No Spiritualist can quarrel with me for dwelling on this famous materialization. It is supposed to be the mostly firmly authenticated in the whole movement. Sir W. Crookes said, quite late in life, that he had "nothing to retract"; and every Spiritualist who quotes his high authority endorses the materialization of Katie King. The majority of the public to-day will merely conclude that some scientific men are worse witnesses on such matters than dockers, and that the disgust of scientific men like Sir E. Ray Lankester and Sir Bryan Donkin has a very solid foundation. Even at the time there were leading Spiritualists like Sergeant Cox who regarded the affair with bewilderment and suspected that all materializations were fraud.
What can be said for Sir W. Crookes? He alleges that the medium and the ghost were unmistakably different persons. Katie King was taller than Florrie. But Florence Cook, like her contemporary, Miss Showers, was seen to walk on tip-toe, and alter her stature, when she was the ghost. Sir W. Crookes nowhere says that he took the elementary precaution of measuring ghost and medium with their dresses drawn up to their knees. He says that the lock of hair which Katie gave him as a memento was auburn, and Florrie's hair was very dark brown. But we do not doubt that on the last occasion the ghost was not Florence Cook. Other differences he finds, in a dim light, are negligible. If the modern Spiritualist really believes Sir W. Crookes, as he professes to do, he must come to this ultra-miraculous conclusion: The spiritual powers in this case did not merely take some matter out of Florence Cook's body, but they took more than the whole substance of it, because Crookes says that Katie was taller and broader than Florrie! And, to cap this supreme miracle, he on one occasion saw ghost and medium together, and apparently Florrie was as solid as ever! The spirits had in this case multiplied nine stone into eighteen or nineteen.
After twenty years of religious controversy I am a patient man, but I decline to argue with any one who doubts that Florrie Cook (four times caught in fraud, and a pupil of Herne) impersonated the ghost.
Mr. F. Podmore saw the photographs which Professor Crookes took. He says that ghost and medium are the same person. Crookes himself was nervous, in spite of Florrie's charms, and he begged to be allowed to see ghost and medium plainly together. The artful Florence could not manage that in his house. Once she let him look at her, lying on the ground, but he saw no face or hands; and a bundle of clothes and a pair of boots are not quite clearly a living person. He pressed again. Florence—he tells us this very naively—borrowed his lamp (a bottle of phosphorized oil) and tested its penetrating power, and then told him he should see both ghost and medium in her house. He went, and we are not surprised that he saw them.
If any Spiritualist of our time really doubts that on this occasion there were two girls, I invite him to read carefully Sir W. Crookes's account of the famous farewell scene. Katie proclaimed that her mission was over (she had converted a scientific man), and this was to be her last appearance. Florrie (who was in a trance, of course) wept, vainly implored her to visit this earth again, and sank, broken-hearted, to the floor. Katie directed Crookes—who stood, mute, with his phosphorus lamp in the middle of this pretty comedy—to see to Florrie, and, when he turned round again, Katie King had vanished for ever. That is to say, she had not been re-absorbed in the medium's body, as Spiritualist theory demands, but had gone in the opposite direction while his back was turned!
Now there you have the most wonderful, classic, historic materialization in the whole Spiritualist history. It is attested by a distinguished man of science. It is endorsed by all the Spiritualist leaders of our time. And it is piffle from beginning to end. The evidence would not justify a man in drowning a mouse. The control was ridiculously inadequate. The imposture was palpable. If Sir W. Crookes had taken the scientific precaution of spreading a few tacks on the carpet, or waxing a bent pin in the ghost's chair, he would have heard the Hackney dialect at its richest. It was reserved for two Oxford undergraduates to show Sir W. Crookes how to investigate ghosts. They seized "Marie," Florrie's next spirit, in 1880; and they found they had in their arms the charming Florence, in her lingerie. Crookes had never searched the ample black velvet dress she used to wear.
It is hardly worth while running over all the ghostly frauds since then, but a word about Florrie's friend and contemporary, Miss Showers, will be found instructive. Miss Showers was a really unpaid medium; though she received a good deal in the way of jewellery and other presents from admirers of her fair and aristocratic ghost, "Lenore Fitzwarren." She was a general's daughter, and above suspicion. No one dreamed of searching her. On one occasion she allowed Florence Cook to peep into her cabinet; and Florence—hawks do not pick out hawks' eyes—assured the public that she plainly saw Miss Showers and "Lenore," and even a second ghost, simultaneously. But, alas for the fair Lenore! Sergeant Cox, who was very sceptical, had Miss Showers at his country-house in 1874; and Miss Cox, a born daughter of Eve, tried to draw the curtain and peep into the cabinet. Miss Showers fought for her curtain, and the ghostly headdress fell off, and the game was up.
This was only four months after the exposure of Florence Cook. The two most certainly genuine and respectable mediums in England were unmasked within four months. R. D. Owen's "Katie King" had been exposed in America in the previous year, the last sad year of the old man's life.