There are signs of gathering thunder all around the spiritualistic sky.
A leading spiritualist, a lawyer, who had read the Herald’s recent articles on the subject, demanded of Mrs. Katy Fox Jencken, immediately upon her arrival in New York on Tuesday, that she refuse to support her sister Maggie in her exposé of mediumistic fraud, and, to use his own words, that she “throw herself upon the sympathy of the spiritualists.”
This proposition she emphatically rejected and declared that she had done forever with Spiritualism and spiritualists. She firmly believes that leading men and women among the latter, particularly her eldest sister Leah, are her secret persecutors, and that it was due to their animus that she was arrested last spring and deprived of her two boys, to whom she is immeasurably devoted.
There is much to sustain this charge, and the inference that this mysterious persecution, of which, as she alleges, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was only the instrument, was inspired by the fear that she and Mrs. Kane, having long been exploited for the financial benefit of others, might do the very thing they are doing now—betray the secrets of deception, which have from the beginning of the spiritualistic movement been so well guarded.
As was said in the Herald yesterday, Mrs. Jencken knew nothing of the course which her sister Maggie had taken until she landed on the wharf of the Monarch line company. The Herald did not state yesterday that Mrs. Jencken was accompanied by her two boys, whom the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children made such great efforts to keep apart from their mother in last May. As soon as she heard the news of Maggie’s disclosures from a friend who met her at the steamer, she was overcome with fear lest, being now aware of the means that had been employed to secure their release and her own, the society would again attempt to deprive her of her children. She was advised by a lawyer who knew the real source of the hostility to her and the motives that prompted it, to send them back at once to England. The boys declared that they did not want to fall into the hands of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children again. Both of them are now strapping big fellows for their age, and are able and willing to earn their own living. One is fourteen years old and the other will be soon sixteen. But for a misunderstanding as to their ages on the part of the police justice last spring there would never have been any question of retaining them in the custody of Mr. Gerry’s over-zealous myrmidons.
Mrs. Jencken’s apprehensions, however, were not to be quieted, and early in the morning she bundled off the two lads [and they are now safely beyond the jurisdiction of the dreaded society of which Mr. E. T. Gerry is the chief].[2]
“This shows,” said a gentleman yesterday, “how far certain wealthy spiritualists are powerful to inspire a kind of terrorism even in New York city among those who have left their ranks.”
“Now that my boys are out of danger,” said Mrs. Jencken, “I will stand by my sister Maggie and go to the very fullest length of any exposure that she may make. We have been the tools and victims of others long enough. I approve and I affirm all that she has said about the immoral practices hidden under the ridiculous cloak of Spiritualism. The whole thing is damnable, and it should long ago have been trampled, out as one would trample out the life of a serpent.”