Is Spiritualism Based on Fraud? / The Evidence Given by Sir A.C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined

by Joseph McCabe

Mrs. Fay's most characteristic séance was when she sat in the middle of a circle of sitters, a bell and a guitar beside her. Her husband, "Colonel" Fay, was in the circle, but, as they held each other's hands, it was presumed that he could do nothing to help her if he wished. Mrs. Fay then began to clap her hands. The lights were extinguished, and, although Mrs. Fay continued to clap her hands loudly, so that you could be sure she was not using them, the bell was rung, the tambourine played, the sitters' beards were pulled, and so on. This was easy. When the gas was put out, Mrs. Fay no longer slapped her left hand against her right, but against her forehead or cheek—perhaps slapped the Colonel's face for a variation—and had the right hand free for business. No doubt the Colonel also released a hand, as we have seen Eusapia Palladino do, and joined the band.

When this trick was realized, Mrs. Fay used to allow herself to be bound with tapes to a stake erected on the stage. A few minutes after the lights were put out the band began its ghostly, but not very impressive, music. Sometimes a pail was put beside her, and it was raised by invisible hands (in the dark) on to her head. When the light was restored Mrs. Fay was discovered still bound to the stake, the knots and seals intact. By an accident at one of her performances Mr. Podmore was enabled to see how she did it, and the secret has long been known. The tapes supplied had to be fastened in such a way that she could with great speed slip them up her slender arms and get into a working position. Maskelyne also exposed her, and trade fell off so badly that she made him an offer, by letter, to go on his stage and, for payment, show how all the tricks were done. She had by that time converted hundreds to Spiritualism.

There were various other forms of the musical performance. One medium used to sit in sight of the audience with a sitter holding his hands. A cloth was then put over them both, from the neck downward, the lights extinguished, and the usual band began. He had released one hand, by the familiar trick, and reached behind him for the instruments.

The medium, Bastian, also played instruments in the dark. At Arnheim, where he was edifying the Dutch Spiritualists, he was suspected, and it was arranged to ignite some inflammable cotton by an electric current from the next room. The next time a ghostly hand played the guitar above the heads of the sitters, the signal was given, and the flash lit the room. The guitar fell hastily to the table, and Bastian's hand retreated rapidly to its right place. His English Spiritualist admirers accepted his explanation that it was a "materialized" hand that was seen shrinking back into his body. One medium strummed his guitar with a long pencil which he took with his teeth out of his inner coat-pocket and held with his teeth. Others had telescopic rods or "lazy tongs" hidden about them, and used these in the dark.

The binding of mediums with cords or tapes is a "precaution against fraud" which was thoroughly exposed fifty years ago. Many of Sir A. C. Doyle's own admirers were pained when he announced to the world his belief in the genuineness of the performance of two Welsh colliers, the Thomas brothers. Their "manifestations" were prehistoric. More than fifty years ago spectators were invited to tie up the mediums, and as long ago as 1883 Mr. Maskelyne was exhibiting the trick. The Davenport brothers, the latest American marvels, had toured England. Most people will remember how they were held up at Liverpool by some one tying the rope in knots with which they were not familiar. The spirits failed entirely to play the tambourine when the tying-up was properly done, and the instrument was put out of reach of the medium's mouth. As usual, it had been said for months that fraud was "absolutely excluded."

Later mediums found the solution of this difficulty. The medium kept a sharp knife-blade within reach of his teeth, and, when knots proved too stubborn, he cut the rope and freed himself. He had a spare rope in his clothes and fastened himself—or was bound by a confederate—before the lights went up. People thought that they could prevent this by sealing the knots. It was useless. The medium had chewing gum of the same colour as sealing-wax, and the seals were imitated with this. These desperate shifts are, however, rarely necessary. While he is being tied the medium catches a loop of the rope with his thumb, and this gives him plenty of slack to use. I have seen a medium laced tight into a leather arm-case, and get out behind the curtain in three minutes. He had caught a loop of the lace with his thumb, and the rest was tooth work.

It was therefore little wonder that when the Thomas brothers were brought from the valleys of South Wales to London their ancient miracles would not work. A recent convert to Spiritualism, Mr. S. A. Moseley, describes their work on their native heath (or hearth) with the same awe and simplicity as Sir A. C. Doyle had done. Many of us knew the history of Spiritualism, and smiled. They were brought to London by the Daily Express in 1919, and here, where sceptics abounded and the need of convincing evidence was at its most acute, "White Eagle" (the Red Indian spirit who controls Will Thomas) and all his band of merry men were powerless. Will Thomas was properly bound, the tambourine and castanets were put out of reach, and his brother was isolated. All that happened—the throwing of a badge-button and a pair of braces to the audience—is within the range of possibilities of the human mouth.

Let us now turn to another bright and classical page in the history of Spiritualism: the experiments of Professor Zöllner with the medium Slade. Sir A. C. Doyle granted in the Debate, with an air of generosity, that Slade "cheated occasionally," but he insisted that Slade's phenomena in the house of Professor Zöllner were genuine. Now, as long as Sir A. C. Doyle does this kind of thing, as long as he assures his readers that he will not build on any medium who has been convicted of fraud and then builds on such a medium, as long as he tells his readers (who will not check the facts) that a medium who was exposed over and over again merely "cheated occasionally," it is no use for him to assert that he is trying to purge Spiritualism of fraud. Slade was a cynical impostor from beginning to end of his career.

I will show in the next chapter but one how Slade confessed his habitual fraud as early as 1872, how he was exposed and arrested in London in 1876, and how he was exposed again in Canada in 1882 and in the United States in 1884. A word about the last occasion will suffice for my purpose here. Henry Seybert, a Spiritualist, left a large sum of money to the University of Pennsylvania on the condition that the University authorities would appoint a commission to examine into (among other things) the claims of Spiritualism. They did; and it was the most unlucky inspiration the ghosts of the dead ever conveyed. Very few mediums would face the professors, and those who did were shown to be all frauds. Slade was one of these, and the Pennsylvania professors, wondering how any trained man could be taken in by so palpable a fraud, sent a representative to Leipsic to investigate the experiences of Professor Zöllner and the three other German professors who had endorsed Slade. The gist of his report was that of the four professors one (Zöllner) was in an early stage of insanity (he died shortly afterwards), one (Fechner) was nearly blind, the third (Weber) was seventy-four years old, and the fourth (Scheibner) was very short-sighted, yet did not (as Sir A. C. Doyle says) entirely endorse the phenomena!

I have not been able to discover evidence that Zöllner's mind was really deranged, but he certainly approached the inquiry with a theory of a fourth dimension of space, and was most eager to get his theory confirmed by the experiments. The key to the whole situation is, therefore, lack of sharp control. Slade had been conjuring for years, and was an expert in substitution. He had a purblind audience, and he astutely guided the professor until the conditions of the experiment suited him. He knew beforehand, as a rule, what apparatus Zöllner would use, and he duplicated his wooden rings, thongs, etc. An excellent study of his tricks in detail will be found in Carrington's Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. Sir A. C. Doyle speaks of the shattering of a screen in Slade's presence as an indisputably superhuman feat. But before the séance no one had thought of looking to see if the screen had been taken to pieces and lightly tied together by a black thread which Slade could pull asunder at will!