The Mysteries of Modern London

by George R. Sims

The woman passes for a seeress—a modern witch. She is consulted by women of education, women who come to her to gaze into the crystal and the ink pool, to peer into the future, and who—strange as it may seem to common sense, level-headed people—implicitly believe in the supernatural powers of the wily adventuress, the cunning woman who trades upon their credulity.

We can understand the ignorant servant-girl who pays the half-crown she can ill spare for some wretched hag in a garret to read the cards for her and tell her her future; but there is nothing more amazing in the mysteries of London than the hold which the clairvoyante and the "divineress"—generally, according to themselves, "the seventh child of a seventh child"—still have upon the minds of women of education and position.

There is hardly one of the clairvoyantes who practised in the West until the law stepped in who is not still carrying on the business, though in a more secret and a less profitable manner.

Here is a house that the agents would call "a desirable villa residence." It stands in a long garden at the corner of one of the leafy roads of St. John's Wood.

Within its walls meets a little band of men and women who go through strange ceremonies and perform strange rites, and almost worship as their leader a woman who calls herself a prophetess, and who has persuaded her ignorant dupes that she is directly appointed to save them from death. The semblance of death they will know, but their souls will pass into other bodies, and in a reincarnated state they will continue to live upon the earth in greater happiness and greater health and strength and well-being than they ever knew before.

The policeman on duly passes the house at night and flashes his lantern on the door, but he has no idea of the strange orgies of exaltation which take place behind the closed shutters of that charming villa residence.

There are "offerings" to the prophetess, the giving up of jewellery and "adornments" for the good of the cause, and so it may be that one day the Old Bailey will see "a prophetess" in the dock again, and the spectators will look with astonishment at the men and women who enter the witness-box to tell a story that will startle the newspaper reader and make the humdrum world open its eyes and say, "Can such things be in these days of enlightenment?"

In a road running off the outer circle of Regent's Park there is another house of mystery. It is walled in in front, and there is a door in the wall which is always kept locked.

If you ring the bell a man-servant will open the little trap in the door and look at you keenly.

You are not likely to be admitted unless you have satisfied the janitor that your visit is expected, and that your presence will be welcome to the master of the house.