At the 83rd sitting, when Mr and Mrs Thompson were again present, Phinuit said all at once,—
"Here's Dr Rich;" upon which Dr Rich proceeds to speak.
Dr Rich.—"It is very kind of this gentleman" (i.e., Dr Phinuit) "to let me speak to you. Mr Thompson, I want you to give a message to father."
Mr Thompson.—"I will give it."
Dr R.—"Thank you a thousand times; it is very good of you. You see I passed out rather suddenly. Father was very much troubled about it, and he is troubled yet. He hasn't got over it. Tell him that I am alive—that I send my love to him. Where are my glasses" (the medium passes her hands over her eyes)? "I used to wear glasses" (true). "I think he has them, and some of my books. There was a little black case I had; I think he has that too. I don't want that lost. Sometimes he is bothered about a dizzy feeling in his head—nervous about it—but it is of no consequence."
Mr T.—"What does your father do?"
(The medium took up a card and appeared to write on it, and pretended to put stamp in corner.)
Dr R.—"He attends to this sort of thing. Mr Thompson, if you will give this message I will help you in many ways. I can and I will."
Professor Lodge remarks about this incident, "Mr Rich, senior, is head of Liverpool Post Office. His son, Dr Rich, was almost a stranger to Mr Thompson, and quite a stranger to me. The father was much distressed by his son's death, we find. Mr Thompson has since been to see him and given him the message. He (Mr Rich, senior) considers the episode very extraordinary and inexplicable, except by fraud of some kind. The phrase, 'Thank you a thousand times,' he asserts to be characteristic, and he admits a recent slight dizziness. Mr Rich did not know what his son means by a black case. The only person who could give any information about it was at the time in Germany. But it was reported that Dr Rich talked constantly about a black case when he was on his deathbed."
No doubt Mr and Mrs Thompson knew Dr Rich, having met him once. But they were quite ignorant of all the details here given. Whence did the medium take them? Not from the "influence" left on some object, because there was no such object at the sitting.