Letter to Harry Price (22 february 1928)

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

This letter was written by Arthur Conan Doyle on 22 february 1928 to Harry Price about fraud in spiritualism, Hope, Mrs. Deane and exposed mediums.


Letter

THE PSYCHIC BOOKSHOP
22nd February, 1928.

Dear Price,

It is all very well to say that you are not 'anti-spiritualistic' but your record is all the other way. You put a slur upon Hope's twenty years of splendid work, and though I have never put the fraud down to you none the less it was for you to denounce it when it was clearly shown, and so to undo some of the unjustice which had been done.

Then with no experience of Mrs. Deane you denounced her on the strength of a single complaint from a woman, with no reference to the fact that both Sir Oliver Lodge and I, to say nothing of hundreds more, had tested and endorsed Mrs. Deane. Where is the sense of impartiality of that? Now you tell the story of the Cottingley photographs in a way which give no idea at all of the real facts. It is the same with your allusion to 'exposed' mediums, such as Mrs. Mellon and Evans. The former was undoubtedly a great medium, if testimony goes for anything, and if the 'exposure' was an Australian incident, it was denounced at the time as a frame-up. I hold no brief for Evans but it should have been stated that Miss Rosita Forbes and I and many others were in his favour. I have to remonstrate on these points for I am looked upon as in a way the spokesman of the Cause, and when under a form of science such utterly loose unscientific statements go forth I am bound to remonstrate. It is the more serious when you are in a sense the guest of a spiritualistic body.

Yours faithfully,

A. Conan Doyle