Leah began in 1869, every other branch of Spiritualist conjuring having now been fully explored, to produce a ghost at her sittings. In the dark a veiled and luminous female figure walked solemnly about the room, and profoundly impressed the sitters. The mere fact of walking—ghosts have to glide nowadays—would tell a modern audience that the ghost was the very solid medium; and the luminosity would have an aroma of phosphorus to a modern nostril. But the Americans of 1869 were not very critical. A few months later a wealthy New York banker, Livermore, lost his wife, and the "hyenas"—as Sir A. C. Doyle calls mediums who prey on the affections of the bereaved—hastened to relieve his grief and his purse. For four hundred sittings, spread over a space of six years, Katie Fox impersonated his dead wife. As Katie Fox confessed in 1888 that Spiritualism was "all humbuggery—every bit of it," we need not enter into a learned analysis of these sittings.
English mediums were put on their mettle, and after a little practice in private they announced that they had the same powers of materialization, and it was unnecessary to bring over the Americans. Mrs. Guppy, the pride of London Spiritualism, opened this new and rich vein. The story of Mrs. Guppy need not be told here. It is enough that, while she was still Miss Nichol, she was the chief medium to convert Dr. Russel Wallace to Spiritualism; and that, on the other hand, she was the lady who professed that she was aerially transported by spirits from Highbury to Lamb's Conduit Street, and through several solid walls, in the space of three minutes. Mrs. Guppy was above suspicion: first because she was unpaid, and secondly because she exposed several fraudulent mediums. So Mrs. Guppy set up her little peep-show in the first month of 1872, and drew fashionable London. But the performance was rather tame. While Mrs. Guppy sat in the cabinet, a little white face appeared, in the dim moonlight, at an opening near the top of the cabinet. It did not speak, as the New York ghosts did. Dolls do not speak.
A few months later Herne and Williams, the professional friends of Mrs. Guppy whose spirit-controls had wafted that very voluminous lady as rapidly as a zeppelin across London, set up a more robust performance. As they sat in the cabinet (unseen), spirit-forms emerged—dim, luminous, but unmistakably alive—and moved about the room. It was the first appearance in England of those famous spirits, John King, the converted pirate, and Katie King, his daughter, who had been a great attraction in America for several years. John's beard looked rather theatrical, and his lamp smelt of phosphorus. But what would you? Spirits have to use earthly chemicals; and they would find plenty of phosphorus in the brain of Charlie Williams, not to speak of his pockets, which were never searched. Again we may save ourselves the trouble of a learned analysis of the phenomena by recalling that Williams presently dissolved partnership with Herne, and entered into an alliance with Rita; and that in 1878 the precious pair were seized during a performance, and searched, at Amsterdam. Rita had a false beard, six handkerchiefs, and a bottle of phosphorized oil. Williams had the familiar false black beard and dirty drapery of "John King," and bottles of phosphorized oil and scent.
The Spiritualist reader here impatiently observes that I am merely picking out a few little irregularities in the early days of the movement. Far from it. I am scientifically studying the preparatory stages of one of the classic manifestations of the movement: the materializations of Florence Cook, which are vouched for by Sir W. Crookes, Sir A. C. Doyle, and, apparently, all the leaders of the movement. If the Spiritualist wishes, like other people, honestly to understand "Katie King," he or she must read this part of the story which I am giving, and which is generally omitted (though it may be read in any history of the movement).
Florence Cook was a pretty little Hackney girl of sixteen when Herne and Williams began. She attended séances at their house in Lamb's Conduit Street, and she was so impressed that she became a pupil of Herne. She and her father seem to have understood each other very well, and she very shortly began to give, to paying guests, materialization-séances in their house at Hackney. Florence went one better than Mrs. Guppy and Herne. There was a lamp in the room—at the far side of the room—and you saw faces plainly at the opening in the cabinet. As her "power" developed, the ghost began to leave the cabinet and walk about the room and talk to the sitters. Florence remained bound with rope in the cabinet while "Katie King" stalked abroad. You did not see her, it is true, but you had her word for it. She was not bound by the spectators—nor by herself, of course. She was bound by the spirits. A rope was put on her lap, the curtains were drawn, and presently you discovered Florrie, "securely" bound and in a trance, in the cabinet. The curtains were drawn again when the ghost, in flowing white drapery, walked the room.
Meantime, and at a very early date, a Manchester Spiritualist named Blackburn privately engaged to give Florrie an annual fee if she would not take money at the door; so she became an "unpaid" and highly respectable medium. Jewellery is, of course, not money, and Florrie exacted jewellery (as the Spiritualist Volckmann found and said in the London Press at the time, when he wanted to attend) from would-be sitters through her father. It is said that she looked, in features, remarkably like a Jewess.
Her fame reached the ears of a brilliant young scientist, Professor W. Crookes, and he invited her to materialize at his house. She soon laid aside all dread of the scientific man. In three niggardly little letters, which he never republished, Crookes described in 1874 the wonderful things done at his house. While Florrie lay in an improvised cabinet, or behind a curtain, the beautiful and romantic and quite different maiden, Katie King, walked about his room. She played with Crookes's children, and told them stories about her earthly life in India long ago. She talked affably to his guests, and took his arm as she walked. There was not the least doubt about her solidity. The wicked sceptic who suggests that Katie King was a muslin doll or a streak of light has certainly not read Crookes's letters. He felt her pulse, he sounded her heart and lungs, he cut off a tress of her lovely auburn hair, he took her in his arms, and he—well, he breaks off here and simply asks us what any man would do in the circumstances? We assume that he found that she had lips and warm breath like any other maiden.
Florence Cook's opinion of scientific men would to-day be priceless. I will say, on behalf of Sir W. Crookes, that he never obtruded this sacred experience on the public. He "accidentally" destroyed all the negatives and photographs he had taken of Katie King. He forbade friends, to whom he had given copies, ever to publish them. The three short letters he wrote to the Spiritualist (February 6, April 3, and June 5, 1874—I have, of course, read them) are now rare. He wrote them out of chivalry, because a rival Spiritualist, Volckmann (who married Mrs. Guppy), got admission to the Hackney sanctuary (by a present of jewellery) and exposed Florence (December 9, 1873). He saw at once that she was impersonating the spirit, and he seized it. Other Spiritualists present, supporters of Florrie, tore him off, and turned out the lamp; and five minutes later Florence was found, bound and peacefully entranced, in her cabinet. In the hubbub that followed Professor Crookes gave his modest testimonial to Florrie's virtue. Spiritualists generally accepted her version, and she continued to make ghosts until 1880, when Sir George Sitwell and Baron von Buch exposed her in precisely the same way.