INTRODUCTION.
“Every new truth which has ever been propounded has, for a time, caused mischief; it has produced discomfort, and often unhappiness.”—Buckle, in History of Civilisation.
What led to the recent Experiments in Psychic Photography.
A number of test séances for spirit photography had been held with Mr. David Duguid, of which no records have been kept, but in April and May, 1892, four séances were held under strict test conditions, notes of which were made at the time, and signed by the various persons who were present. These notes were printed for private circulation, and a copy was sent, with some of the photographs, to Mr. Frederic W. H. Myers, Cambridge, (Hon. Secretary Psychical Research Society).
He suggested that when there was another opportunity for a test séance, the presence of a “scientific man,” and some one well acquainted with photographic manipulations, be got to attend to watch the experiments.
One of the investigators induced Mr. Duguid to come to London to give a séance under the strictest test conditions which could be devised; and Mr. J. Traill Taylor, Editor of the British Journal of Photography, by special request consented to take charge of the experiments, and to fix the conditions under which they should be made.
Mr. Taylor combines in himself the special qualities named by Mr. Myers, inasmuch as he is a “scientific man,” and an expert in photographic chemistry, optical research, and all photographic manipulations.[1]
Mr. Taylor is the author of several works relating to the chemistry, optics, physics, and practice of photography; and besides being a member of Council of the Photographic Society of Great Britain, is an honorary member of the Imperial Polytechnic Society of Russia, and of all the leading Photographic Clubs and Societies in London, and of several in New York.
Testimony Relating to David Duguid.
In a book recently published, entitled The Rise and Progress of Modern Spiritualism[2] (consisting of a reprint of a course of lectures delivered in Glasgow by Mr. James Robertson), the author gives the following testimony as to Mr. Duguid:—
“For many years we have had resident amongst us one whose name is world-wide, and whose character is above reproach; go where you will, David Duguid is recognised as one of the world’s mediums. From his lips have come forth volumes full of wonderful information which he, the normal man, never gathered of himself, but which is the product of intelligences who have ripened in that other sphere of existence. The story of the early life of Jesus, which is to be found in Hafed, the glimpses of ancient peoples, their manners and customs, are a valuable contribution to our knowledge. But he has been famous as a medium for every phase of the subject, including those marvellous direct paintings which have done much missionary work, the direct voices, materialisation, perfumes, writings in language utterly unknown to him, and specially in the conclusive evidence he has been the means of furnishing as to the reality of spirit photography. The striking story contributed to Light by ‘Edina,’ of how a picture of the dead boy was got after patient waiting, is amongst the best-attested phenomena. The early and close friend of D. D. Home, he has revealed almost similar mediumistic gifts. One of the most genial and retiring of men, he has ever reverenced his gifts, and sought in his own modest way to give all and sundry the benefit of their light.”
One of Mr. Glendinning’s private letters to the editor of a photographic journal, with reference to an intended action for libel, contained the following:—
“If my counsel wishes it, I shall produce such an array of testimonials from men of position as to Mr. Duguid’s honesty and uprightness as have seldom been read in any court.”
That would be an easy thing to do; but, when it is considered that Mr. Duguid has for a long time been employed by Mr. Robertson in his bicycle works; that Mr. Robertson, who is an active business man and a good judge of character, is year after year in almost hourly contact with Mr. Duguid; that he has been at many of Mr. Duguid’s séances, some of these being held in his (Mr. Robertson’s) own house—when these things are borne in mind, the value of the voluntary tribute given by Mr. Robertson to Mr. Duguid’s honesty and uprightness will be the more fully appreciated.
For nearly thirty years has Mr. David Duguid been before the world as a private medium for various descriptions of spirit phenomena. He has given innumerable séances readily, without fee or desire for reward, to clergymen, medical men, artists, teachers of science, lawyers, journalists, merchants, and men and women in all ranks of life; he has sacrificed time and money in the cause which is dear to his heart, and upon which no act or word of his has ever brought a stain. These facts are well known to many, nor would it be necessary to print them here were it not for the efforts made to destroy public confidence in the facts brought to light through his mediumship by writers in certain photographic journals, and the artful insinuations of men who put themselves forward on the plea of being anxious investigators.
Where Mr. Taylor read his Paper.
At a meeting of the London and Provincial Photographic Association, held on March 9, 1893, Mr. J. Weir Brown in the chair, the following paper by Mr. Taylor was read by him, and, with his consent, is reprinted from the British Journal of Photography (Vol. XL., No. 1715, March 17, 1893).
There was a large attendance of members, and several visitors were present. Visitors were allowed to make remarks, a privilege of which several availed themselves. Some members put questions to Mr. Taylor on points of detail regarding his experiments, all of which he replied to frankly and explicitly. In replying to one member, Mr. Taylor stated that he had received a letter, asking him to bring a reasonable man with him to witness his experiments—in fact, he said, he had the option of taking any one he chose. To another member Mr. Taylor replied that he himself placed the sitters and the camera, and also arranged the lighting of the room. Several members spoke highly of Mr. Taylor’s qualifications to conduct such experiments; but as they could not accept the spiritualistic hypothesis, and as the photographs had to them the appearance of being copied from cut-out prints, or made by “stump-work,” they concluded that therefore they could not be genuine, ignoring entirely Mr. Taylor’s emphatic statements, which he had already given in his paper, viz.:—
“My conditions were entirely acquiesced in”—that I “should use my own camera and unopened packages of dry plates, purchased from dealers of repute, and that I should be excused from allowing a plate to go out of my own hand till after development,” and that “I should dictate all the conditions of operation.”
As a matter of fact, everything connected with the experiments was subject to Mr. Taylor’s entire control and approval.
“SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY,” WITH REMARKS ON FLUORESCENCE.[3]
By J. Traill Taylor.
The presence of smoke may be considered as implying the existence of flame. Spirit photography, so called, has of late been asserting its existence in such a manner and to such an extent as to warrant competent men making an investigation, conducted under stringent test conditions, into the circumstances under which such photographs are produced, and exposing the fraud, should it prove to be such, instead of pooh-poohing it as insensate because we do not understand how it can be otherwise—a position that scarcely commends itself as intelligent or philosophical. If in what follows I call it “spirit photography” instead of psychic photography, it is only in deference to a nomenclature that extensively prevails, and not as offering a surmise from any knowledge of my own as to what is matter and what spirit, or the distinction between mind, spirit, and matter, for in truth I don’t know. I approach the subject merely as a photographer.
Before I proceed, a few words on the origin of spirit photography may not be out of place. In March, 1861, W. H. Mumler, the principal engraver in the employ of Bigelow Bros. & Kennard, the leading jewellers of Boston, when whiling away an idle hour as an amateur photographer, had a form other than that of any one present developed on his collodion plate. He surmised that it arose from an image having been previously on the plate, and its having been imperfectly cleaned off. Subjected to a more thorough cleaning, the form again appeared more strongly marked than before, and he could offer no other explanation than the one given. It got noised abroad through the press that a spirit had been photographed, and although Mumler strove to suppress the misrepresentation, as he regarded it, yet he eventually succumbed to popular demand, and took two hours a day from his regular work, devoting them to photography. This he had to extend to the whole of each day, entirely discarding his regular profession. Many men of eminence sat to him, most of whom he did not know at the time. He seems to have encouraged his sitters in the adoption of such test conditions as they deemed satisfactory. The figures that usually appeared on the plate with the sitters were, if I rightly infer, those on whom the sitters’ minds had been set. That eminent portrait photographer, Mr. Wm. Black, of Boston, so well known all over the world as the inventor of the acid nitrate bath, undertook to investigate the bonâ fides of Mumler’s methods. Through a friend who had just previously sat and obtained a figure, Black offered fifty dollars if Mumler would operate in his presence and obtain a picture. Invited to come, the acute Black critically examined camera, plate, dipper, and bath, and had his eye on the plate from the moment its preparation began until it was sensitised and locked in the dark slide, removing it himself from the camera, and carrying it into the dark room, where, on development, a figure of a man was seen leaning on B.’s shoulder. Black was wonder-stricken, and got away the negative, no charge whatever having been made. Mumler now claimed publicly to be a spirit-portrait photographer, and as such he eventually opened a studio in New York, having previously satisfied Silver, Gurney, and other photographers as to the genuineness of his claims, never hesitating to operate in their galleries if required, and with their apparatus and chemicals. Mumler was arrested in New York; whether on the ground of witchcraft or of endeavouring to obtain money under false pretences, I am at present uncertain, but his trial was the sensation of the day, and numerous witnesses were examined. He was honourably acquitted.
In this country, several who are amateur photographers have investigated this subject with more or less success. These include some F.R.S.’s, scientists, artists, and others. I question whether any have so persistently done so as the late Mr. John Beattie, of Clifton, and his friend, Dr. Thompson. Mr. Beattie was a skilled professional photographer of the highest eminence who, some time prior to his death, had adopted the views of the spiritualistic school. The figures he obtained on his plates were much blurred in outline, some being misty in the extreme. I possess some two or three dozen of these, taken by or in the presence of, Mr. Beattie, whose intelligence, honesty, and powers of observation no one would venture to doubt. Many such photographs are claimed to have been produced by Hudson, a professional photographer, formerly of the Holloway Road, and I submit for examination a work by the late Miss Houghton, containing fifty-four of Hudson’s spirit photographs.
There are many ways by which, assuming the genuineness of only one of all spirit photographs hitherto produced, the spurious article may be made even better than any alleged real ones I have yet seen. A plate secretly impressed previous or subsequent to being placed in the camera fulfils the condition; so does one at the back of which is placed a phosphorescent tablet in the dark slide. Pressure on the surface, such as by that of a Woodbury relief film, also causes a developable image; in short, trickery in a whole variety of forms may, and has been, impressed into the service.
The higher department of fluorescence may with success be employed. Here is something to which believers in the visibility of spirit forms to a camera are quite welcome. At the time, and àpropos of the Mumler trial in New York, I wrote that a good many absurd things have been said pro and con on the subject; but a writer in the latter category, who asserted that anything that is visible to the eye of the camera, and thus capable of being depicted by photography, must therefore necessarily be visible to the human eye, was surely ignorant of that important branch of physics popularly known as fluorescence. Many things are capable of being photographed which to the physical eye are utterly invisible. Why, for that matter, a room (visually dark) may be full of the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum, and a photograph may be taken in that dark light. Objects in a room so lighted would be plainly visible to the lens of the camera—at any rate, they could be reproduced on the sensitive plate, while, at the same time, not an atom of luminousness could be perceived in the room by any person possessing ordinary or normal vision. Hence the photographing of an invisible image, whether it be of a spirit or a lump of matter is not scientifically impossible. If it reflect only the ultra-violet rays of the spectrum, it will be easily photographed, although quite invisible to the sharpest eye.
Again, Cromwell F. Varley, F.R.S., well known as one of the most eminent of electricians, says (Electric, June, 1871), when passing a current of electricity through a vacuum tube, the results of which were indicated by touches of light about the poles:—“In one instance, although the experiment was carried on in a dark room, this light was so feeble that it could not be seen, and the operators doubted if the current were passing. But photography was at work, and in thirty minutes a very good picture was produced of what had taken place. This,” he says, “is a remarkable fact; indeed, it borders on the wonderful, that a phenomenon invisible to the human eye should have been, so to speak, seen by the photographic lens, and a record thereof kept by chemical agency. It is highly suggestive, and we may anticipate that it will be turned to good account by practical philosophers.”
Some very striking phenomena in photographing the invisible may be produced by the agency of fluorescence. Figures depicted upon a background by one or other of certain substances I shall presently name, although invisible to the eye, may become visible to the camera. Of these, the best known, although not the most effective, is disulphate of quinine. Such a solution, although to the eye it is colourless like water, is to the camera as black as ink. Fill three phials respectively with water, quinine, and common writing ink, and you have two whites and one black; but photograph them, and you have two blacks and one white. The camera has reduced the transparent quinine solution to the colour of the ink. Those of you who may care to experiment in this direction, please take notice that the quinine must be acidulated with sulphuric acid, and that hydrochloric acid, even a small trace, will destroy this property. Among other substances that are fluorescent, or that change the refrangibility of rays of light, are mineral uranite, certain salts of uranium, canary glass, alcoholic solution of chlorophyll, æsculine, tincture of stramonium seeds, and of turmeric. There are others known to be still better, but my experiments in this direction are yet too incomplete to warrant my even indicating them.
Let me for a moment enter the realm of speculation, and assume that there are really spirits invisible to the eye but visible to the camera and to certain persons called seers or clairvoyants only. Might we not suggest that there is some fluorescent compound in the eyes of such persons not present in those whose eyes are normal, and that it is to this they owe their seeing powers? Some of you may probably be aware that Dr. Bence Jones and other philosophers have actually established the fact of such fluorescent substances being found in some eyes. May this throw any light upon the recognised fact of certain animals being able to see in the dark?
When the subject of fluorescence is more thoroughly investigated (it is a discovery of Sir D. Brewster, who was followed by Herschel and Professor Stokes, and is as yet but of yesterday), we may hope for a vast accession to our knowledge of subjects as yet very slightly understood.
At the Bradford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1873, Dr. Gladstone, F.R.S., demonstrated before the Mathematical and Physical Section what I have said respecting invisible drawings on white cards having produced bold and clear photographs when no eye could see the drawings themselves, and I brought away back to London these photographs, and, for aught I know, may have them still.
To prevent this disquisition from being too dry, I will here introduce a fanciful sketch I wrote àpropos of Dr. Gladstone’s demonstration at the time mentioned:—
A mischievous young lady of scientific proclivities who attended the meeting of the British Association, and who was addicted to practical joking, listened attentively to Dr. Gladstone’s observations upon the properties of quinine referred to, and having carefully noted the discussion that followed, reasoned within herself thus: If solution of quinine can make invisible marks upon paper, which will come out black in a photograph, it ought to do the same when applied to the skin. So she procured some of this solution, and upon her fair brow she painted with it a death’s head and cross-bones. These, of course, were invisible to human vision. Thus prepared, she went to a photographer to have her portrait taken. All went right until the operator went an to develop the plate, when she soon heard an altercation between the photographer and the attendant boy, in which it was evident that the latter was being charged with having coated an old or dirty plate.
A second negative was taken, with this result, that the operator, after bestowing a puzzled, affrighted look at the lady, rushed downstairs to the principal of the establishment. Both returned to the dark room, and a third negative was taken, when it became evident that intense excitement was being produced in the dark room. After an excuse to the lady about there being electricity in the atmosphere, which had affected the chemicals, she was requested to sit once more.
Scarcely had the plate been developed, when both photographer and assistant rushed out from the dark room, pale and excited, and explained that on the brow of the sitter in each negative was emblazoned the insignia of the King of Terrors. The negatives were produced leaving no doubt of the fact. What was to be done?
The sitter hinted something about not being disposed to be made a fool of by one who she was satisfied was a spirit photographer, and that she, for one, would not allow herself to become the victim of such absurdity. This upset the equanimity of the photographer, who expressed his earnest conviction that she was an emissary and personal friend of the common enemy of mankind.
“I shall look in again to-morrow,” said the lady, in her sweetest tones, “if you promise not to play any of your silly ghost tricks upon me.”
“Not for ten thousand worlds,” said the artist, “shall you ever set foot within my studio again!”
“Oh,” she laughingly rejoined, “I shall drop in through the roof and visit you some day when you are disengaged;” and with that she departed.
“I knew it!” gasped the photographer. “I felt a sulphurous odour the moment I came near her. Send immediately for my friend, the Rev. ——, and get him to offer prayer, and free the studio from the evil influences remaining after a visitation from one whose feet, although clad in boots, would, if examined, be found to be cloven.”
David Duguid.
For several years I have experienced a strong desire to ascertain by personal investigation the amount of truth in the ever-recurring allegation that figures other than those visually present in the room appeared on a sensitive plate. The difficulty was to get hold of a suitable person known as a sensitive or “medium.” What a medium is, or how physically or mentally constituted to be different from other mortals, I am unable to say. He or she may not be a photographer, but must be present on each occasion of trial. Some may be mediums without their being aware of it. Like the chemical principle known as catalysis, they merely act by their presence. Such a one is Mr. D. of Glasgow, in whose presence psychic photographs have long been alleged to be obtained. He was lately in London on a visit, and a mutual friend got him to consent to extend his stay in order that I might try to get a psychic photograph under test conditions. To this he willingly agreed. My conditions were exceedingly simple, were courteously expressed to the host, and entirely acquiesced in. They were, that I for the nonce would assume them all to be tricksters, and, to guard against fraud, should use my own camera and unopened packages of dry plates purchased from dealers of repute, and that I should be excused from allowing a plate to go out of my own hand till after development, unless I felt otherwise disposed; but that, as I was to treat them as under suspicion, so must they treat me, and that every act I performed must be in presence of two witnesses, nay, that I would set a watch upon my own camera in the guise of a duplicate one of the same focus—in other words, I would use a binocular stereoscopic camera and dictate all the conditions of operation. All this I was told was what they very strongly wished me to do, as they desired to know the truth and that only. There were present, during one or other of the evenings when the trials were made, representatives of various schools of thought, including a clergyman of the Church of England; a practitioner of the healing art who is a fellow of two learned societies; a gentleman who graduated in the Hall of Science in the days of the late Charles Bradlaugh; two extremely hard-headed Glasgow merchants, gentlemen of commercial eminence and probity; our host, his wife, the medium, and myself. Dr. G. was the first sitter, and, for a reason known to myself, I used a monocular camera. I myself took the plate out of a packet just previously ripped up under the surveillance of my two detectives. I placed the slide in my pocket and exposed it by magnesium ribbon which I held in my own hand, keeping one eye, as it were, on the sitter and the other on the camera. There was no background. I myself took the plate from the dark slide, and, under the eyes of the two detectives, placed it in the developing dish. Between the camera and the sitter a female figure was developed, rather in a more pronounced form than that of the sitter. The lens was a portrait one of short focus; the figure being somewhat in front of the sitter, was proportionately larger in dimensions. I submit this picture (see opposite). It is, as you see, a lady. I do not recognise her or any of the other figures I obtained as being like any one I know, and from my point of view, that of a mere investigator and experimentalist, not caring whether the psychic subject were embodied or disembodied.
Photograph of a Psychic Lady.
Many experiments of like nature followed; on some plates were abnormal appearances, on others none. All this time Mr. D., the medium, during the exposure of the plates, was quite inactive. After one trial, which had proved successful, I asked him how he felt and what he had been thinking of during the exposure. He replied that his thoughts had been mainly concentrated upon his chances of securing a corner seat in a smoking carriage that night from Euston to Glasgow.
If the precautions I took during all of the several experiments, such as those recorded, are by any of you thought to have been imperfect or incomplete, I pray of you to point them out. In some of them I relaxed my conditions to the extent of getting one of those present to lift out from the dark slide the exposed plate and transfer it to the developing dish held by myself, or to lift a plate from the manufacturer’s package into the dark slide held in my own hand, this being done under my own eye, which was upon it all the time; but this did not seem to interfere with the average on-going of the experiments.
The psychic figures behaved badly. Some were in focus, others not so; some were lighted from the right, while the sitter was so from the left; some were comely, as the dame I shall show on the screen, others not so; some monopolised the major portion of the plate, quite obliterating the material sitters; others were as if an atrociously badly vignetted portrait, or one cut oval out of a photograph by a can-opener, or equally badly clipped out, were held up behind the sitter. But here is the point: not one of these figures which came out so strongly in the negative was visible in any form or shape to me during the time of exposure in the camera, and I vouch in the strongest manner for the fact that no one whatever had an opportunity of tampering with any plate anterior to its being placed in the dark slide or immediately preceding development. Pictorially they are vile, but how came they there?
Now, all this time, I imagine you are wondering how the stereoscopic camera was behaving itself as such. It is due to the psychic entities to say that whatever was produced on one half of the stereoscopic plates was reproduced on the other, alike good or bad in definition. But on a careful examination of one which was rather better than the other, and which is now about to be projected on the lantern screen for your examination ([see page 35]), I deduce this fact, that the impressing of the spirit form was not consentaneous with that of the sitter. This I consider an important discovery. I carefully examined one in the stereoscope, and found that, while the two sitters were stereoscopic per se, the psychic figure was absolutely flat. I also found that the psychic figure was at least a millimetre higher up in one than the other. Now, as both had been simultaneously exposed, it follows to demonstration that, although both were correctly placed vertically in relation to the particular sitter behind whom the figure appeared, and not so horizontally, this figure had not only not been impressed on the plate simultaneously with the two gentlemen forming the group, but had not been formed by the lens at all, and that, therefore the psychic image might be produced without a camera. I think this is a fair deduction. But still the question obtrudes, How came these figures there? I again assert that the plates were not tampered with by either myself or any one present. Are they crystallisations of thought? Have lens and light really nothing to do with their formation? The whole subject was mysterious enough on the hypothesis of an invisible spirit, whether a thought projection or an actual spirit, being really there in the vicinity of the sitter, but it is now a thousand times more so. There are plenty of Tycho Brahes capable of supplying details of observations, but who is to be the Kepler that will from such observations evolve a law by which they can be satisfactorily explained?
Abnormal Portrait of Lady
In the foregoing I have confined myself as closely as possible to narrating how I conducted a photographic experiment open to every one to make, avoiding stating any hypothesis or belief of my own on the subject generally, and it only now remains to exhibit the results, bad and fraudulent-looking as they are, on the screen.