Now consider the situation thus created. Since the plate had not been developed it is clear that neither Hope nor anyone at the College could possibly have known that it was a marked plate, for there was no publication of the alleged exposure until more than four months after. Who was there in the whole world who did know that this was a marked plate and one in which the S.P.R. might be expected to take a special interest? Clearly the experimenters of the S.P.R. and their confidants—no one else. But if the marked plate had been abstracted by Hope in the dark room and mixed up there with other plates how could any friend or emissary of the S.P.R. have picked it out as being the plate that was marked? It could not have been done. Therefore the conclusion seems to be irresistible that this plate was abstracted from the packet before the experiment by someone who knew exactly what it was. If this be so, Hope is the victim of a conspiracy and he is a much ill-used man. I see no possible alternative to this conclusion.
Let us see if we can build up any sort of theory which would cover all the known facts. Any such theory is bound to be improbable, but the improbable is better than the impossible, and it is quite impossible that Hope could have known that a plate was secretly marked when it had not been exposed or developed. We have to remember that the knot of conspirators (some consciously so, and some not) are in close touch with a group of conjurers. These gentlemen have announced that there is no packet which cannot be opened and no seal which cannot be tampered with undetected. For twenty-four days after Mr. Price takes his packet of marked plates to the headquarters of the S.P.R. it was locked up not in a safe but in an ordinary drawer, which may or may not have been locked, but could presumably be easily opened. My belief is that during that long period the packet was actually opened and the top plates taken out. Upon one of these top plates a faked photograph was thrown from one of those small projectors which produce just such an effect as is shown on the returned plate. The idea may have been that Hope would claim this effect as his own and that he would then be confounded by the announcement that it was there all the time. That was the first stage. The second stage was that either the original conspirator relented or someone else who was in his confidence thought it was too bad, so the packet was again tampered with, the marked and faked plate taken out and a plain one substituted. The packet was then taken to Hope as described. Mr. Hope then got a perfectly honest psychic effect upon the unmarked plate. Meanwhile the abstracter, whoever he may have been, had the original faked plate in his possession, and out of a spirit of pure mischief—for I can imagine no other reason—he wrapped it in a sheet of the College syllabus, which can easily be obtained, and returned it to the S.P.R., to whom it originally belonged. Wherever it came from it is clear that it did not come from the College, for when a man does a thing secretly and anonymously he does not enclose literature which will lead to his detection.
It is possible that this thing may originally have been conceived as a sort of practical joke upon Hope and upon spiritualists generally, but that some who were not in the joke have pushed the matter further than was originally intended. Whom can we blame? I am in the position of never having personally met any of the three protagonists, Price, Dingwall or Seymour, so that my view of them is impartial. Mr. Price is popular among the spiritualists who know him, and all agree that he would be unlikely to lend himself to any deception. Mr. Dingwall was possessed by an extreme prejudice against Mr. Hope, and yet I cannot conceive him as gratifying that prejudice by such a trick. He cannot, however, be acquitted of having aided and abetted in issuing the libellous pamphlet against Hope before all the facts were known, and before Hope’s friends could examine any of them. It was an unworthy thing to do, and Messrs. Price and Dingwall must share the responsibility. It is a curious fact which should be recorded that, although the experiment was on February 24th, and though the report of the alleged exposure was not issued till the end of May, we find Mr. Dingwall applying for a sitting with Hope early in May, and writing, when Hope refused to give him one: “As I understand from your letters that you still refuse to have sittings with the only scientific body in Great Britain investigating this subject, I shall be obliged in my coming report on psychic photography to publish certain facts which may not be of advantage to yourself.” That letter was on May 2nd. Apparently, therefore, the publication of the “exposure” depended upon whether Mr. Dingwall was piqued or was humoured. If he were sure that the exposure was a genuine one this is a very singular attitude to assume.
There remains Mr. James Seymour, the amateur conjurer, who has been concerned in several so-called exposures. It would be unjust to assert that it was he who carried out this deception, for when a packet is left for twenty-four days in a drawer many people may have had access to it, and none of the three experimenters may have known the facts. This, I think, is very probable. At the same time, as Mr. Seymour has been very searching in his inquiries about mediums, he will not take it amiss if I ask him what he meant when in his evidence (“Cold Light,” etc., p. 7) he says: “They” (i.e., Hope and Mrs. Buxton) “were thoroughly taken in by the packet and were not suspicious of it.” How could they possibly be suspicious of a packet which had never been opened? On the other hand, if the speaker knew that the packet had been tampered with, it would be a most natural remark to make. The words may be innocent, but they demand a clear explanation, and so does the fact that an extra was found upon a marked plate which obviously had never been in Hope’s dark room at all.
So secretive and tortuous have been the methods of the agents of the S.P.R. that each fresh piece of evidence has to be wrung from them, and they seem to have no conception of the fact that a man who is accused has a right to know all the facts concerning the accusation. Even now, nine months after the event, constant pressure has to be put upon them in order to get at the truth. Only at this last moment has a new and strange fact been admitted. It is that when the mysterious marked plate was returned it was not alone, but that three other plates, not belonging to the marked series, were with it, each of them adorned with psychic photographs. These photographs in no way resembled the results of Hope or of Mrs. Deane, nor were they like the one upon the marked plate. I should be interested to know whether Mr. Marriott was ever in the counsels of the conspirators, for there is something in this incident which rather recalls that gentleman’s powers and also his somewhat impish sense of humour.
Even now—I write nearly nine months after the original investigation—we have no assurance that this secret of the S.P.R. has been fully divulged or that they have been frank with the public. It is possible that they have received other anonymous communications which bear upon the case. The first one was within a week of the investigation, and if divulged at the time it might have been possible to find the source. After such a lapse of time it is far more difficult. As I have shown, these new facts place the Society in a very invidious position and that may be the cause of their hesitations and concealments, but they have to remember that they have made a wanton attack upon a man’s honour, and that their own amour propre is a small thing compared to the admission of the injustice they have done. They should now come forward honestly, admit the blunders they have committed, apologise to Hope, and remove any slur which they have cast upon one of the most important and consistent psychic manifestations ever known in the history of the movement. In all attempted explanations let them bear in mind the central fact that no one but themselves and their associates knew that there was a marked plate in existence until several months after the experiment and after one had been returned to them.
Among those who examined the evidence at that time available was Dr. Allerton Cushman, for whose independence of mind and strong common sense I have a great respect. Having signed the document in which he admitted that there had been substitution of plates, he added the following impressive note:
“My signature appended to the above statement sets forth that investigation of all the facts available up to date shows that the plate containing the psychic extra in the Price test sitting with Hope did not match up with the other plates marked by the Imperial Dry Plate Company. The only possible inference is that the plate in question was substituted by someone at some time either deliberately or accidentally. I do not commit myself as to the authorship of the substitution. After careful experimentation I do not consider the system of X-ray marking adopted by Mr. Price to be infallible, but quite the reverse, as the markings quite disappear on long exposures and over-development. I am also unimpressed and unconvinced by Mr. Price’s method of marking the plate-holder. I have had in all five sittings with Hope and four with Mrs. Deane. Of these nine sittings, seven were conducted under test conditions in which Dr. H. Carrington and other witnesses participated. I have obtained psychic extras from both mediums on plates marked by X-ray by the Imperial Dry Plate Company, and boxed and sealed by them, and also on plates purchased by Dr. Carrington just previous to one of the Hope sittings, all of which were marked by us with every precaution. I am convinced that there was no substitution possible in at least five of the seven test sittings. I consider that the mediums possess genuine psychic power, and are capable of obtaining marvellous, genuine results.... The more I investigate the subject the more convinced I am that the marvellous evidential case of spirit photography obtained by me through Mrs. Deane in July, 1921, was genuine and true.
“Yours faithfully,
“Allerton F. Cushman.”