That is the official judgment which Spiritualists constantly represent as acquitting Home of fraud! This man, scornfully lashed as a greedy impostor from the British Bench, is the snow-white medium recommended to the public by Sir A. C. Doyle, Sir W. Barrett, Sir W. Crookes, and Sir O. Lodge. Sir Arthur adds in his Vital Message (p. 55) that "the genuineness of his psychic powers has never been seriously questioned." That statement is hardly less astounding. Home's performances, which we will examine in the third chapter, were regarded by the overwhelming majority of the cultivated people of his time as trickery of the most sordid description from beginning to end. Has Sir A. C. Doyle never heard of Browning's "Sludge"? It expressed the opinion of nearly all London.
As to Stainton Moses, the other lamb, an ex-minister who ran Home close in sleight-of-hand and foot (in the dark), it is enough to say, with Carrington, that "no test conditions were ever allowed to be imposed upon this medium." Spiritualists ought to quote that whenever they quote the miracles of Stainton Moses. His tricks were always performed—in very bad light (if any)—before a few chosen friends, who had not the least inclination to look for fraud. Home was never exposed, though he was once caught, because he chose his sitters. But Stainton Moses chose a far more exclusive circle of sitters, and never once had a critical eye on him. We shall see that the tricks themselves brand him as a fraud. He was not exposed; but it was the sitters who were lambs, not Stainton Moses.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in effect, recommends two further mediums as snow-white. One is Kathleen Goligher, of Belfast, whose performances shall speak for her in our third chapter. The other is "Eva C.," whose miracles will be examined in the second chapter. We shall see that she was detected cheating over and over again. At the present juncture, however, I would make only a few general remarks about this living "lamb."
In a work which was published in 1914—in German by Baron von Schrenck-Notzing, and in French by Mme. Bisson (they are not two distinct books, as Sir A. C. Doyle says)—there are 150 photographs of "materializations" with this medium. We shall see that they tell their own story of crude imposture. In the introductory part of his book Baron Schrenck describes the character of the lady (pp. 51-4). He says, politely, that she has "moral sentiments only in the ego-centric sense" (that is to say, none); that she "behaves improperly to herself"; that she "lost her virginity before she was twenty"; and that she has "a lively, erotic imagination" and an "exaggerated idea of her charms and her influence on the male sex." That is bad enough for a snow-white Vestal Virgin, a sacred portal of the new revelation. But worse was to follow; and it was evident to me during the Debate that, while Sir A. C. Doyle twitted me with knowing nothing about these matters, he was himself quite ignorant of the developments of this case six years before. The young woman's real name, Marthe Beraud, had been concealed by Baron Schrenck, and her age mis-stated by six years, for a very good reason—she is the "Marthe B." who was recommended to us in 1905 as a wonderful medium by Sir Oliver Lodge, and who was detected and exposed (in Algiers) in 1907! Baron Schrenck was forced to acknowledge her real age and name in 1914.
Where, then, are the snow-whites? Does Sir A. C. Doyle want us to go back to the pure early days of the movement? Take the Foxes, who began the movement. In 1888 Margaretta Fox, who had married Captain Kane, the Arctic explorer, and had been brought to some sense of her misconduct by him, confessed (in the New York Herald, September 24) that the movement was from the start a gross fraud, engineered for profit by her elder sister, and that the whole Spiritualist movement of America was steeped in fraud and immorality.
Perhaps Sir A. C. Doyle would plead that this appalling outburst of fraud, which poured over America from 1848 to 1888, was only the occasion of the appearance of genuine mediums. Well, who are they? Take the mediums who founded Spiritualism in England from 1852 onward. Was Foster white? As early as 1863 the Spiritualist Judge, Edmonds, learned "sickening details of his criminality." Was Colchester, who was detected and exposed, white? What was the colour of the Holmes family, whose darling spirit-control, "Katie King," got so much jewellery from poor old R. D. Owen before she was found out? Are we to see no spots on the egregious "Dr." Monck, who pretended that he was taken from his bed in Bristol and put to bed in Swindon by spirit hands? Or in corpulent Mrs. Guppy (an amateur who duped A. Russel Wallace for years), who swore that she had been snatched from her table in her home at Ball's Pond, taken across London (and through several solid walls) for three miles at sixty miles an hour, and deposited on the table in a locked room? Was Charles Williams white? He was, with Rita, detected by Spiritualists at Amsterdam in 1878 with a whole ghost-making apparatus in his possession. Were Bastian and Taylor white? They were similarly exposed at Arnheim in 1874. Was Florence Cook, the pupil of Herne (the transporter of Mrs. Guppy at sixty miles an hour) and bewitcher of Sir W. Crookes, white? We shall soon see. Was her friend and contemporary ghost-producer, Miss Showers, never exposed? Or does Sir A. C. Doyle want us to believe in Morse, or Eglinton, or Slade, or the Davenport brothers, or Mrs. Fay, or Miss Davenport, or Duguid, or Fowler, or Hudson, or Miss Wood, or Mme. Blavatsky?
These are not a few black sheep picked out of a troop of snowy fleeces. They are the great mediums of the first forty years of the movement. They are the men and women who converted Russel Wallace, and Crookes, and Robert Owen, and Judge Edmunds, and Vice-Admiral Moore, and all the other celebrities. They are the mediums whose exploits filled the columns of the Spiritualist, the Medium and Daybreak, and the Banner of Light. Cut these and Home and Moses out of the chronicle, and you have precious little left on which to found a religion.
Spiritualists think that they lessen the reproach to some extent by the "grey" theory. Some mediums have genuine powers, but a time comes when the powers fail and, as the audience presses for a return on its money, they resort to trickery. That is only another way of saying that a medium is white until he is found out, which usually takes some years, as the conditions (dictated by the mediums) are the best possible for fraud and the worse possible for exposure.
But Sir A. C. Doyle is not fortunate in his example. Indeed, nearly every statement he made in his debate with me was inaccurate. Eusapia Palladino was a typical "grey," he says. "One cannot read her record," he assures us, "without feeling that for the first fifteen years of her mediumship she was quite honest." An amazing statement! Her whole career as a public medium lasted little more than fifteen years, and she tricked from the very beginning of it. In his New Revelation Sir Arthur assures the public that she "was at least twice convicted of very clumsy and foolish fraud" (p. 46).