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    Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts: An Illustrated Guide to 19th Century Spiritualism
    Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts: An Illustrated Guide to 19th Century Spiritualism
    Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts: An Illustrated Guide to 19th Century Spiritualism
    Ebook168 pages1 hour

    Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts: An Illustrated Guide to 19th Century Spiritualism

    By Michael Gallagher

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    About this ebook

    Originally conceived as a blog to accompany Gallagher's Victorian novels, and freely available to read online, this guide provides a great introduction to the fascinating phenomenon of 19th Century spiritualism. If you can't tell your materializations from your Mumlers, or never realized just how physical ghost-grabbing could get, then this may well be the perfect book for you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeventh Rainbow Publishing
    Release dateJan 3, 2014
    ISBN9780957582576
    Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts: An Illustrated Guide to 19th Century Spiritualism

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      Book preview

      Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts - Michael Gallagher

      Chapter 1:

      The Fox sisters—an early April Fool?

      The Fox sisters; Kate and Margaret Fox with their married sister, Mrs Leah Fish

      Photographer and date unknown

      The story of spiritualism starts with a house that had an uncanny reputation in Hydesville, New York, a hamlet which no longer exists but was then situated in Wayne County in New York State. John Fox, a farmer, took over the tenancy with his wife Margaret and his two youngest children, Margaret and Kate, on December 11th, 1847. Three months of relative peace went by then at the tail end of March, when his daughters were aged fourteen and eleven respectively, the knocking began. Noises were heard all through the house. John and his wife investigated but could find no explanation for the sounds.

      On Friday the 31st of March the family retired early for the night, with the girls sleeping in the same room as their parents, when the commotion began again. Kate, the youngest challenged the noise-maker, saying, ‘Mr Splitfoot, do as I do,’ whilst clapping her hands. The sound instantly followed her with the same number of raps.

      According to Mrs Fox’s own testimony, "…[Kate] said in her childish simplicity, ‘Oh, mother, I know what it is. To-morrow is April-fool day, and it’s somebody trying to fool us.’ I then thought I could put a test that no one in the place could answer. I asked the noise to rap my different children’s ages, successively. Instantly, each one of my children’s ages was given correctly, pausing between them sufficiently long to individualize them until the seventh, at which a longer pause was made, and then three more emphatic raps were given, corresponding to the age of the little one that died, which was my youngest child. I then asked: ‘Is this a human being that answers my questions so correctly?’ There was no rap. I asked: ‘Is it a spirit? If it is, make two raps.’ Two sounds were given as soon as the request was made. I then said ‘If it was an injured spirit, make two raps,’ which were instantly made, causing the house to tremble. I asked: ‘Were you injured in this house?’ The answer was given as before. ‘Is the person living that injured you?’ Answered by raps in the same manner. I ascertained by the same method that it was a man, aged thirty-one years, that he had been murdered in this house, and his remains were buried in the cellar; that his family consisted of a wife and five children, two sons and three daughters, all living at the time of his death, but that his wife had since died. I asked: ‘Will you continue to rap if I call my neighbours that they may hear it too?’ The raps were loud in the affirmative."

      Mr Fox called in a neighbour, a no-nonsense woman named Mrs Redfield. After the spirit had answered her questions she called for her husband, who then called in all the other neighbours, one of whom, Mr Duesler, managed to ascertain that the man was murdered in the east bedroom about five years ago; that the murder was committed on a Tuesday night at twelve o’clock; that he was murdered by having his throat cut with a butcher knife; that he was murdered for money; that the body was taken down to the cellar; that it was not buried until the next night; that it was taken through the buttery, down the stairway, and that it was now buried ten feet below the surface of the ground.

      By the next day (April 1st) the house was full to overflowing with people curious to experience the now celebrated phenomena for themselves. In the evening the crowd dug up the cellar until they came to water and, finding nothing more, they gave up. The knocking continued intermittently over the next few days. Within a week Mrs Fox’s hair had turned white from the anxiety.

      Fourteen-year-old Margaret was sent to stay with her older brother David in the nearby town of Rochester; Kate also went to Rochester to stay with her older sister Leah, a music teacher whose married name was Fish. Unfortunately the rapping knocks went too. Hundreds flocked to Mrs Fish’s house to witness and marvel.

      The Foxes’ House, Hydesville, New York

      Photographer and date unknown

      The knocking became contagious. It was no longer confined to the Fox family. Similar sounds were heard in the homes of the Reverend A. H. Jervis, a Methodist minister from Rochester, a Mrs Sarah A. Tamlin, a Mrs Benedict, and a certain Deacon Hale, who lived in surrounding towns. Now the knocks claimed that they came from the deceased friends of those who were gathered there. The amateur séance was born.

      These early enthusiasts were often reformers who championed the abolition of slavery, equal rights for women, and the temperance movement. Their involvement with spiritualism reflects a link between spiritualists and radical reformers, especially those who advocated women’s rights, that would last for more than half a century.

      At this point séances were essentially domestic affairs held in private homes. Soon, however, they would become much, much more.

      Chapter 2:

      Trance lecturers—there’s no business like show business

      Paschal Beverly Randolph (1825-1875)

      Although spiritualism and séances were always to retain a strong domestic, amateur appeal—in that they remained essentially private affairs practised by middle-class enthusiasts dabbling in table-rapping and table-turning in their own homes—they were destined to become public, professional affairs as well.

      The small band of pioneers from Rochester (dubbed by many as the Rochester rappers) received spirit messages urging them to hold an open meeting where their powers could be investigated and tested. This was a risky move, for although the spirits obliged with their normal fare of raps and knocks, the men who were testing the mediums refused to believe that they were caused by any outside agency.

      Horace Greeley, the founder and editor of the New York Tribune, published their report, but also appended a note suggesting that their tests were invalid because of the men’s obvious bias. Supporters rallied to the call, giving testimony about the Fox sisters’ abilities. Rather than stifling spiritualism, the report fed the public interest in the girls.

      Horace Greeley (1811-1872)

      Photograph by Mathew Brady, date unknown

      Under the watchful supervision of their mother, the three Fox sisters began giving public sittings at Barnum’s Hotel in New York in the spring of 1850. There’s a contemporary description written by a Mrs Emma Hardinge, who was later to become a medium in her own right, which gives us some idea of the pressure the girls faced. She talks of "pausing on the first floor to hear poor patient Kate Fox, in the midst of a captious, grumbling crowd of investigators, repeating hour after hour the letters of the alphabet, while the no less poor, patient spirits rapped out names, ages and dates to suit all comers." Although most of the press reports denounced them as frauds, Horace Greeley published a supportive and sympathetic article in his paper. After a tour of the Western States, the Fox family paid a second visit to New York, which again attracted an intense public interest, both positive and negative.

      For some years the two younger sisters, Kate and Margaret, made their living by giving séances. An extraordinary daguerreotype of Kate and Margaret exists in the Missouri History Museum, made by the daguerreotypist Thomas M. Easterly at his studio in St Louis, Missouri when the sisters stopped off there during their national tour of 1852. If you can, do click on this link and have a look. A daguerreotype is a photographic likeness made directly onto a sheet of polished silver-plated

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