The Psychical Doyle
The Psychical Doyle is an article written by Kelvin I. Jones published in three parts in the A.C.D. - The Journal of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (Vol. 1, No. 1, 2 & 3, and Vol. 2 No. 2) in september 1989, march & september 1990, and autumn 1991.
The article examines Arthur Conan Doyle's collaboration with American journalist J. Malcolm Bird, using Bird's eyewitness accounts of séances to reassess Conan Doyle's approach to spiritualism. It argues that Conan Doyle was neither blindly credulous nor rigorously scientific, but a committed believer who balanced sympathy for mediums with selective skepticism toward individual phenomena.
The Psychical Doyle
Part One: An American at the Seance
It had always been Conan Doyle's belief that Britain and America should be close allies both politically and culturally. It seemed equally natural to him that they should also be united in the fight to establish spiritualism as a major religious cause. When, after the public declaration of his belief in spiritualism in 1916, Sir Arthur looked across the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of an ally for his cause, he was not to be disappointed. Certainly Conan Doyle thirsted for greater credibility for the psychics he championed at this stage, for the British spiritualist movement had received its fair share of knocks and blows.
The years following the conclusion of The Great War had been hectic and often stormy ones. In 1918 Conan Doyle had published The New Revelation the book which was to represent his official view of spiritualism and its profound relevance to mankind, followed in 1919 by The Vital Message, an attempt to establish spiritualism as a revolutionary form of religion. Then, in the August of 1920, he had set sail with his family on a missionary visit to the Antipodes, resulting in a six month tour which demonstrated beyond all doubt his abilities as an evangelist.
Since returning to Britain, however, his mission in Britain had led him into areas of controversy. In the June of 1921, he joined Ellis Powell in Portsmouth and addressed a large congregation of fellow spiritualists about the obvious disadvantages of such a public figure as himself maintaining a high profile in an area which was constantly under attack by both the media and the established church orthodoxy. Unhappily, he confessed, anyone who became deeply engrossed in such matters found himself on debatable grounds and found that his friends, possibly even his relatives, took a different view, and sharp differences arose. (1)
In the Autumn of that same year James Douglas, the editor of the Sunday Express. challenged Conan Doyle regarding the issue of psychic photographer, William Hope, whom Conan Doyle had met in the summer of 1919 when he travelled to Crewe to attend a sitting with him. At first he had been sceptical of the photographer's abilities. However, on the second night of his visit he managed to obtain a spit photograph of his son who had been killed some eight years previously. However, the third result was the most impressive, showing not only the face of Conan Doyle's eldest sister but also the small brooch she was in the habit of wearing.
Since he was by now firmly convinced of Hope's psychic powers, Conan Doyle had been understandably angered by Douglas' claim in the April of 1921 that photographs taken of him by Hope showed a face near his own which had appeared in a rival newspaper. Two controlled experiments were carried out, one at the offices of the newspaper and one at the British College of Psychic Science to see if, under conditions similar to those used by Hope, trickery could go unnoticed. In the second of these, Douglas employed a magician and psychic investigator, Marriott, to prove to Conan Doyle how uncritical he and other spiritualists had been about the methods of Hope. The four plates which were produced were clearly faked, one of them (the picture of Conan Doyle) being a rather mocking parody of the by now famous fairy photographs taken by Elsie Wright and her cousin.
The whole question of the reliability of mediums and of scientific investigation of psychic phenomena was one which had greatly occupied Sir Arthur since his early days as a struggling young doctor in Southsea. He was, therefore, agreeably surprised to find an American journal, The Scientific American, eager to conduct its own systematic investigation into the physical powers of mediums. So keen was he to establish international links within the psychical community that in the early part of 1922 he wrote the following letter to the journal:
- 'It has struck me what an excellent thing it would be if you chose me reliable American now in London to represent you, and to see what I might be able to help him to... If he were a man of the right type I would bring him in touch with the right mediums here, and he could run over to Paris and see Dr. Geley, and possibly to Munich to see Schrenck Notzing's medium Willy, who has converted some very hopeless cases. With these additions your report would take a wider sweep than any of your predecessors. If you named such a man, I would make it my business to get in touch with him, and get him sittings.' (2)
The lot fell to J. Malcolm Bird, a young reporter and associate editor of the journal and the arrangements were subsequently made without publicity for it was rightly thought that mediums would suffer considerably from the auto-suggestive notion that Bird's presence would be a hostile one. Bird would be introduced to spiritualist circles merely as 'an American friend and correspondent' who was visiting Britain to experience the phenomena at first hand.
In Britain the only people who knew Bird to be a reporter were Sir Arthur and Lady Doyle and Hewat McKenzie, President of the British College of Psychic Science. When the arrangements had been finalised, Bird sailed on the Noordam on February 10th, arriving in London on the 20th. Here he remained until March 13th when he left England to visit a number of psychic research centres in Paris, Berlin and Munich, arriving back in London on March 26th. Two days later Bird sailed for America again, this time in the company of Sir Arthur and his family on the first of his great American spiritualist tours.
It is indeed fortunate that only a year later Bird had the foresight to record the results of that intensive five week period in his book My Psychic Adventures for it remains the only objective reliable source of material relating to Conan Doyle's own involvement in the attitudes towards the question of psychic phenomena and their validation. What emerges from Bird's memories is a picture of a man sympathetic to the needs of mediums, yet sceptical about the complete reliability as links with the afterlife. Far from being credulous, Conan Doyle was eager to establish verifiable results in a scientific manner. Often he was dismissive of the amateurism of many spiritualist circles, a fact which did nothing to endear him to the movement and which may well have been the cause of his rapid fading from the memories of many adherents during the early 30's and 40's.
Despite his critical approach, Conan Doyle was a self confessed convert to the spiritualist creed. Indeed, it could be said that during the early part of the century he had been a lifelong member of the Society for Psychical Research, he was often critical of that body’s narrow aims and objectives He was also a member of the Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures, a body which stressed the acceptance of psychic phenomena in photographs. The British College of Psychic Science, of which he was also a member, emphasised that their aim was 'not to inquire whether life continues beyond death, but to demonstrate that it does.'
It is important to recognise that, although Conan Doyle believed implicitly in the demonstrable existence of an afterlife, he was neither naive nor simplistic in his approach to psychic phenomena. As Bird explains in his memoirs, Sir Arthur carefully refrained from claiming that everything which occurred at a seance was due to the intervention of deceased persons. He knew well that the medium himself contributed enormously from his own sub-consciousness and that contributions also came from the sub-conscious of the sitters. In addition, contributions also came from entities outside the circle, many of whom were neither human nor benevolent. According to Bad, Conan Doyle was greatly impressed 'with the immense difficulty of untangling this complex net of causes' and of being able to ascribe the different elements of the seance to various causes. (3)
The first seances Bird attended took place at the British College of Psychic Science with the Glasgow medium John Sloan. There were twelve people present, including Sir Arthur and Hewat McKenzie, the latter acting as Master of Ceremonies.
Like many of the mediums whom Sir Arthur and his colleagues brought to the public's attention, Sloan was a man of poor education. According to Bird, he refused to take money for his mediumship, earning his living as a labourer. Prior to the London seance, Conan Doyle had visited Glasgow on several occasions where he had been impressed by the medium's powers. Sloan finally moved to London after a rift with his wife and employment was found for him in a London garage where the work was physically exhausting.
According to Bird, Sloan was 'probably incapable, mentally, of conscious fraud on a scale sufficient to account for his manifestations; and... given the capacity, there seemed no earthly way of explaining the motivation of such fraud.'
The conditions under which Sloan operated at the British College were certainly unscientific by today's standards The seance room itself was a long room in which two pillars projected from the side walls, equipped with curtains so that the space between them could be used as a cabinet. In the centre of the room hung a chandelier carrying white bulbs and a single red bub; these being controlled from a switchboard in the corner. Opposite the cabinet space was a fireplace and at one end of the room was a small organ.
As with many of the spiritualist meetings of the period, this particular seance commenced with Sloan performing three hymns on the organ, after which he became increasingly restless, rubbing his hands together and emitting a variety of incoherent noises. After some while his control 'White Feather' took possession of him and began to utter a number of comments and observations in a shrill voice. Bird goes on to describe the events that followed:
- 'White Feather had a rough time with his spirit communicators. They kept crowding one another and usurping one another's place... Frequently Whitey called them down sharply... Every once in a while Whitey would get stranded on a word that one of the sitters or one of the spirits had used... On these occasions he would sometimes apologise for his poor English... After Whitey had been struggling with the situation for some time, voices began to come from the trumpet. At the beginning this had been stood on end, in the centre of the circle. I was pretty sure it was out of the medium's reach, if he remained in his chair. Whether it was picked up or moved about in the production of voices I could not judge... Like everything else, the trumpet voices were weak and indistinct at first, and got better as they proceeded...'
Bird remained objective about the value of such phenomena. The voices certainly came from the trumpet, and appeared to do so while the medium's hands were held ('I had one of the medium's hands while his left-hand neighbour said that she had the other.'). It was virtually impossible for the medium to manipulate the trumpet with his arms or legs he thought. Similarly, the hypothesis of ventriloquism hardly sufficed as an explanation.
Another spirit who called himself 'Cornelius' now came through and made a series of statements regarding Bird's origins and journey to Britain. However, none of it was evidential in a very precise way and much of it could have been explained by some telepathic process. This was followed by the visual phenomena to be encountered at seances of this period: phosphorescent lights which circled the sitters and hung above them and the movement of the trumpet which not only moved about the circle but also caressed each sitter’s face.
The second of these seances with Sloan took place four days later, on Tuesday 27th February in the company of Conan Doyle, Lady Doyle and Mrs. McKenzie (among others). Considerably more singing and playing opened the proceedings, despite the fatigued condition of the medium. Sir Arthur made the following notes:
- I held his (the medium’s) right hand, and Mr. Marshall his left, and this control continued all the time save when the medium walked around the circle, or withdrew his hands momentarily from ours as he sat in his chair. (4)
A number of voices then ensued from the trumpet, Conan Doyle being convinced that the medium's hands were held when the first broke. A recently deceased spiritualist from Glasgow was first, followed by a succession of voices, all very weak. Then the voice of Lily Loder-Symonds, Lady Doyle's friend and companion (herself proficient at automatic writing) came through. Here the control interrupted, describing the spirit as having brown ha and hazel eyes, apt specifications according to Lady Doyle. Then it was the turn of Dr. Joseph Bell, the Edinburgh doctor who had provided the role model for Sherlock Holmes.
According to Bird, 'the message was neither evidential, nor of interest, save to Sir Arthur.' Then a man was seen clairvoyantly by the control The name came through as Robert Leckie, the control attempting to identify him first as Lady Doyle's father, then as her grandfather. The control finally delivered a message to Lady Doyle under her father's correct name of James.
Now came further departed spirits. First was Malcolm Leckie, Lady Doyle's brother, killed in action near Mons. Sir Arthur was impressed with this manifestation, for the voice gave the sight of his death as 'three miles and two furlongs from Mons' a fact which Conan Doyle could not verify, yet felt accorded with Robert's precise and fastidious nature. After this, Oscar Hornung put in an 'appearance', telling Sir Arthur that he would meet considerable opposition during his forthcoming American tour. Finally Ellis Powell, a deceased spiritualist communicated his presence, uttering the words: 'No artist has ever pated, no poet ever imagined, the beauty of the land wherein we dwell.'
What did Conan Doyle make of these initial sittings ? Although he may have been eager to impress his American visitor, there is no doubt that he remained reasonably objective throughout the proceedings. According to Bird, Sir Arthur granted without reservation that there was no direct evidence; and his acceptance of Sloan's worth was based on general grounds:
- He has what he considers ample evidence, proving rigorously and scientifically that the dead live and communicate. He does not, therefore, feel called upon to question any particular message, any more than, on handling a copper wire and getting a sharp tingling sensation, I should feel inclined to question that there was really an electric current on the wire, rather than a cleverly concealed pin. (5)
Due regard should here be given to Conan Doyle's approach to the scientific
orthodoxy of the period, which he regarded as unduly dismissive of psychic Phenomena. He relied greatly on intuition and belief: without these, it was not Possible to gain proof of the existence of the hereafter. A receptive mind and empathetic nature were absolutely vital prerequisites if the medium was to maintain his or her power.
One should also remember that Conan Doyle had moved from a position of agnosticism, following his refutation of Catholicism, to one of a man convinced of the spiritual dimension of life. The new orthodoxy which he proposed was based not so much on scientific demonstration as on an intense intuition and faith. Hence his reticence to demonstrate the exact nature of what constituted 'scientific proof' of the spirit world.
In the days that followed, Bird was to gain an even clearer picture of Conan Doyle's involvement with the leading mediums of his time and his overview of the spiritualist philosophy.
Part Two: Evenings in the Suburbs [1]
After the second of the seances which took place at The British College of Psychic Science on 27 February 1922, J. Malcolm Bird, the associate editor of The Scientific American, arranged with Hewat McKenzie, the president of the College, to sit with Mrs. Osborne Leonard, one of the most famous clairvoyants of the period. Bird was impressed by Mrs. Leonard's control, and East Indian girl by the name of Feda, who claimed to have been married at an early age to an Indian rajah and to have died in childbirth at the age of 13. The spirits who came to Mrs. Leonard's control did not do so directly but, using the medium’s vocal cords, spoke through Feda herself in a shrill, high-pitched voice. Although Conan Doyle remained convinced of Mrs. Leonard's genuine ability to contact the dead, Bird was less convinced. He was even less convinced by Feda's commentary, which appeared to him to be confused and rambling:
- Feda talked like a streak of lightning for about two hours, and I kept up with her only at the expense of the legibility of my notes. She took her communicators in turn, describing their appearance in more or less detail — far too great intelligence, in fact, for her years; then delivering her messages and finally Passing on to the next applicant. Now and again there was fumbling with this procedure, so that I was uncertain just what Feda was trying to do. It was not always clear, for instance, which of the two spirits she was quoting, or to which some reference in the message was intended to apply...
Although Feda strove to satisfy Bird by bringing in a number of his deceased relatives, the details were invariably incorrect or misplaced in terms of chronology. He concluded that Feda was merely the medium's subconsciousness, or perhaps a dual personality, "feeding out a complex web woven of elements which the medium has taken through the telepathic faculty."
Following the Leonard sitting, Bird was invited to Sir Arthur's home at Crowborough where he was entertained by the Doyle family. Bird was suitably impressed by the Doyle collection of spiritualist books and artefacts which the author had amassed over the last decade and talked in great depth about the powers of Mrs. Leonard, whom Conan Doyle regarded as a gifted pioneer in her field. Conan Doyle Suggested to Bird that he join a private seance group which had been sitting regularly every week for the last seven years. Sensitive to the attentions of the press, Conan Doyle conducted the majority of his psychic work in private and it was only on rare Occasions that he made public announcements about the mediums whom he consulted.
The rendezvous on this occasion was the upstairs of a small grocery store on the outskirts of London. As Bird recalled, of the thirteen sitters, one sat outside the circle at the piano in the far corner of the room, whilst the other twelve joined hands on the table itself. Bird's suspicions were immediately alerted by the fact that the proprietor insisted that two of the "regulars" had to adopt fixed places at the table, whilst two others had to be at the other end, since this was "necessary for the proper working of the psychic circuit." Then, as soon as the room was made dark, the control demanded that Conan Doyle change his seat. Bird looked about him, his eyes quickly adjusting themselves to the darkness:
- There was a most amazing array of apparatus scattered about (he recalls), and clearly we were to have a noisy evening. Two tin-horn trumpets, smaller than one usually meets at a seance, and in a Single piece rather than collapsible, since they never had to be packed for travel; a small and a large bell of the clapper type that is rung by shaking in the hand; a mandolin; a drum, one head being of the usual membrane and the other of tin; drumsticks; a good-sized wooden mallet; a rather large four-legged stool; a wooden whistle of extraordinary size, with a pea inside to make the noise; a thick pad of paper with a couple of prodigious pencils; ... an electric lamp assembled with its battery in a small wooden case, and with a piece of red felt stretched over its eye; a small slate, phosphorescent — painted on one side — that was all on the table...
As if this was insufficient to the medium's cause, underneath, on the floor, was a music box, whilst suspended in a loose loop from the table leg to a staple on the underside of the table-top was a strip of leather carrying a string of sleigh-bells.
After the singing of two verses of 'Onward Christian Soldiers', the hymn books were collected and a candle then lit and placed on a saucer on the table. More hymns followed at intervals. Little happened save for a few raps and the sound of a shrill, piping voice which purported to be Iris, the chief control. Sir Arthur immediately identified her as a negress — an identification which proved to be wrong. The control talked fast and freely, a fact which Sir Arthur maintained to the assembled company could "hardly have been consciously maintained by a human voice for the necessary time." At length Iris demanded that the company sit in complete darkness and the candle was then extinguished. Bird goes on to describe how:
- Every sound that could conceivably be produced on the instruments I have catalogued, we had, and had repeatedly throughout the sitting; and always the effort seemed to be to make just a little bit more of an infernal racket with a given tool than one would have supposed the tool to be capable of... the most ear-splitting were when an effort was made to throw the music-box through the floor, when the stool was lifted and banged violently upon the table-top, and when Iris put forth her best on the whistle. The entire evening was one prolonged six-ring circus.
Apart from Iris, there were two other entities who announced themselves to the company, John, the rapper and Bell, a violent and noisy spirit. When questioned by Conan Doyle, John claimed that he was John King, otherwise known as the pirate, Morgan, who later became Governor of Jamaica. He also claimed to be the father of Katie King, Crooke's some-time phantom friend. (In fact this was a common claim in the seances of the period. Bearing in mind that Morgan was born in 1688, this would make the claim patently absurd.) Bell spoke now and again, but derived most pleasure from beating the drum with considerable force and raining fearful blows on the table with a mallet. Iris wrote messages on the pad provided, one for Bird and one for Conan Doyle. The message to Bird ran as follows:
- Dere Mr Bird, me is very pleased to meet you here tonight. Me thought you would like a few words from me — Iris.
Sir Arthur's letter was apparently similarly inane in terms of content.
Later in the seance the request was made that Iris should materialise part of herself. Materialisations were considered among spiritualists of the period to be the most convincing of all spirit manifestations which is one reason why so many turned out to be fraudulent. Iris agreed to show her hands and after a short wait a slate was held up vertically, a hand being visible in silhouette form against a phosphorescent surface. Bird observed that the fingers of the hand seemed "altogether too thin and small for a human hand, and they were ill-shaped into the bargain." Iris then announced that she intended to make contact with Bird's and Conan Doyle's hands. Here Bird was most critical in his analysis of what took place:
- Presently Sir Arthur felt the touch of a finger-end upon the back of his hand; then it came to me in the same way. Here his observations and mine were not in agreement. He found the finger firm, but soft and velvety. If we were both touched by the same object, it seemed to me that this verdict must be the result of auto-suggestion built upon the expectation of a child's finger; the contact that I got impressed me as quite coarse and hard. Sir Arthur also got more of an impression of smallness and delicacy than I did, especially in the case of the fingernail, which we both felt distinctly...It seems, as a matter of fact, that the divergent observations might best be explained on the supposition that we were both touched by a neighbour — but by different neighbours.
It is very evident from reading this account that Conan Doyle, having been thoroughly convinced of the rationale of spiritualism, was only too willing to convince himself of the credibility of the phenomenon, whilst Bird has his reservations.
After the manifestation of the hand, there followed a circular tour of the phosphorescent slate, minus the hand. The smaller of the two bells also made the tour, the inside glowing as it made its way between the sitters. Then the two circulated together, though this time the bell was silent, suggesting to Bird that it was held by the clapper.
The climax of the seance brought matters to an end. Bird describes in his account how a circular piece of wood with a bevelled edge had been cut into the centre of the table. Onto this edge a small hole of approximately a quarter of an inch in diameter had been drilled into the table top and from the edge of the panel a pin projected, fitting the hole. This meant that a random blow from beneath the table would not be sufficient to displace the plate and that the pin would hold it fast. Attached to the underside of the table around the edge of the gap was a bag and in its bottom a large bell with a clapper.
As the company sat in silence with the gaslight turned up, the plate was repeatedly jerked upwards out of the hole. This continued for about five minutes, the movement of the plate decreasing all the time until finally it ceased.
Bird remained circumspect about the affair although he does not record whether Conan Doyle joined him in this view. He regarded it as entirely possible that a number of the sitters had colluded with each other in order to produce the various manifestations. In particular he suspected a sitter immediately to the right of Sir Arthur. He went on to observe:
- Throughout the time when the plate was in action, she sat in a curious sideways position, as though trying to extend her foot further out under the table than her reach could comfortably permit. At the same time her body was bent slightly forward, while her head and eyes behaved as though she were trying to peer surreptitiously under the table. I was entirely satisfied that she was either implicated in the motion of the plate, or trying to see for herself what was going on beneath the table. Either hypothesis would have met her position and actions; between the two I was unable to choose...
Bird was nevertheless prepared to concede that both fraudulent and genuine phenomena might occur at the same seance. However, where to draw the line was certainly impossible under the type of conditions which prevailed.
Bird's dissatisfaction with seance conditions was something Conan Doyle felt unable to share. He believed, as did many orthodox spiritualists of the period, that the medium should be allowed a certain amount of leeway and that the seance room should not be confused with the scientific laboratory. His strong reaction against the materialistic approach which had formed so great a part of his medical training is here clearly in evidence. On the other hand, he was quite ready to accept that mediums could produce fraudulent effects when their powers began to fail them. After all, he had been a member of the Society for Psychical Research for many years and had followed the reports submitted to that Society which dealt with the famous Italian medium Eusapia Palladino — a medium whose strong presence and ingenious ways helped fool a number of expert psychic researchers.
Although the "seance in the suburbs" had not proved to be an unmitigated success and the results were clearly variable, Sir Arthur was keen to impress the young reporter with his next psychic subject — the revered Welsh medium, Evan Powell.
Part Three: The Medium and The Message
If there was one thing which impressed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, then it was sincerity of purpose. In his dealings with a variety of mediums there is no doubt that the question of their sincerity loomed large in his estimation of their abilities. The results of the British College seances held with Mrs. Leonard in the February of 1922 had proved to A.C.D., beyond all doubt, that there were many genuine mediums whose powers were not being taken seriously by the scientific establishment. In fact, a long while before the Doyle seances. the S.P.R. had tested Mrs. Leonard under rigorous conditions. In 1918, over a period of three months, she had offered them no less than 73 sittings. and the report compiled by Mrs. W.H. Salter during this period confirms that the sitters generally agreed that good evidence of a surviving personality had been obtained and that the complete trustworthiness of the medium was without question.
The Lodge seances held during the autumn of 1915, and widely reported in the psychic press of the time, had already turned Mrs. Leonard into an instant celebrity. so that by the time A.C.D. and Bird sat with her, we must assume a certain amount of credibility had crept in. Nevertheless Bird, for his part, remained objective about the powers that were being demonstrated, while A.C.D. was prepared to be less circumspect (if the correspondence between Lodge and Conan Doyle during this period is to be believed).
At the beginning of March, A.C.D. contacted Bird and asked if he would be interested in attending a seance at short notice with the Welsh medium, Evan Powell. Powell had come up from Wales to give a Sunday seance at Crowborough, mainly for the benefit of an Episcopalian clergyman who wished to look at the phenomena for himself before being convinced of the "truth" of spiritualism.
Born at Paignton in South Devon in 1881, Powell was originally a coal miner brought up in South Wales who later invested money in a small business of his own. A non-professional medium, A.C.D. had encountered him some years before and had been impressed by his amenable nature and honest approach.
A.C.D. had reason to be grateful to Powell. On 7 September he had broken through the barrier of death and was able to contact his son Kingsley. Powell had travelled to Portsmouth from Merthyr Tydfil where he attended a meeting addressed by the author. What really impressed A.C.D. about Powell was that he accepted no pay for his services and therefore his powers were "free from that deterioration which comes from overstrain."
After the conclusion of the lecture, Powell agreed to return to Sir Arthur's hotel room and there gave him a sitting. The other persons present at this seance were Lady Conan Doyle, Frank Blake, President of the Southern Counties Spiritualist Union, Mr. and Mrs. MacFarlane, leaders of the Portsmouth branch, and Harry Engholm, a cinema producer — all present sympathetic to the cause of spiritualism.
Powell would insist on being tied securely to a chair before each seance commenced and of having the knots tested by each of his sitters. His chief control was a North American Indian called Black Hawk. and the phenomena witnessed by observers included movements of objects. psychic lights and direct voice phenomena.
During the 1919 seance, Powell's Indian control announced that "Leely is here" and that "Leely wishes to speak to the Lady of the Wigwam", a reference, so the Doyles believed, to Lily Loder-Symonds. the departed friend of Lady Conan Doyle. A minute later came the excited voice: "Jean, Jean, I am here." Lady Conan Doyle, now convinced that she was talking to Lily directly, exchanged words of affection. Then came silence. The lights were turned on and the spiritualists discovered that an enormous pedestal. weighing approximately 50 pounds, had been shifted from the corner and placed in the middle of the semi-circle.
A.C.D. later recorded:
- Then came what to me was the supreme moment of mv spiritual experience. It is almost too sacred for full description, and vet I feel that God sends such gifts that we may share them with others. There came a voice in the darkness, a whispered voice, saving "Jean, it is I." My wife felt a hand upon her head, and cried, "It is Kingsley." I heard the word "Father." I said "Dear boy is that you?". I then had a sense of a face very near my own, and of breathing.
Sadly for Bird, he was out of London at the weekend of Powell's seance so he missed it. However, the following day (a Monday), both men proceeded to the British College of Psychic Science in order to observe proceedings at 4pm.
Powell, who had just recovered from a sleep, explained to Bird that he had already known of the American's visit, and that he was prepared to force Bird to take certain necessary precautions so that fraud was not a charge which could be raised against him.
Powell then stripped and, standing only in pants and shirt, insisted that Bird and A.C.D. go through his pockets. He then got dressed again and, accompanied by his two guards, went to the washroom at the College where he washed his hands in hot water in front of them to convince them that they had no luminous substance on them.
He then demanded to be tied up, and it was decided that Bird and the clergyman who had witnessed the Sunday seance should do this. The centre of the rope was looped and knotted about a central pillar close to the floor and, of the two ends remaining, one was brought to each side and passed round the leg and rung of the chair and again knotted. The medium then sat down; both ends of the rope were brought round the uprights of the chairback and the medium's chest, having been knotted before and after this. The remainder of the rope was then passed three times round the medium's upper arm and the upper part of the chair, whilst the lower arm was roped in to the lower, horizontal section of the chair arm. More trussing ensued, trapping the medium's ankles and, finally, the last knot was sealed with wax. In his detailed account of the proceedings, Bird goes on to point out:
- As a matter of fact, the problem of escape was still further complicated. Everybody knows that, if a knot be tied tightly in ordinary sewing thread, the fineness of the thread prevents it being untied in most cases; it has usually to be cut or broken, or if actually untied, this is done with the utmost difficulty. So, as a final step in tying up the medium, a spool of thread was produced, and his thumbs tied together as they sat, motionless in the rope tie, on his either knee. The thread was passed about the base of his thumb, so tightly as almost to cut the skin, and each thumb was tied by means of a knot drawn as tight as possible, leaving eleven inches of the thread extending across his lap from thumb to thumb, quite taut.
With these elaborate precautions and with the medium securely roped to his chair now fully dressed, a circle was formed. Bird sat at Powell's right and the clergyman to his left. At this point, Powell asked everyone to join hands except for Bird and the clergyman, and everyone was cautioned not to cry out or jump up or to break the circle of hands. Nor was anyone to cross their legs. This at once made Bird suspicious since it is far easier to locate all the feet and legs when the medium can see them spaced out around the table and he can thus move freely between them.
Powell was a cabinet medium, not by sitting in the cabinet itself, but in front of it with the curtains drawn at the sides and in the front. Inside the cabinet on this occasion stood a circular-topped table and on the table were two sets of sleighbells, a trumpet and a vase of cut flowers.
The lights having been extinguished, the medium went quickly into a deep trance whilst the sitters sang their way through a selection of hymns, minus the music. In no time at all Black Hawk, the control, manifested himself, Bird describing his voice as at first "thin and piping" and later on "deep enough for a normal male voice." The control insisted on being introduced to everyone formally, referring to A.C.D. as "the Big chief". The introductions having been dispensed with, he got down to the business and asked for complete darkness. A recently deceased parishioner came in and asked the minister to do something about sending a letter to the decedent's son in Liverpool. Later in the evening, a person calling himself Wallie spoke loudly in Bird's ear claiming that he had once known him. However, Bird knew nothing about the spirit, and Wallie went away in a huff. Overall, Bird was unimpressed by such attempts at communication.
However, when it came to the physical manifestations, this was altogether a different matter. First the sleigh bells rang at their stand in the cabinet. Then they came out of the cabinet and rang all over the room. For some while, only one set of bells rang; then ultimately, the second set rang; finally, both sets rang simultaneously from both sides of the room. Next came the flowers. They were withdrawn from the vase and passed round the circle in the darkness. The wet stem ends trailed round Bird's face and gave him a shock, and they carried on in this way, caressing peoples' faces and hands. Then, finally, the bouquet was broken up and the stems handed to the female members of the company. Immediately after this, the vase itself was passed round the circle, each sitter being sprayed with water. The vase was found at the end of the sitting, on the floor between two chairs.
As the seance progressed, the minister began to observe that the curtain in front of the cabinet was billowing out over him. Whenever this happened, he had the clear impression that somebody or something was passing him en route to or from the cabinet. This could well have been Powell himself, of course, or, if A.C.D. is to be believed, an "ectoplasmic extrusion" of some kind. Eventually, the Reverend announced even greater activity, then, lo and behold, out came the table itself, clearing the shoulders of the medium and the clergyman. One leg was presented to the Reverend's knee. then the table came down into the middle of the circle with a bang.
The minister suspected that this whole thing had been accomplished by human agency and wanted to know if the table might be put back as a demonstration of the power of the spirits. However, the ladies present dissented at this and the lights were subsequently put on.
Bird remained impressed by the phenomena he witnessed, despite his innate scepticism. At one point, the trumpet placed itself between Bird and his neighbour, speaking in a deep bass voice, then it shifted to a point between A.C.D.'s sister-in-law and her neighbour and, for a long while sang bass and alto on alternate notes. On several occasions, Bird was slapped and patted on his wrist, arm, shoulder or back by a "materialised hand", and he was careful to note that, at no time, could the medium have reached with his right arm free, and at no time did the "hand" foul the back of his chair.
Towards the end of the seance, the medium concentrated his energies on producing "psychic lights" and the control's "sweethearts", as he called them, were sent back into the cabinet to summon up more power. Eventually, they got strong enough for everyone to see the same lights. The ones seen by Bird he describes as "luminous balls" which passed across the circle in a slow procession. These went to the ceiling and wove their way between the legs of the sitters. Finally Black Hawk bade everyone goodnight, the medium came out of his trance and the thread joining his thumbs was then examined.
As one of the ladies was on her way to turn on the red light, Black Hawk's voice was heard again, ordering her to wait. He then addressed Bird, asking him to locate the medium's right thumb. Having done this, he was instructed to pull on the thumb to assure himself that the thread was intact. Then he was told to pull harder and break the thread. The pull was momentarily resisted, then the thread gave. However, as Bird was in the act of reassuring the group that he had broken the thread, it dawned on him that he had heard no clean snap and that the sensation he had felt had been too soft. When light was made available, he found that the thread was broken an inch from the knot at the base of the medium's left thumb — the one remote from him.
Was Bird the victim of trickery? He could not be absolutely sure. It would have been easy enough to conceal fresh thread and there was no search of the medium after the seance had concluded. In the full light of the room, Bird now examined the medium's bonds with A.C.D., and was satisfied that they had not been disturbed. The knot carrying the seal was intact and, if Powell had escaped, he must have done so by slipping the ropes rather than by untying them.
Reading Bird's account today, one is struck by the fairness and impartiality of the man. His approach was a scientific as was humanly possible, bearing in mind the limited circumstances. As regards Powell, he entertained a reasonable measure of doubt — a doubt that was not shared by A.C.D., who believed he had undeniable proof offered to him by Powell of the survival of his nearest and dearest after death. Was Powell a consummate trickster? It is at least possible if one bears in mind some of the extraordinary tricks performed by the late Harry Houdini. It must be remembered that the assembled company was sympathetic to the medium and that the room was in complete darkness for much of the time. It might well have been possible for Powell to have smuggled in an accomplice prior to the seance commencing. We shall never really know, and some might ask does it really matter? The answer, I believe, is that it did and that it still does. For upon such threads hangs the reputation of someone who many of us believe to have been a great writer. Perhaps, as some claim, he was simply credulous when it came to matters psychic; too trusting, perhaps, in human nature to allow himself to see the ugly reality. Yet it is one thing to suspect trickery, but another thing to prove it — as Bird subsequently discovered.
Part Four: In the Dark Room
One of the most publicized aspects of Conan Doyle's adventures in the spirit world concerned his relations with the psychic photographer, William Hope, the other being the matter of the Cottingley Fairies, a case which has already formed the basis of three full length books (the most comprehensive written by Joe Cooper) and several magazine articles.
In the earlier part of this century, photography was a popular and much clumsier business than it is today. Although the box camera was popular and widespread in its use, roll film did not become standardised until a much later date and many cameras relied on plates. This gave the unscrupulous plenty of opportunity to hoodwink the unsuspecting client in search of a spirit photograph of their long dead relative and there was a widespread industry in fakery to be found in the quiet suburbs of London, Glasgow, Manchester and other large cities.
Spirit photography can be traced almost to the inception of the camera. It was 'discovered' in 1861 by an American engraver, William Mumler, who subsequently made a profitable trade from his rather crude prints. Mumler's trick was to superimpose an image of one of his many sitters onto a glass plate. The 'spirits' would not be known to the customer since they had been taken probably months before. So successful was he that he gave up his trade as a master engraver and concentrated solely on spirit photography. When, at last, it was realised that he had superimposed the images of living men and women there ensued a scandal and he was finally arrested on the orders of the Mayor of New York on an accusation of fraud. Since he was well represented at the trial by a number of professional photographers, the case was not proven and he was released.
The fashion soon spread to England and it was not long before a number of mediums and clairvoyants took up the trade. Viewing the material today (for example in the standard work on the subject, James Coates' Photographing The Invisible) one is amazed at the crudity of the results. It is clear that many of the photographs have been carefully touched up and when examined with a lens the dot matrix of newspaper print can, in some cases, be clearly seen. Yet we must remember that, in an age without film and television, the invention of the camera must have appeared to the gullible as something short of a miracle and a spirit photograph especially so.
William Hope (1863-1933) was, perhaps, Britain's best known photographer of the spirit world in the earlier part of this century. A carpenter from Crewe, his psychic power was discovered by accident in 1905 when he and a comrade photographed each other on a Saturday afternoon. The plate which Hope exposed showed an extra figure, a transparent woman, behind whom the brick wall was visible. This was the sister of Hope's friend who had been dead for many years. With the help of Mr Buxton, an organist at the Spiritualist Hall at Crewe, a circle of six friends was formed, calling themselves The Crewe Circle', whose aim was to specialise in the production of spirit photographs. For fear of being accused by fellow Catholics of Satanism, the circle destroyed their stock of original negatives until they managed to enlist the services of Archdeacon Colley. Colley tested Hope's powers, was suitably impressed, and gave Hope his first stand camera which Hope used for many years as the mainspring of his operations.
The first controversy regarding Hope occurred in 1908 in connection with the Archdeacon's first visit to Hope's studio. Colley recognised his mother in the psychic extra Hope obtained on the plate. Hope disagreed, claiming it to be more like a picture he had copied two years earlier and he informed Colley of his error. Colley advertised in the Leamington Spa newspaper, asking all who had known his mother to come forward and testify. Eighteen people subsequently did so and Hope relented. According to Colley, his mother had never been photographed and this fact clearly added 'authenticity' to Hope's work.
Arrangements had been made by ACD to sit with William Hope at the British College of Psychic Science on Tuesday March 13th, 1922, the eve of his departure to the Continent. Hope was at this time something of a national celebrity among spiritualists and when he visited the College special quarters were reserved for him, including two small rooms on the top floor of the premises, one serving as a studio and the other as a dark-room.
One should remember that, at this time, the notorious business of Hope's exposure by the late Harry Price, psychic investigator and 'ghostbuster', had already occurred, yet the furore that was to follow was not revealed to the world at large until the summer of 1922. When it was, Hope's reputation was severely threatened, although ACD and others did their best to ward off the barbs and arrows.
ACD had first made the acquaintance of Hope in the summer of 1919 when he visited Crewe in the hope that he might obtain evidence of the survival of his son who had died the year before. He took his own plates with him and submitted them to Hope. After a short religious service, at which Hope and Mrs Buxton were present, Hope and ACD went into the dark-room where ACD opened the packet of plates, put two in the carrier and marked them. The carrier was then taken back into the room and Hope inserted it into the camera. The exposure having been made, Doyle took the carrier back into the dark-room where he took out the plates, developed them and fixed them. ACD was impressed by what he saw: a partial materialisation of the hair and forehead of a young man and an inscription scrawled across the plate which read: 'Well done, friend Doyle, I welcome you to Crewe. Greetings to all. T. Colley.' The reason ACD was so impressed, it seems, is that by this time Archdeacon Colley had died and yet the handwriting was identical with specimens taken from life.
The following day, ACD returned to the house and this time assented to use Hope's own plates. This immediately produced a photograph of a young man but, as Doyle commented in his The Case For Spirit Photography, 'it was not a good likeness of my son, though it resembled him as he was some eight years before his death ... On examination with a lens it was noticeable that the countenance was pitted with fine dots, as in the case of process printing... 'He then went on to comment somewhat ingenuously, 'One can only suppose that it is in some way connected with the psychic process...'
The third result really impressed Doyle. Hope claimed to get images without the use of a camera, a statement which sounded incredible to Doyle. Hope went into a trance, having first asked Doyle to mark a plate and put it into the carrier. At the end of a minute Hope gave a shudder and declared that he had obtained a result. When the plate had been put into the developer, Doyle observed a disc the size of a shilling emerging in the centre and under the face was a disc with two fingers pointing to it. The disc was evidently a brooch and the face, on examination, proved to be that of Doyle's eldest sister, who had died thirty years previously. The brooch, Doyle's other sisters confirmed, had been in the possession of the departed sister.
Doyle regarded the three photographs as 'significant' and in his defence of Hope went on to quote other, second-hand accounts in his support of the photographer. Reading Doyle's book today, one is struck by the unscientific and credulous reaction of a man who had made photography a hobby and who had even contributed to the literature of the subject in a small way. There had been no control by an independent party of Hope's methods, and Doyle had allowed Hope to use his own plates. Moreover, one of the photographs clearly showed evidence of the tell-tale pinpricks. Hope was certainly thorough in gaining photographs from the friends and relatives of his clients, but he was not the most subtle of fraudsters. How then had Doyle allowed himself to be deceived? One can only imagine that his recent bereavement had clouded his usual fine judgement, for he was not always so unperceptive when dealing with mediums.
The scandal that arose in the May of 1922 will be dealt with later. For now we shall examine Malcolm Bird's own appraisal of Hope which, if nothing else, remained objective and open-minded.
At first glance, the set up at the British College seemed reasonable and fraud-proof to Bird. The only entrance to the suite was through the studio, a room with only one window opening out of doors. This was barely furnished with a table, a few chairs and an old, battered camera. The dark-room itself was even more impoverished, possessing a single large wash basin, three developing trays, jars of chemicals and a red lamp on either side of the room, a situation that well fitted ACD's remark about Hope that he was 'unquestionably the worst professional photographer... in the world."
On the morning of the sitting, Bird arrived with his own packet of rapid quarter plates which he kept in his pocket until he reached the seance room. Present at the sitting were ACD, Bird and two friends of the Doyles plus the two mediums, Hope and Buxton six in all. Doyle himself was much perturbed by the muggy weather that pertained since, apparently, this often interfered with the exercise of mediumistic powers.
The premises were examined by the guests and then Bird examined Hope's camera for signs of trickery. He found nothing save a pin-hole in the bellows and the curious fact that Hope used neither shutter nor lens cap, but made his exposures by covering and uncovering the camera with a black cloth — a suspect technique if ever there was one, since items could be concealed beneath the cloth.
The three plate holders were handed to Bird (though he does not say by whom) and he was asked to select one. This he examined with great care and then placed it in his pocket. The door was locked and the six sitters drew up to the table, joining hands and singing hymns. At last, Mrs Buxton took the package in her hands, Hope added his to the outside of hers, and the rest of the company followed suit. This pose was held for several minutes while Mrs Buxton influenced' the plates. Bird then reclaimed the plates and pocketed them before he and Hope adjourned to the dark-room. At this point, ACD announced enthusiastically that they were sure to produce a result of some significance.
In the dark-room, Bird observed that Hope did not once touch the plates, an indication perhaps that the plates had already been tampered with during the seance. Bird took the package from his pocket and broke the wrappings. However, before he got past the outer wrapper, Hope suddenly intervened and reminded him that the plates were in pairs, hinged together by a flap of the emulsion: Bird should decide which ones he should use, he suggested. As Bird correctly pointed out, this enabled Hope to know which plates to thus expose while waiting until Bird had got them in his hands en route to the holder. Bird chose the bottom plate of the first pair and the top plate of the second pair. Bird then placed the plates on the table and traced his name with the blunt end of a pencil. He then rewrapped the remaining ten plates and replaced them in his pocket. Only when he had the plates out of sight did he then get the plateholder out of his other pocket. There was a glass slide outside of each plate and these Bird signed to ensure against substitution. Assembling plates, glass slides and dark slides and latching the holder, he then put the item into his pocket.
ACD and Bird sat together for the first exposure and Bird sat alone for the second. Hope focussed the camera on the two empty chairs, shifted the hood to the front of the camera while Bird placed the holder in its seat and removed the dark slide. Bird returned to his seat while Hope raised the hood, held it clear of the camera for fifteen seconds and then dropped it back into place. During this time, he and Mrs Buxton stood on either side of the camera and slightly behind it, with hands joined above it. The exposure then terminated, Bird rose to replace the dark slide and remove the plateholder.
Focussing was then accomplished while Bird stood beside the camera with the plateholder in his hand. He glanced through the camera and then replaced the plateholder in its grooves. The exposure was then made as before. Finally Hope accompanied Bird to the dark-room.
Bird at this point became suspicious. Why did Hope need to be there? Why couldn't he stay outside during loading and development? Hope got his beakers down and his two jars, mixing his developer. He was, it seems, quite ready before Bird was ready with the plates. Bird managed to knock over the developer so that Hope was distracted and had to mix some more. By the time Hope was again ready, Bird had his plates out of the holder and was waiting for the developing tray. The latter he had scratched with his thumb nail so that it would show up if there were an extraneous image on it. Bird poured the contents of the beaker into the tray and began to rock the plates. The images came out slowly but, in a few minutes, it became obvious that the plate with the single portrait on it was going to show some extras. This is significant for, as every photographer knows, when images are formed independently on a plate, they will emerge in the developer at different times, suggesting superimposition.
Development completed, the negatives were fixed and a report made to ACD and the others in the studio. However, the results were not very clear and it was arranged that prints would be made the next day and that they should go to ACD, since Bird was due to be on board the Olympic where they would be handed to him in the morning. It was also agreed that Bird should have the negative, though this was not customary with Hope, it seemed. The result was nonconclusive, although there was evidence of an extra, somewhat indistinct.
ACD's friends next sat twice, using plates from the second four of Bird's extraneous marks of any package. They produced neither extras nor description. Bird was of the opinion that Hope was a fraud but that he had been unable to substitute the plates because of Bird's vigilance. The extra image, he maintained, could be obtained by slipping a thin celluloid transparency, showing the face clear on a slightly opaque ground, into the camera with the plateholder immediately in front of the camera. He also noted that:
1. Hope wore a coat considerably too large for him with voluminous sleeves and large pockets — ideal for concealment.
2. He did not use a lens cap or a shutter but a dark cloth and this hung down in front of the camera so as to hide part of Hope's body.
3. At one point, both Mrs Buxton and Hope had their hands in front of the camera. If the transparency were in front of the plateholder, it would have been easy to superimpose the image of the extra.
4. The use of a glass screen over each plate provided the perfect opportunity for an additional image to be added, perhaps stencilled onto the glass screen. Such an image could be radioactive.
5. It would also be possible for Mrs Buxton to have a radioactive chemical painted on her hand. This could be transferred to the plate while she was touching the wrappers.
It is possible that ACD had serious misgivings about Hope, despite his spirited defence of the man, for Bird notes that Doyle had a lantern slide prepared, made from a print from the original negative. From this slide a new glass negative was then made by photography with transmitted light and an examination of the prints made from this showed clear marks of a newspaper half-tone, the grain being the predominant feature. The print was examined by Bird and ACD with a high-powered lens and the results confirmed.
Harry Price recalls in his memoirs Leaves From A Psychist's Casebook that his test case with Hope was conducted at the British College on February 24th, 1922. This means, of course, that Doyle would already have known of the impending embarrassment, but it is quite likely that he kept the details from Bird or, at least, played down the affair.
The College charged Price two guineas for the sitting and agreed to use Price's own plates. Price wanted to make sure that his plates were not changed during the experiment and so had the Imperial Dry Plate Co. x-ray a portion of their trade mark on the corner of each plate. He also took a metal thumb-stall along with him, studded with three needle points to indelibly mark Hope's slides. After a short religious service, Hope and Price adjourned to the dark-room where Price examined the dark slide and was asked to open a packet of plates. He did so, loaded two in the slide and, in replacing the wrappers, Hope then calmly took his dark slide out of Price's hand. In the darkness of the room, Price watched as Hope put the dark slide in his left pocket and then, apparently, took it away again. Price now knew that the slide had been switched.
The two men trooped back to the studio and, on examining the slide, Price found that the twelve puncture marks had disappeared, as he had suspected they would. Hope took two pictures of Price and, when developed, there appeared a beautiful female extra, swathed in cheesecloth. However, on neither plate was there the slightest trace of the x-rayed trade mark.
Price published his report Cold Light on Spiritualistic Phenomena and there ensued a tremendous furore. Doyle could not accept that Hope was capable of fraud, even though a most detailed account of the affair appeared in the pages of the Journal of the Society For Psychical Research in May 1922, condemning Hope. ACD did not give up. He wrote reams of letters to Hope, cajoling him. In October 1922 he wrote: I am sure your personal conduct was quite honourable and I say so...' and he said that he resented his mediums being ridiculed in public 'by ignorant men like McCabe.' Nearly two and a half years after this, he was still attempting to win Price round. On July 19th, 1924 he wrote asking whether a way could not be found by which the Hope controversy could be settled 'in some honourable fashion.' However, in the same letter, Doyle admitted that one day when examining Hope's collection of dark slides, he came across the identical one bearing Price's puncture marks. However, honour had to be satisfied. Would Price not do the honourable thing and atone for the wrong' he had done by withdrawing any imputations upon Hope's honour?' In September he wrote again saying that something had to be done to 'assuage Hope's wounded feelings.' Finally, in 1928, he wrote to Price saying that he had 'put a slur upon Hope's twenty years of splendid work.'
Sadly for ACD, time proved otherwise. Three years after Doyle's death, Fred Barlow, who had written part of the spirited defence of Hope in Doyle's The Case For Spirit Photography, and Major W Rampling-Rose, two leading figures in the SPR, carried out a detailed investigation of Hope's affairs. Their report was damning in the extreme. Read at a private meeting of the SPR on 30 November 1932, and subsequently published in their Journal (Vol. 41, pp. 121-138), they found Hope guilty of gross misdemeanours. Eleven years after the Price/Hope affair, the widow of the proprietor of the College admitted (Light, June 2nd, 1933, p.342) that, after Price's seance, her husband, McKenzie, went through Hope's luggage and found in a suitcase a flash lamp with a bulb attachment, some cut-out photographic heads and some hairs.'
The question remains: did McKenzie tell ACD this information and, if so, would it have made any difference to the way in which Hope was treated? Hope had, by this time, become a celebrity and, if his reputation had been shattered, what damage might it have done to the prestigious British College of Psychic Science? Throughout Bird's time at the College, it is clear that Doyle had done his utmost to impress Bird with the methods they employed and, above all, the authenticity of the mediums they used. So Doyle was caught in a difficult situation. If he did know (and there is no reason to suspect that he did) that Hope was a total fraud, he could not very well reveal it to Bird. His best bet was to keep the information to himself. Or was it that there was still a part of him that genuinely believed in the power of this so-called psychic? Elsewhere, Doyle admitted that mediums could be notoriously unreliable, yet he was of the opinion that, nevertheless, their services should still be retained.
Part Five: Voices in the Air
The Crowborough Memorial to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
During his visit to Paris in the March of 1922, J. Malcolm Bird visited Gustave Geley, research officer of the Institut Metaphysique and saw for himself the remarkable series of plaster casts of spirit hands produced by the medium Kluski. Thence he travelled to Berlin where he visited the laboratory of Herr Fritz Grunewald. Here he saw for himself the laboratory with its large number of anatomical instruments used for measuring the responses of mediums. Bird was impressed by the scientific nature of these controls. No one in Britain seemed prepared to devote time and money to the objective monitoring of mediums. In fact it was not until later, under the direction of Harry Price, that scientifically verifiable results were obtained and subsequently published in British psychical journals.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had little time for the Germanic approach and was content to attend seances where the medium in question was given full rein to exhibit his or her powers. He indicated several times in his Spiritualist writings that, since mediums worked by inspiration, the results they produced could not be repeated like those of a scientific experiment. This laissez faire attitude often resulted in scorn being heaped upon his head, but he rode it with equanimity.
When he returned to England, Bird attended a dinner given for Sir Arthur by Charles Allen Munn, at which ACD remarked that during the course of his much publicised tour of the USA he hoped to stop at Toledo for a seance with Miss Ada Bessinet. He thought that if he did this, Miss Bessinet would be willing to accept Bird into the circle of sitters.
Ada Bessinet had already refused to be examined by the committee of the Scientific American, and for a good reason. She was regarded by some as a fake and by others as the genuine article. Known by marriage as Mrs William Wallace Roche, Ada Bessinet had been investigated on a number of occasions. After a formal series of investigations during 1909-1910, conducted by the A.S.P.R., the American version of the S.P.R., Professor Hyslop concluded (Proc. A.S.P.R., Vol. V, 1911) that the medium produced the phenomena herself but while in a hysterical state of secondary personality and without the slightest degree of moral responsibility in her own person for the fraud. These phenomena included psychic lights, direct voices (which sometimes gave an amazing singing and whistling performance), and materialisations through ectoplasmic extrusions.
A different conclusion was arrived at after a six months' engagement at the British College for Psychic Science in 1921. According to J. Hewat McKenzie's report in Psychic Science (April 1922), those actions of the medium which Hyslop attributed to hysteria could be fully accounted for by the actions of spirits. Hereward Carrington, the renowned psychic investigator, claimed that 'My own sittings with. this medium left me entirely unconvinced of their genuineness' (The Story of Psychic Science). However, he admits that he observed curious lights at a seance held in 1922 which, on request, hovered for a few moments over exposed photographic plates and that the plates, when developed, showed unusual markings which could not be explained by artificial means.
Ada Bessinet was undoubtedly a very powerful medium and, in my opinion, many of the effects she produced defy rational dismissal. As with many mediums, however. she may have faked her results on occasions in order to sustain her reputation. In ACD's mind she was a genuine medium and he was impressed by her powers. She had two main controls, both Indians: Pansy, a little girl, and Black Cloud. Usually she sat in the dark, unbound, but during the seance, as a feat of her stock performance, she was often tied by invisible hands to her chair. hands and feet. Sitters were not asked to hold hands but to place them directly on the table in front of them. Her materialisations were usually incomplete and consisted of faces which had a corpse-like appearance, very often bearing a resemblance to her own face. Sometimes she was transported from the room altogether and found in a deep coma in an adjoining room.
ACD had sat with Ada Bessinet on four earlier occasions when she had visited England in 1921. On one occasion he had been greatly impressed by a materialisation of his mother which had occurred at the British College of Psychic Science.
According to ACD, the seance at Toledo was one of the most remarkable experiences he had ever had. The Conan Doyle party consisted of Sir Arthur. Lady Conan Doyle, Captain Wilson, Sir Arthur's secretary, Lee Keedick, the manager of Sir Arthur's tour, and J. Malcolm Bird, the observer.
The seance was held on Thursday 26 April in the dining room of the house of Dr John S. Pyle, at 1064 Prospect Street. Toledo. Dr Pyle was then one of Toledo's leading doctors and had known Ada Bessinet from the age of twelve, so he could hardly claim to be an impartial observer. Other members of the group (apart from the Conan Doyle contingent) included Dr Horace Westwood and Mr W. W. Roche, both active in their defence of the medium. Dr Westwood was the pastor of a Unitarian church in Toledo, whilst Mr Roche was the editor of a local newspaper and an old friend of the medium in fact, as Bird recalls in his memoir of the event, the two intended to be married. The only truly impartial observer, therefore, was Bird himself.
In his memoirs, Bird described Ada Bessinet as a woman of above average height and of a powerful build. Photographs taken at the time would seem to confirm this. In his account of the seance. Bird was careful to observe the layout of the room and the allocation of tasks to the members of the party:
- Miss Bessinet sits only in absolute darkness... The two windows were sealed by means of fitted dark curtains, which were placed close to the glass, outside the conventional dark shades. The kitchen door was light-tight when closed the big rug that carpeted the dining room was taken up bodily... and bung in the [main] doorway... the rug was... adjusted so as to cut off completely the light from the front of the house.
Ada Bessinet insisted not only on absolute darkness during her seances but also on the provision of a solid table, without cracks. In order to achieve this, an extension table was provided, opened as though for the reception of two or three leaves. In fact this operated as if it were two tables. The medium sat at the opening of the table, this arrangement obviously giving her better access to all parts of the table than with a more conventional arrangement.
Music was constant throughout the medium's 'performances', apparently enabling her to keep up the power to the required pitch. This was provided by means of a phonograph, and the records used were the medium's own. Other apparatus used comprised two tambourines, a sectional trumpet of cheap imitation leather, a writing tablet, a pencil, and ten yards of rope.
The operation of the phonograph having been assigned to Mrs Lee, the seance got under way. The sitters were asked to put their hands on the table and to keep them there; then the medium 'went under.' To the question, 'Are you there, Black Cloud?' came the reply, 'Yes' in faint raps. Lights then appeared of considerable range and speed and presently vocal manifestations were noted, chiefly singing and whistling. Bird claimed that these manifestations were the most extraordinary he had ever heard, comprising tenor, bass, and soprano voices. One female voice had a distinctive Irish filt to it, and one male voice a prodigious rich tenor (this belonged to Dan, an American soldier killed in the war). "It would be rash to insist,' observed Bird, that the medium could possibly do it all."
When the singing had subsided, Black Cloud announced that he was going to tie the medium and the ropes were trailed across Bird's hands to demonstrate the legitimacy of the operation. After a good deal of whipping had taken place. Black Cloud verified that he had done what he intended and when the lights came on and the ties were examined. Dr Pyle produced a handkerchief, suggesting that before the medium was untied something should be done with this to prove the authenticity of the experiment. When the lights were once more extinguished a tinkle of a tambourine was heard and Dr Pyle stated that the handkerchief had been brought to him in the tambourine, neatly folded. Before the lights could be raised the handkerchief disappeared, and it was subsequently located tied about the medium's mouth. When examined, the handkerchief was found to be smoothly and neatly folded. In fact, it was so tightly drawn that the flesh of the medium's cheeks folded over its edges. The ends were tied a little to the right of the back of her neck.
Bird claimed that it would have been impossible for Ada to have achieved this difficult feat without the help of a confederate, and that such a person could not have passed Sir Arthur or himself without being sensed.
After the seance had been going for about half an hour a psychic light was produced. A short distance away a vague object appeared, illuminated by the light. Faces then appeared, and Sir Arthur 'made desperate efforts to identify the materializees, asking to have them repeated, again and again. Ultimately he satisfied himself that one was his nephew and another his mother. Bird commented that as he was sitting next to ACD he saw these particular apparitions almost as well as he did; and it was my best judgment that they were not sufficiently clear to be identified at all, save by a liberal contribution of desire and imagination on the part of the sitter. All those [faces] I saw were to my best judgment extremely generalised in appearance." he concluded.
Finally, towards the end of the seance, ACD obtained a written communication alleged to be from his mother. No attempt was made to duplicate her handwriting and the content of the message was in no way evidential. It merely stated that the face which he had thought he recognised as hers was indeed hers in reality. Bird observed that the penmanship was extremely poor', and he was convinced that Ada might well have written the note herself.
Despite Bird's scepticism, the Conan Doyles were delighted with the results they obtained. We are having most marvellous results. ACD exclaimed at one point, and afterwards Lady Conan Doyle claimed of Miss Bessinet. She is simply wonderful. She is such a splendid character that she lends great value to what is obtained through her mediumship.' (Two Worlds, Vol. 35, pp. 1-3).
The evidence remains inconclusive. Could Ada Bessinet have produced her singing effects by the insertion of a number of discs on the phonograph, for example? Might she have had a confederate? After all, the seance was conducted in the company of a number of friends and acquaintances. And on the subject of the materialisations it seems that ACD appeared to be remarkably ingenuous on this occasion.
Bird's detailed and objective reports of the Conan Doyle seances provide us with a unique insight into the approach and attitude of Britain's most renowned spiritualist. Reading his memoir of this short period, it becomes clear that, given the unscientific nature of the seances conducted in his presence, the lack of light, and the number of possible confederates or persons most sympathetic to the medium, there may have been opportunities for deception. Nevertheless, ACD seems to have been no more nor less credulous than many of his contemporaries.
The truth may well lie somewhere in the middle. Certainly many powerful mediums have been known to practice deception when it best suited them, but this should not prevent us from recognising that they possessed genuine psychic powers. J. Malcolm Bird, who was not a spiritualist but who reveals himself as an astute and perceptive observer. certainly believed that many of the mediums he encountered with ACD were genuine. although he also knew that they might, on occasions, trick their audiences. Until ACD's own notes on seance work (still held in limbo as the result of litigation) are made available, we must rely on such documentation as has been passed down to us. The debate continues.
REFERENCES
1. Hampshire Telegraph and Post, 10th June 1921
2.'My Psychic Adventures', J. Malcolm Bird; Allen & Unwin, 1923
3. Bird; op.cit., p. 74
4. Bird; op.cit., p. 84
5. Bird; op.cit. p. 86
- ↑ In the "Contents" list, the title was "A Evening in the Suburbs"
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
