What I Remember, Volume 1

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

On subsequent visits we assured ourselves of the entire truthfulness of statements to the effect that Emma was conscious of the approach of Dr. Elliotson, while he was still in a different street, and to the punctuality with which she went to sleep and waked, at the hour she had named herself as that when she should do so.

I remember Dr. Elliotson relating to me, as an instance of the utility of the magnetic influence, a curious case to which he had been called. The brother of a young girl had, as a practical joke, suddenly fired off a pistol behind her head. She was of course painfully startled, with the result of becoming affected by a fit of hiccough so persistent, that no means could be found or suggested of making it cease. It was absolutely impossible for the girl to swallow anything. She was becoming exhausted, and the case assumed a really alarming aspect. It was at this conjuncture that Elliotson was called in. He succeeded in putting her into a magnetic sleep, with of course perfect calm, after which the hiccough returned no more.

But by far the most curious and interesting of Elliotson’s cases was one, of which a good deal was, I think, said and printed in those days, but of which very few persons, probably, saw as much as I did—the case of the two Okey girls. They were both patients, I believe for some form of catalepsy, in a hospital of which Dr. Elliotson was one of the leading physicians. Dr. Elliotson was obliged to throw up his position there, because those who were in authority at the hospital were bitterly opposed to his magnetising experiments and practice. And about the same time, or shortly afterwards, the Okey girls were dismissed for a cause which seems grotesquely absurd, but the story of which is strictly true. These girls, of, I suppose, about thirteen and fourteen, being in the very extraordinary condition which a prolonged course of magnetising had produced (of which I shall speak further presently) were in the habit of declaring that they “saw Jack” at the bedside of this or that patient in the hospital. And the patients of whom they made this assertion invariably died! That the presence of such prophetesses in the hospital was undesirable is intelligible enough; but what are we to think of the motives, presentiments, instincts, intuitions of mental or physical nature which prompted such guesses or prophecies?

Much about the same time my brother had a serious and dangerous illness, so much so that his medical attendants—of whom Dr. Elliotson was, I know not why, not one, though we were intimate with him at the time—were by no means assured respecting the issue of it. Now it is within my own knowledge that the Okey girls, especially one of them (Jane, I think, her name was), were very frequently in the lodgings occupied by my brother at the time, during the period of his greatest danger, and used constantly to say that they “saw Jack by his side, but only up to his knee,” and therefore they thought he would recover—as he did! I am almost ashamed to write what seems such childish absurdity. But the facts are certain, and taken in conjunction with the cause of the girls’ dismissal from the hospital, and with a statement made to me subsequently by Dr. Elliotson, they are very curious. I may add that when cross-examined as closely as was possible as to what they saw, the girls said they did not know—that they did know that certain persons whom they saw were about to die shortly, and that was their way of saying it. They, on more than one occasion, on reaching our house by omnibus, said that they had seen “Jack” by the side of one of the passengers—of course I cannot say with what issue.

The statement referred to was as follows:—Elliotson having been in some sort the cause of the two girls being turned out of the hospital, and being anxious, moreover, to continue his observations on them, took them into his own house. There looking out one day from an upper window, they saw across the street at the opposite window three fine healthy-looking children. They were, said Elliotson, the children of a hairdresser, who had a shop below. “What a pity,” said Jane Okey, “that that child in the middle has Jack at him. He will die!” And so within a day or two—it might have been hours, I am not certain—the child did die! Believing, as I do, Dr. Elliotson to have been a truthful and habitually accurate speaker, I confess that it does not satisfy me to dismiss this story, especially when taken in conjunction with the other anecdotes I have related, as mere “coincidence,” though I have no shadow of a theory to offer in explanation of it.

The purely physical experiments which were performed with these girls before my eyes were curious and interesting. I have seen those Okey girls, and they were slight small girls, lift weights, which it would be quite impossible for them to lift normally, not by applying the whole strength of the body and back to the task, but by taking the ring of an iron weight in the hand, and so lifting it in obedience to the “passes” of the magnetiser applied to the arm.

But decidedly the most singular and curious part of the case consisted in the abnormal condition of mind and intelligence in which they lived under magnetic influence for many weeks at a time. There were three conditions, or, as it might be said, three stages of condition in which I saw and studied them. Firstly—though it was lastly as regards my opportunities of observation—there was their normal natural condition. Secondly, there was a condition not of trance, or somnambulism, but of existence carried on according to the usual laws and conditions, but resulting apparently from the application of magnetism during prolonged periods of time, during which complete interruption of conscious identity seemed to have taken place. The third state was that of trance. In the first state they were much such as children of that age taken out of a workhouse, say, might be expected to be—awkward, shy, seemingly stupid, and unwilling to speak much when questioned. In the second state they were bright, decidedly clever, apt to be pert, and perfectly self-confident. And in this condition they had no recollection whatsoever of any of the circumstances, persons, or things connected with their previous lives. It was in this state that they talked about “Jack,” and in this state that we—my mother and myself—knew them for weeks together. While in this state a very slight accident was sufficient to produce cataleptic rigidity and trance; often one without the other. I remember one of the girls dining once with us in the middle of the day. A dish of peas was handed round, the spoon in which, it being hot weather, was no doubt heated by the successive hands which had used it. When Jane Okey grasped it in her hand to take some peas her fingers became clenched around it, and she could not open them. But there ensued no trance or other manifestation of catalepsy. On another occasion she was in my mother’s house playing on the accordion, which she did very nicely in her magnetic state, but could not do at all in her normal state, and I, sitting at the other side of the room opposite to her, and reading a book, was moving my hand in time to the music, though not thinking of her or of it. Suddenly she fell back in a trance, magnetised unconsciously by me by the “passes” I was making with my hand. I have also produced a similar result by magnetising her intentionally behind her back, while she was entirely unconscious of what I was doing.

But perhaps the most singular and remarkable scene connected with these girls was that which occurred when, their physical health having been very greatly, if not perfectly, restored, it became necessary to take them out of that “second state,” which has been above described, and to restore them to their former consciousness, their former life, and their parents. The scene was a very painful one. The mother only, as far as I remember, was present. Memory seemed only gradually, and at first, very partially, to return to them. The mother was a respectable, but poor and very uneducated woman, and of course wholly different in intelligence and manners from all the surroundings to which the girls had become habituated. And the expression of repulsion and dismay, with which they at first absolutely refused to believe the statements that were made to them, or to accept their mother as such, while she, poor woman, was weeping at what appeared to her this newly developed absence of all natural affection, was painful in the extreme.

Subsequently the daughter of one of these girls lived for some years, I think, with my brother’s family at Waltham, as a housemaid.

The next reminiscences I have in connection with this subject belong to a time a few years later.