By F. R. Scatcherd
Member of the Society for Psychical Research, Co-Editor of the Asiatic Review
(Miss Felicia Scatcherd, who has been one of the true psychic researchers and pioneers of knowledge in this country, has contributed the following information which she gained during her close association with the Crewe Circle at and after the time of its formation.)
Questioned about himself, Mr. Hope said that he was christened “Billy Hope,” and was born at or near Manchester. His first memory is of having scarlet fever when he was four years old. During the fever he used to see all sorts of faces peering at him through the doorway, and became so frightened that he screamed for his father to come and send them away. Now that he knows about clairvoyance, he thinks otherwise of those visions. He lost his mother when he was nine, and remembers little about her. It is a curious fact, as he observed: “I have wished for her picture hundreds of times, and sat for it many a while, and have never yet got it. These things beat me.”
When asked did he grieve much for his mother’s death, he replied that he was brought up in a religious family, his father being a local preacher. Later on Mr. Hope, Senior, lost all his worldly possessions.
“My father was wealthy according to my ideas,” said Mr. Hope. “He had two farms, but late in life lost his money.”
Mr. Hope was well cared for by his mother as long as he had her, and afterwards by his step-mother.
“She was a good woman: and I had an aunt of a religious frame of mind who also kept an eye on me.”
“You must have been a very good little boy,” I said.
“Oh dear, no! I was much the same as the other lads. I played plenty of truant, and once joined a party of seven and ran the schoolmaster round the room. We had agreed beforehand what we would do if he began a-thrashing of us. But don’t put that in, Miss Scatcherd!”