On February 27 1906, a séance was held on the Grove Estate in Pinner by well-known ‘medium’ Frederick George Foster Craddock. Having charged his attendees – a Colonel Mayhew and his wife, and another man called Mr Sinclair – the 7s 6d. entrance fee, Craddock ‘sat in a chair and made several facial contortions and went into a trance’. After a while the attendees were informed that there were ‘several spirits here’ and the spirit slates were fetched so that communication could commence. The slates were duly placed on the floor, but then disappeared backwards under a curtain, leading the medium Craddock to cry out ‘See! The spirits have taken the slates!’ Unfortunately, Craddock had been a little careless with his performance that night and had forgotten to conceal the wires attached to the slates that allowed him to move them unseen. He then appeared as a manifestation of ‘Dr Alder’ and ‘Uncle George’, but forgot to stick his theatrical beard and moustache on properly. His fate was sealed, however, when he passed on a message from the colonel’s mother to ‘send her love’ from the spirit world. The colonel’s mother was very much alive and well. It is unsurprising, therefore, that Craddock was hauled in front of the magistrates at Edgware Police court on charges of fraud and that he ‘being a rogue and a vagabond, did unlawfully use certain subtle craft, means, or device, by palmistry or otherwise, to deceive the said Mark Mayhew and others’. Craddock was ordered to pay £10 and five guineas in costs or go to prison for one month.

It may seem laughable to a modern audience, but at the height of spiritualism’s popularity in the 19th century, drawing rooms up and down the country were alive with levitating tables, spirit rapping, ectoplasm and mesmeric trances. Was it proof of the ‘other side’? Or mere hocus-pocus?

Modern spiritualism was imported from the US to European shores in the 1850s but the belief that the spirits of the dead could be communicated with was not in itself a new phenomenon. Throughout history, humankind has been conscious of the existence of the spirit – in the form of God, or gods; or the spirits of ancestors. These higher beings were approached to bestow favours, guide decisions and provide support and healing in times of stress. Many ancient cultures practiced divination to obtain guidance from the gods, and the early Christian Church was founded on the concept of the Holy Spirit – with Jesus himself appearing after his physical death to prove his ongoing existence. In the 18th century, the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) and the teachings of Franz Mesmer (1734–1815) contributed to the idea of a spirit world. Swedenborg claimed that his trance-like states enabled him to commune with spirits, and Mesmer – as well as lending his name to the technique of mesmerism – alleged that his subjects could contact spiritual beings while under hypnosis.

In an era of rapid advancement – faster trains, electricity, photography and X-rays were all inventions of the 19th century – the Victorians were primed to challenge the ‘old world’ cosmic order. Scientific endeavour helped to answer the question of ‘how the world worked’, but what Victorians really wanted to know was ‘Is there life after death?’. In an age where death was a tragic but all-too-common part of everyday life, the belief that the soul could continue to exist beyond the mortal plane provided a source of comfort to grieving families. Christianity was still the mainstay of religious practice, but outside of faith, where was the proof of immortality?

The answer initially came from an unlikely place. On 31 March 1848, Kate and Margaret Fox of Hydesville, New York, reported that they had made contact with the spirit of a murdered pedlar. The spirit was communicating with them via rapping noises, which they could elicit by clapping their hands or snapping their fingers. News of their claims quickly travelled across the Atlantic, turning them into celebrities in a matter of months. Their experience aroused curiosity, as well as publicity, and enabled mediumship and spirit communication to come out into the open. However, this also meant it was exposed to increasing scrutiny, as the scientific world of fact and certainty collided with manifestations, moving tables and floating objects. The case was not strengthened when three years later in 1851, tests carried out at the Fox residence suggested the sisters were producing the sounds themselves, although this was vehemently denied by the sisters.

Despite this exposure, the popularity of spiritualism continued to grow, and every level of Victorian society was gripped by the craze – from upper-class ladies to the working classes. Invitations to tea among the wealthy classes often included a spiritualist element such as spirit writing or table-turning. Table-turning involved the spirits communicating with those seated around the table by tilting, rotating or lifting the table. A medium would typically have planchettes or talking boards (patented as the Ouija Board in 1891) and slates for spirit writing at their disposal – as well as themselves, as they were the conduit for the spirits to communicate. The phenomena produced often depended on the medium’s speciality, but some mediums offered a broad repertoire of manifestations – as well as a broad range of spirits to call upon – and it was not unknown for Charles Dickens to make an appearance alongside Auntie Mary!

Women were often considered to be better suited to mediumship and were often highly regarded. Mrs Guppy, a medium operating in London in the 1860s and 1870s, famously shocked the country in 1871 by making a spirit powered journey through the air from her house in Highbury to a séance in Bloomsbury. And in the 1870s Florence Cook, a young medium working in London, could allegedly perform full-form materialisation – where the spirit world would materialise from the body of the medium and move within the circle of sitters.

Middle-class women often dominated the ranks of amateur mediumship. It was one of only a few professions open to genteel ladies, giving them the opportunity to discreetly earn money. It was also seen as an acceptable hobby or pastime, alongside embroidery and sketching.

Outside of the domestic sphere and private sittings, lectures and demonstrations would be held in front of audiences of hundreds, becoming a common form of ‘inspirational’ entertainment. The industrial north of England, where dissenting religion was already strong, became a hub of spiritualism and the first spiritualist church opened in Keighley, West Yorkshire, in 1853. The town also published the first spiritualist newspaper – the Yorkshire Spiritualist Telegraph – two years later.

Inevitably, spiritualist activity started to be called into question; and since some of the phenomena involved gravity – such as the movement of objects and levitation – it was the scientific community who decided they would be best placed to investigate it. Scientists such as Michael Faraday, who discovered the principles of electromagnetism, were called in. He attended two séances with the aim of finding a rational explanation and immediately dismissed the claims as nonsense. In 1882, the Society for Psychical Research was founded to examine the phenomena using rigorous scientific methods to test spiritual claims. Much of their early work involved exposing fake phenomena, sifting and corroborating reports of spontaneous paranormal experiences, and collecting data. Its work produced the first landmark in psychical research, a two-volume study of visions and apparitions titled Phantasms of the Living  (1886).

Not all of the scientific community were sceptical. Several eminent scientists of the day believed in spiritualism – Guglielmo Marconi and Alexander Graham Bell were notable supporters. John Logie Baird, inventor of the television, was also persuaded by his spiritual experiences, claiming that he had communicated with the spirit of American scientist Thomas Edison. After visiting a séance in 1926 he wrote, ‘I am convinced that discoveries of far reaching importance remain waiting along these shadowy and discredited paths.’

And discredited they often were – largely due to acts of dishonesty and deceit. Demonstrations of mediumship had proved themselves to be a profitable venture, but this meant incidents of fraud became widespread. Mr Punch’s History of England (1921) was in no doubt as to the dubious nature of some mediums: ‘The gipsies are hardly dealt with in being convicted as rogues and vagabonds for telling fortunes by the cards or the palm of the hand, whilst practitioners in Clairvoyance get their hands crossed with silver, or with postage-stamps with perfect impunity. There is clearly one law for the Romany, and another for Somnambulists.’ John Henry Anderson (1814–1874), a prominent magician nicknamed the ‘Wizard of the North,’ did much to expose spiritualist fraud, denouncing the movement as ‘humbug’. His book, The Fashionable Science of Parlour Magic (1855), used his magician’s knowledge to describe in detail how the effects of spirit rapping and table-turning are achieved. The movement was also called into question in 1888 by the most unlikely source: Margaret Fox. Forty years after their original claims, Margaret revealed the rappings of the murdered pedlar in Hydesville were a hoax perpetrated by herself and her sister, stating, ‘There is no such thing as a spirit manifestation. That I have been mainly instrumental in perpetrating the fraud of spiritualism upon a too-confiding public many of you already know. It is the greatest sorrow of my life&helli; When I began this deception, I was too young to know right from wrong.’

Just to muddy the waters further, Fox went on to claim at a later date that the confession was in fact a deception and she quickly returned to promoting spiritualism.

The movement appeared undiminished by this scandal and continued to gain credibility into the 20th century, gaining distinguished supporters such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, scientist Sir Oliver Lodge (who became president of the Society for Psychical Research from 1901–1903) and the journalist Hannen Swaffer. The Church was surprisingly slow to condemn the movement – the Roman Catholic Church denounced spiritualism in 1898 and the Anglican Church warned of ‘grave dangers’ in the ‘religion of spiritualism’ in 1920. By the late 1920s and early 1930s there were around 250,000 practicing spiritualists and 2000 spiritualist societies in the UK, in addition to many local mediumship circles.

Undoubtedly, many seances and sittings were held in genuine faith, but others were conducted for pure entertainment value; incorporating a mixture of magic, sleight of hand and masterful psychological tricks. Some were successful in their endeavour – whether that meant pulling the wool over an audience’s eyes for money or being able to comfort a grieving family with heartfelt messages from the spirit world. Whatever the motivation, science has so far failed to categorically prove or disprove the existence of the spirit world. The only certainty we have is that one day we’ll all get the opportunity to find out the truth, once and for all, for ourselves.

As John Mortimer’s famous Rumpole quipped in Rumpole and the Dear Departed (1981), ‘What I can’t accept about spiritualism is the idea of millions of dead people (there must be standing room only on the Other Side) kept hanging about just waiting to be sent for by some old girl with a Ouija board in a Brighton boarding house, or a couple of table-tappers in Tring, for the sake of some inane conversation about the Blueness of the Infinite. I mean at least when you’re dead you’ll surely be spared such tedious social occasions.’

Further reading

• Conan Doyle, Arthur, The History of Spiritualism Volume One and Two (Cassell and Company, 1926)
• Owen, Alex, The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England (Virago, 1989)
• Oppenheim, Janet, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Resources

• The Society for Psychical Research (see website for details on how to access their archives and libraries)
• The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB, (search for literature and ephemera relating to Victorian Spiritualism and Parlour Magic)
• Victorian Web – a huge online archive of information and resources relating to the Victorian era.