sure to rate us and comment on Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Until next time!
Sources
American Battlefield Trust. (2022). Civil War Casualties. Retrieved from American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/civil-war-casualties#:~:text=Roughly%202%25%20of%20the%20population,high%20as%206%20million%20souls.&text=The%20human%20cost%20of%20the%20Civil%20War%20was%20beyond%20anybody's%20expectations
American Battlefield Trust. (2022). Photography and the Civil War. Retrieved from American Battlefield Trust: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/photography-and-civil-war#:~:text=While%20photographs%20of%20earlier%20conflicts,in%20ever%20larger%20quantities%20nationwide
American Society for Psychical Research. (2017). Proceedings of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1885-89, Vol. 1: Containing Nos. 1-4 (Classic Reprint). London: Forgotten Books.
Blackburn, D. (1912, June 3). Confessions of a Telepathist. Wanganui, Wellington, New Zealand.
Blum, D. (2006). Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death. New York: Penguin Press.
Braude, A. (2001). Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, Second Edition. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Braude, S. E. (1998). Peirce on the Paranormal. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 203-224.
Coleman, M. H. (1992). The Death of Edmund Gurney. Journal for Psychical Research, 194-200.
Dr. M. H. Coleman Estate. (2015). Dr. Michael Coleman: A Biographical Note. Retrieved from Weiser Antiquarian Books: https://www.weiserantiquarian.com/Dr.M.H.Coleman/
Editors of The Athenaeum. (1892). The Congress of Experimental Psychology. The Athenaeum Journal of Literature, Science, the Fine Arts, Music, and the Drama, 229.
Goodwin, G. (2004, September 23). Knoghtbridge, John (1619/20 - 1677). Retrieved from Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-15742
Gottlieb, A. (2006, August 20). Raising spirits. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/books/review/raising-spirits.html
Gray, S. (1999). Free-lancers And Literary Biography In South Africa.(Cross/Cultures 36). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Health Sciences Library System. (2022). Early Works on Animal Magnetism. Retrieved from University of Pittsburgh: https://www.hsls.pitt.edu/early-works-on-animal-magnetism#:~:text=Animal%20magnetism%20is%20a%20healing,%E2%80%9Canimal%20gravitation%E2%80%9D%20in%201776
International Union of Psychological Science. (2022). Who We Are. Retrieved from International Union of Psychological Science: https://www.iupsys.net/about/
Kelly, E. F. (2022). Ed Kelly's Bio. Retrieved from University of Virginia School of Medicine: https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/dops-staff/ed-kellys-bio/
Kelly, E., & Kelly, E. W. (2009). Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
McCuskey, B. (2021). How Sherlock Pulled the Trick: Spiritualism and the Pseudoscientific Method. University Park: Penn State University Press.
Myers, F. W. (1961). Fragments of Inner Life, first edition. London, England.
Myers, F. W., & Susy Smith, e. (2005). Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Mineola: Dover Publications.
Old Bailey Proceedings Online. (2018). Richard Corden Cox, Richard Johnstone Railton. Deception: fraud. 25th February 1884. Retrieved from The Proceedings of the Old Bailey: London's Central Criminal Court, 1674-1913: https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?div=t18840225-370
Oppenheim, J. (1985). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (1982). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 1 1857-1866. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Peirce, C. S. (2000). Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 6, 1886-1890. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Podmore, F. (1892). In Defense of Phantasms. The National Review, 234-251.
Podmore, F. (1908). The Naturalisation of the Supernatural. London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Poe, E. A. (2022). The Raven. Retrieved from Poetry Foundation: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48860/the-raven
Radovancevic, L. (2009). The tribute of the pioneer of hypnotherapy--Franz Anton Mesmer, MD, PhD in the history of psychotherapy and medicine. Acta medico-historica adriatica, 49-60. Retrieved from National Library of Medicine.
Ransdell, J. (2014, August 11). Who is Charles Peirce? Retrieved from Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway: https://cspeirce.iupui.edu/faqs/whoiscsp.HTM
Roberts, M. J. (2009). The Politics of Professionalization: MPs, Medical Men, and the 1858 Medical Act. Medical History, 37-56.
Russell, J. E. (1903, July). Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. Retrieved from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1903/07/human-personality-and-its-survival-of-bodily-death/637449/
Ryan, M. (2010, January 26). The unusual case of Arthur T. Myers, tennis player and doctor. Retrieved from Tennis Warehouse: https://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/the-unusual-case-of-arthur-t-myers-tennis-player-and-doctor.309112/
Ryan, M. B. (2010). The Resurrection of Frederic Myers. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 149-170.
Sidgwick, H. (1981). The Methods of Ethics, seventh edition. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
Slater, D. E. (1980). Introduction. In T. H. Hall, The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney, Second Edition. London: G. Duckworth.
Sommer, A. (2012). Professional Heresy: Edmund Gurney (1847–88) and the Study of Hallucinations and Hypnotism. Medical History, 383-388.
The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia. (2022). Light. Retrieved from The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia: https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Light
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. (2022). Albion. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Albion-island-Europe
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. (2022). Franz Anton Mesmer. Retrieved from Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Anton-Mesmer
The Glasgow Herald. (1948, November 22). The Glasgow Herald. Retrieved from Google News: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=hGlAAAAAIBAJ&pg=1579,4864470&dq=edward-cadbury&hl=en
The Rossetti Archive. (2022). London Daily News. Retrieved from The Rossetti Archive: http://www.rossettiarchive.org/docs/ldn.1856.raw.html
Turner, C. (2006). Mesmeromania, or, the Tale of the Tub: The therapeutic powers of animal magnetism. Retrieved from Cabinet: https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/21/turner.php
UCL Bloomsbury Project. (2011). British National Association of Spiritualists. Retrieved from University College London Bloomsbury Project: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bloomsbury-project/institutions/british_national_spiritualists.htm
Vaschide, N. (1902). Experimental Investigations in Telepathic Hallucinations. The Monist, 337-364.
Wiley, B. H. (2012). The Thought Reader Craze: Victorian Science at the Enchanted Boundary. Jefferson: McFarland & Company.
Winter, A. (2000). Mesmerized: Powers of Mind in Victorian Britain. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Zalta, E. N. (2021, February 11). Charles Sanders Peirce. Retrieved from Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive, Summer 2022 Edition: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/peirce/
Thank you for subscribing to the site! We try to use public domain images as much as we can and always credit the source of the image. However, if you are the copyright holder and feel that your copyright was violated, please let us know, and we will promptly remove the image. It is an honor to have you listening (or reading) our podcast! We came across your writings a few times during our research! We hope you enjoy listening as much as we have enjoyed creating it. Thanks for reaching out, and please keep listening! RI35MM
Glad to have been able to provide the photograph of Douglas Blackburn from my blog.