THE PATENT GHOST.

“Modern researches in Spiritualism have led to one practical result—the discovery of a ghost. Not of an ordinary old-fashioned ghost, appearing in the midnight hour to people with a weak digestion, haunting graveyards and old country mansions, and inspiring romance-writers into the mischief of three-volume novels; but of a well-behaved, steady, regular, and respectable ghost, going through a prescribed round of duties, punctual to the minute—a Patent Ghost, in fact. This admirable ghost is the offspring of two fathers, of a learned member of the Society of Civil Engineers, Henry Dircks, Esq., and of Professor Pepper, of the Polytechnic. To Mr. Dircks belongs the honour of having invented him, or, as the disciples of Hegel would express it, evolved him from out of the depths of his own consciousness; and Professor Pepper has the merit of having improved him considerably, fitting him for the intercourse of mundane society, and even educating him for the stage. After having bowed to the public at the Polytechnic Institution, he some weeks ago made his début upon the boards of the Britannia Theatre, in a new and highly original drama, entitled, ‘The Widow and Orphans,—Faith, Hope, and Charity,’ in which piece he continues to present himself nightly to crowded audiences with the greatest imaginable success.

“Possibly, all Britons do not know where the Britannia Theatre is situated, and it may not be necessary, therefore, to state that it has its place in the metropolitan suburb of Hoxton, inhabited chiefly by toy-makers and doll-dressers, and marked under the letter N by the Postmaster-General. Sceptics may smile at the idea of a Patent Ghost making his first appearance in a neighbourhood so little fashionable, and so far removed from the residence of Master Home, commander-in-chief of spirits and mediums, and solicitor-general of demons, ghosts, and shadows of the universe. It is no mere accident; for it appears that there are good spiritual reasons why the ghost should have come out at Hoxton and nowhere else. Here, in this toy-making quarter, there lived, about a hundred years ago, a worthy citizen and officer of the Lord Mayor, Mr. Francis Bancroft, who was haunted all his life long with the one great idea that his body was predestined to arise visibly from the dead, and to wander over British earth in the shape of a tangible ghost. So deeply impressed was he with this belief that, while walking in the flesh, his chief object was to take measures towards insuring his safe and speedy resurrection. With considerable faith in the celebrated maxim of Luther’s active Roman antagonist, indulgence-selling Monk Tetzel:

citizen Bancroft took great care, during his mortal career, to accumulate a respectable amount of cash with the object of forming a bribe for the guardians of his body. Accordingly, in his will he left the sum of twenty-eight thousand pounds for the establishment of schools and almshouses, with this proviso, that his body should be ‘preserved within a shew glass’ in the church.”

During the time I was in Paris, and arranging the ghost for exhibition at the Théâtre du Châtelet under Mons. Hostein, I was surprised to find that the conjuror, Mons. Robin, was showing the ghost at his séances. My lawyers interviewed him, and discovered that, some years before, a little toy had been brought out and patented in France by which a miniature ghost could be shown. It consisted of a box with a small sheet of glass, placed at an angle of forty-five degrees, and it reflected a concealed table, with plastic figures, the spectre of which appeared behind the glass, and which young people who possessed the toy invited their companions to take out of the box, when it melted away, as it were, in their hands and disappeared.

In France at that time all improvements on a patent fell to the original patentee, and under that law I lost the patent in France; but Mons. Hostein honourably paid me a large sum of money for the use of my improved ghost at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris. Query.—Had Mr. Dircks’ patent agent, in his searches after patents, ever come across the toy invented in Paris? Because it is substantially the ghost apparatus and produced that illusion; and thus it shows how correct are the words of Solomon, who has told us “There is nothing new under the sun.”

If the reader will consult a book written by me, entitled “Cyclopædic Science Simplified,” formerly published by Messrs. Frederick Warne and Co., but now bought and published by Messrs. Lippincott, the great American publishers of Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.A., he will find a very near approach to the ghost apparatus copied from Robinson’s “Recreative Memories” published in 1831. The same author describes how the famous magician (so-called) Nostrodamus deceived even the astute and wily Marie de’ Medicis by a vision which appeared in a looking-glass. Moreover, Sir Walter Scott, in his beautiful poem, “The Lay of the Last Minstrel,” has introduced the use of mirrors for producing ghostly appearances, in the vision seen by the ill-fated Earl of Surrey, in the mirror huge and high of Cornelius; the vision being “That fair and lovely form, the Lady Geraldine” (verses 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, canto vi.).

Before travelling about so much I had a trunk full of letters referring to the ghost illusion, many treating it as a supernatural phenomenon, and not an effect from natural causes.

In about four months my secretary wrote at least 1,000 letters in answer to those addressed to me.

I was offered house property in exchange for the right to exhibit the ghost and a full description of the apparatus on attendance at the Polytechnic to see how things were manipulated.

I publish one of the most amusing letters, which has no address or proper signature, but only the initials “R. C.”:—

“Whereas the directors and managers of the Polytechnic Institution believe and maintain the phenomenon called ‘spirit-rapping’ to be produced by trickery, jugglery, or some natural agency, and to be an imposture, I, the undersigned, on the contrary maintain that there is some non-human agent which moves the tables, chairs, etc., and carries on an intelligent conversation with spectators by knocking, or tilting, or other signs. I am ready to wager from £5 to £50 with any one who chooses to accept my challenge that the phenomenon shall take place, and that no one present shall be able to detect any sort of trickery or jugglery in the matter. It is to be clearly understood that mere opinions that the thing is done by natural agency are to go for nothing. The natural agency must be proved. On the other hand I defy any one to produce the same phenomenon by natural agency without my being able to detect that agency. In making this proposal I wish it to be distinctly understood that I do not place any trust or confidence in the so-called ‘spirits,’ as I maintain, in opposition to the whole body of so-called ‘spiritualists,’ that the intelligent agent which moves the tables, chairs, etc., and converses and answers questions by knocking, is nothing more or less than the evil spirit which dwells in humanity, and is found in every human being. This proposition can be clearly demonstrated. As to the so-called ‘spirits’ being the ‘souls of the dead,’ the idea is absurd, and this absurdity also can be made abundantly manifest. This spiritualism is doing an immensity of mischief, and ought to be exposed, but it will never be exposed if people shut their eyes to the fact. It will not be the less a fact, and will not the less impose on all who witness it, because there are men and women who predetermine in their own minds that it cannot be true, and refuse to be convinced by either their senses or their understandings. In all ages there have been deaf adders whom no music could charm, and there are in these days also many ‘who having eyes will not see, and who having ears will not hear.’ On what grounds does any one assume as a certainty that such a thing is impossible?

“Richard Cruin.”

“If any one is so unwise as to be willing to pay £100 in the event of the phenomenon taking place in his presence, and of his being unable to detect any imposture, I undertake that the ‘medium’ shall exhibit in any private room, in any home, and with any furniture (provided it be not too heavy), and that the said medium shall submit to be searched both before and after the exhibition.

“Nothing is easier than to lift a table by means of a concealed apparatus. The knocking also may be produced by means of muscular motion or otherwise. But can any one lift a table without any apparatus, simply by placing the hand on it; or can any one contrive an apparatus so cunning that no one present, having full liberty to examine everything, shall be able to detect it?

“By collusion or otherwise questions also might be answered, but I maintain that the agent in spiritualism can tell all the most secret and hidden things of one’s life, and even one’s secret thoughts, and also that it understands and can converse in any language. I have verified this by repeated experience. But it will not always speak when it is wanted to speak, and the ‘medium’ has no power over it to make it answer questions. But the fact that it often tells lies and often refuses to tell anything, does not make void the fact that it does also at times answer every question which one can ask it. It is by this sort of capricious behaviour that it succeeds in completely deluding some to trust in it, and others to disbelieve in it altogether. But let a man confine himself at first to the physical phenomenon and try if he can make a table to rise up into the air completely off the ground, simply by placing his hand on it, and without any apparatus whatever. If he cannot do this, and if no human being can do it, let it be acknowledged that there is some non-human agent. A little experience will very soon convince any one that it is an intelligent, and a wonderfully intelligent, agent, and then it will remain to be considered whether this intelligent agent is good or evil—I say it is evil.

R. C.”

During the year 1863, when the ghost illusion was one of the topics of the day, the famous George Cruikshank wrote a pamphlet, entitled—“A Discovery concerning Ghosts, with a Rap at the ‘Spirit Rappers,’ illustrated with Cuts, and dedicated to the ‘Ghost Club.’” Curious to say, he says nothing respecting the Polytechnic ghost, but is exercised chiefly with famous stories of ghosts and apparitions, which it is alleged have appeared to various persons. The author examines analytically a number of them, and comes to the conclusion that the persons relating them usually deceived themselves or other people, and that most of the stories are mental hallucinations. The inimitable George, as his friends delighted to call him, treats with profound contempt the spirit rappers, and all the cheats and fortune-telling mendicants who try to impose on innocent people with their bad conjuring tricks—people who might have got through the world safely; but the fatal chord is struck, and they go from bad to worse, until they end in a mad house.

The whole tribe of persons who made money directly or indirectly out of what they called spirit mediums, &c., fairly howled upon me in the lecture room, and, threatening personal violence, I was for some time attended home at night by the most stalwart of our Polytechnic employés; for, like Cruikshank, I vigorously denounced the traders in spirits, founding my arguments on the belief that God was too merciful to us to add to the troubles of this world the fear and trembling brought about by pretended communication with the invisible world.

The first story I told at my Polytechnic “Strange Lecture” had a very simple plot.

It represented the room of a student who was engaged burning the midnight oil, and, looking up from his work, sees an apparition of a skeleton. Resenting the intrusion he rises, seizes a sword or a hatchet which is ready to his hand, and aims a blow at the ghost; which instantly disappeared again and again to return.

This ghost was admirably performed by my assistant, whom we called Ye Perringe, who, wearing a cover of black velvet, held the real skeleton in his arms and made the fleshless bones assume the most elegant attitudes, the lower part from the pelvis downward being attired in white linen, and the white skeleton ghost assuming a sitting posture, so that it appeared to come out of the floor.

Although this exhibition only lasted a few minutes, it drew hundreds and thousands of pounds to the treasury of the Polytechnic. In fact, as already stated, I was obliged to remove to the larger theatre of the Institute.

The next ghost story was told in the large theatre; and it illustrated Charles Dickens’s story of the “Haunted Man.” At the same time was shown “Cupid and the Love-Letter.” When the curtain drew up, a peasant girl was discovered using her spinning-wheel and demurely thinking of something not told to the audience.

The ghost of a very pretty little boy dressed as Cupid now appears at her elbow, and discharges an arrow from his bow, which pierces the heart of the susceptible village girl. She attempts to caress the pretty Cupid, who eludes her kind advances, and is now discovered on the other side. The maiden turns to kiss him, but he is gone. At last, relenting, Cupid gives her a love-letter from some affectionate swain, which she takes and shows triumphantly to the audience, and leaving the girl to read it, the curtain again descended. These two illustrations of the ghost illusion ran for fifteen months without alteration, and were succeeded by many others—viz., Scrooge and Marley’s Ghost, by Charles Dickens; the Ghost of the diving bell; the knight watching his armour; the poor author tested; the Ghost of Napoleon I. at St. Helena; and the Ghost in Hamlet, pronounced by a leading R.A. as being nearly perfect, only wanting a little different colour in the walls of the ramparts, which I adopted with his ultimate satisfaction and approval.

The late Walter Montgomery took a great interest in the ghost proceedings, and assisted me greatly in arranging the scenes with due regard to the dramatic art. There is a mystery about his tragic end which deserves solution, and his brother-in-law told me at Brisbane, Queensland, that he did not commit suicide, but was shot by somebody else.

The sands of the year 1863 had been nearly run out, and I had taken the ghost to Manchester to a lecture hall then under the skilful management of Mr. Peacock, when another great success was scored—various London theatres took out licences to use the ghost; notably the Haymarket, under Mr. Benjamin Webster; The Britannia, under Mr. and Mrs. Lane; Drury Lane, under Mr. Chatterton, also subsequently and after the famous ghost trial before the Lord Chancellor. The Music Halls no longer tried to infringe the patent, but those who required it paid their fees for licences to do so.

The famous ghost trial came on in September at the private residence of the Lord Chancellor Westbury, who very graciously agreed to hear this patent case at once, because his lordship was informed by my solicitor, Mr. Walter Hughes, junr., that if he could not do so the Polytechnic Ghost would most likely be swamped by the multiplicity of imitators, good, bad, or indifferent.

Accordingly, one cold and chilly day I went down into Hampshire, accompanied only by my solicitor, Mr. Walter Hughes, junior, of the firm of Hughes, Masterman, and Hughes, 56, New Broad Street. On arrival we were shown into his Lordship’s drawing-room, where, to my dismay, I found a little army of solicitors and barristers drawn up as if in battle array, and sitting in a row against the right-hand wall of the room.

His Lordship’s secretary courteously came forward, and, noticing we were somewhat cold, placed chairs for us near the fire, and pulled up a table for our use on which to take notes.

We all rose respectfully when the Lord Chancellor entered, and, being requested by him to remain seated, the case was opened by his Lordship asking who appeared for the Plaintiffs, the music hall proprietors. At least four answered, “I do, my Lord,” and we in the minority could only give an answer from one voice—viz., that of my then young solicitor.

The music hall people came down with two newspaper reporters to record their certain victory over me, but which, as it turned out, was a mistake, because the reporters could only tell the truth and record the verdict given in my favour.

The Lord Chancellor, so far as I can remember (and I have no notes), then addressed the Plaintiffs—

1st. I shall require you to show cause by what right or authority you appear before me this day.

2nd. I will hear you on the general merits of the case.

3rd. And lastly, on the novelty which the Defendant seeks to have completed under the protection of a Patent, and which novelty you appear to deny.

One of the barristers then rose, and after saying that he would bow with submission to anything his Lordship might suggest or rule, commenced his argument by calling attention to the fact that the number of days allowed by the Patent Law had already elapsed, and by sections so-and-so I had lost the opportunity of getting the Patent sealed within the proper time allowed between granting Provisional Protection and sealing the Patent.

After he had ended, the Lord Chancellor asked if the Plaintiffs through their counsel had anything more to urge on this first point. They all bowed, and said “No.”

His Lordship now said: “It is very true what you state respecting the wording of the Patent Act, but if you will turn to sections so-and-so you will find that the Law Officers of the Crown have full power to grant an extension of the time for completing and sealing the Patent on the proper application of the Defendant’s solicitors, and as that application has already been made and granted, it must be evident that, though the Defendant exceeded the time usually allowed, he had full permission to do so from the constituted authorities. I will now hear you on the general merits of the case.”

Here the learned counsel exhausted his law and rhetoric in making out there was really nothing to patent, for who could catch hold of a ghost? And more legal technicalities were advanced and argued than I can remember at this distance of time—viz., twenty-six years ago. However, his Lordship again asked, “Have you anything more to urge on this point?” and received the same reply, “No, my Lord, we have not.” The Chancellor then replied in extenso, exposed all the sophistries of the arguments, and whilst complimenting the counsel on his learning and the care which he had bestowed upon the case, said again that there was nothing in the arguments that militated against the sealing of the Patent. Of course, they could take action at common law, and try the case before the judges appointed to try such cases if they thought proper, and, supported by affidavits resulting from a trial at common law, could bring the case again before him.

There was one point which the Lord Chancellor alluded to. He said: “Great stress had been laid on the impossibility of patenting a mere intangible nothing, viz., a ghost; but as he understood, the Defendant did not patent the shadowy result called the Ghost, but an apparatus for ‘Exhibiting Dramatic and other Performances,’ and without this apparatus no ghost could be rendered visible to an audience.” His lordship then continued: “I will now hear you on the novelty of the proposed invention, which your affidavits declare is not new, but an imitation of something already exhibited.”

The learned counsel now made various statements, supported apparently by affidavits from persons who alleged that they had seen the ghost a long time before, and, in fact, had used the very same apparatus I had employed or words to that effect. For instance, an old playbill emanating from the Old Tivoli Gardens, Margate—not perhaps the most refined place of entertainment, in fact, no ladies appeared to visit the place say, in 1851, when I heard a lady in tights discourse a song the burthen of which was—

The playbill was laid upon his Lordship’s table, who, taking hold of it, asked, “Is this the playbill alluded to?” and threw it on the floor. I suppose the counsel was not attending to some point of etiquette, and ought to have produced his playbill in the form of a High Chancery Court affidavit. The playbill alluded to a ghost that was to be shown, and counsel again called attention to their plan of the ghost apparatus, which he was instructed to say was the same or very similar to that used by Defendant. The affidavit of some other dramatic professional was also brought forward with several others; but all things come to an end, and at last the same distinct question rang out: “Have you anything more to urge on this question of novelty?” with the answer as before. “No, your Lordship.”

Lord Westbury commenced by alluding to the drawing brought forward by the Plaintiffs, and said, “I have examined the affidavit and the drawings, and find it is as nearly as possible a copy of the Defendant’s own drawing deposited in confidence in the archives of the Patent Office, and when I visit that establishment will take care to enquire who has presumed to allow the Plaintiffs permission to copy the Defendant’s original drawing of the apparatus used to show the ghost. I well remember,” continued his Lordship, “being taken to the house of Belzoni, the distinguished traveller, and seeing an effect no doubt somewhat similar to that produced by the Defendant’s apparatus, but I could not for one moment compare the toy of Belzoni with the refined and complete contrivances used by the Defendant at the Royal Polytechnic. An affidavit has been put in by the Plaintiffs, sworn to by a person calling himself a ‘nigger minstrel.’ He is elsewhere denominated an ‘Ethiopian Serenader,’ who had seen the Defendant’s ghost shown years ago—a very respectable man, no doubt, in his vocation; but to put the evidence of such a person against the affidavits of Michael Faraday, Sir David Brewster, and Professor Wheatstone, is a manifest absurdity. I, therefore, rule that the Great Seal of England be at once attached to the Defendant’s patent, and that the Plaintiffs do pay the costs.”

After certifying for the costs and having a little conversation with my solicitor and self, his Lordship withdrew, and we all went back to town. The reader can imagine my feelings of joy at the successful upshot of this trial when he learns that I had already received large sums for licences which I must have refunded if the case had gone against me.

For many years the ghost at the Polytechnic pursued its successful career, and earned £12,000 in a comparatively short space of time. I received an illuminated address of thanks, with a handsome honorarium, from the directors, and subsequently they presented my bust in marble to my late dear wife, with a letter from the Rev. J. B. Owen, M.A., the highly-gifted chairman of the old Royal Polytechnic.

Very few persons could understand how the ghost was produced, although many persons wrote about and explained it; even the distinguished philosopher, Michael Faraday, when I took him behind the scenes, said, with his usual love of truth: “Do you know, Mr. Pepper, I really don’t understand it.” I then took his hand, and put it on one of the huge glass plates, when he said, “Ah! now I comprehend it; but your glasses are kept so well protected I could not see them even behind your scenes.”