The results are of interest. The Archdeacon did not wear a plate so as to leave “more power for the others.” Mr. Hope’s plate was blurred. The tablet on Prof. Henslow’s was identical in outline with Mrs. Buxton’s and mine, both of which were sharp and clear, but Mrs. Buxton’s was the best. Mrs. Buxton had been with me the whole time, and her six-months-old baby had never left her arms.
The message addressed to Prof. Henslow was appropriate, but the writing was so microscopically fine that we could not read it that night. Mr. Hope was very disappointed. “Never mind,” he said, “when we get home we will ask the guides to give it us again!” He and Mrs. Buxton were leaving by the early morning train. The Archdeacon had charge of the negatives and had promised to let us know as soon as he had deciphered the message.
The mediums did not like their lodgings, so slept at my hotel. I saw them off in the morning, before any of us knew what the message was. A day or two later I received from the mediums a duplicate of the message not yet known to them or to myself. But this time the writing was large enough to be read by the naked eye. As Prof. Henslow had requested, the same thing had come on all the plates in differing degrees of distinctness.
This was my first experience of a Crewe skotograph, and it was decisive. As I wrote in the Psychic Gazette from notes submitted to Archdeacon Colley at the time, and afterwards read by Prof. Henslow when published, no suspicions could fall either on the mediums, Archdeacon Colley or myself, as not one of us had had the chance of tampering with Prof. Henslow’s plate, nor could Prof. Henslow and his photographer have prepared a series of plates for an occasion on which they had no reason to have reckoned.
I wrote a minute account of these early experiments, according to the strictest psychical research methods, and left it with Mr. Wallis, the then editor of Light. He did not publish it, and when I returned to England it could not be found. This incident is briefly recorded by Prof. Henslow in Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, pp. 224-7.
Fig. 16.—Photomicrograph by Major R. E. E. Spencer of portion of Archdeacon Colley’s signature taken from letter written during his lifetime. (See p. [84].)
Fig. 17.—Photomicrograph by Major R. E. E. Spencer of portion of Archdeacon Colley’s signature on psychograph appearing after his death. Compare with Figs. [2]. and [16].
