In the next room Carroll was busy, too. He got hold of Mrs. Catherine Nichols, the mother, who had been helping with the show, and he was beset by spectators who were incensed because the seance had been broken up.
Wooldridge Takes a Hand.
When Detective Wooldridge and his detail broke down the doors of the hall and made their entrance into the place it was pitch dark, and they had to strike matches before they could separate the combatants.
After a semblance of order had been restored in the place the premises were searched, and a most astounding outfit of disguises discovered. Before this development the spectators, who had been held in the place, were very angry with the officers, saying that they had been attending the seances for the last two years; that they knew Jennie Nichols as a medium had shown them the spirits of their dead. When the officers produced Sarah Nichols, to whom Detective Barry had held when he seized the "spook," they discovered that she had been wearing a pair of sandal slippers with felt five inches thick for soles; a pair of men's black trousers and the white shroud and painted picture face of a young girl.
Attached to a pole in front of her was a paper head, around which was a white shroud four feet in length. Those in attendance believed this image to be the spirit of a believer's dead relative. The "medium" had "spook" images of men, women and children, and could produce them as circumstances demanded. The light was turned up, and the contemptible imposition on credulity was exposed to twenty-six dupes, who had been paying $1 apiece for the privilege of attending meetings of the "spook" grafters for years. It was the greatest exposé of "spooks" that has been made in many years. A wagon load of masks, wigs, false whiskers, tin horns, gowns with safety pins in them, skulls and skeletons with cross-bones to match, were seized.
Women Refuse to Talk.
At the station the women refused to talk. Sarah Nichols, the "spook," had donned a house dress before she was taken to the station. Jennie Nichols, the "medium," was dressed in a neat black gown of rich material. The mother appeared in a black skirt and a white shirtwaist. The latter is a gray-haired woman apparently about 50 years old. She wept copiously. Sarah Nichols also wept. In the scrimmage after the arrest her ear had been injured, and it was bleeding when the trio was booked at the station.
Jennie Nichols was the most composed of all. She held a palm leaf fan in front of her face and above it twinkled a pair of shrewd blue eyes. As she and her relatives were led from the private room at Harrison street she even laughed, although her mother and her sister were in tears, and her victims were denouncing her for having robbed them, through their credulity, of hundreds of dollars, which many of them could ill afford to lose.
Wooldridge Makes Ghost Walk in Police Court.
A "spook" sat on the bench with Justice Prindiville. He made ghosts walk and graveyards yawn.