0807. THE DEATH BLOW TO SPIRITUALISM.

Being the true story of the Fox sisters, as revealed by authority of Margaret
Fox Kane and Catherine Fox Jencken. Written by R. B. Davenport. 147 pages.
Deathblow to Spiritualism. R. B. Davenport 1.00

OCT. 1897. ISSUED MONTHLY. $5.00 PER YEAR.
ENTERED AT THE NEW YORK POST OFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER.

THE
DEATH-BLOW
TO
SPIRITUALISM:

BEING
THE TRUE STORY OF THE FOX SISTERS, AS REVEALED
BY AUTHORITY OF MARGARET FOX
KANE AND CATHERINE FOX JENCKEN.

BY
REUBEN BRIGGS DAVENPORT.

NEW YORK:
G. W. Dillingham Co., Publishers.
MDCCCXCVII.

Copyright, 1888.
BY
Reuben Briggs Davenport.
[All Rights Reserved.]

TO
MRS. HESTER S. DWINELLE.

PREFACE.

This book has been written in extreme haste. It does not pretend to literary style. But it pretends to absolute truthfulness and a reverent regard for justice.

Its sole value is its character as a contribution to the real history of Spiritualism. As such, it is unquestionably of great importance, greater even than any work of the kind that has been published since the beginning of modern Spiritualism.

It is, in fact, what its title sets forth—“The DEATH-BLOW to SPIRITUALISM.”

No one who does not love illusion for illusion’s sake—better, in other words, than he loves the truth—can, after reading this volume, remain a follower of Spiritualism and its hypocritical apostles.

The full authorization of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane and Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken for the publication of this work will be found on the next to the following page.

29th October, 1888.

We hereby approve of Mr. Reuben B. Davenport’s design to write a true account of the origin of Spiritualism and of our connection therewith, and we authorize him to make proper use of all data and material that we furnish him.

New York, 15th Oct., 1888.

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTION.

POETIC JUSTICE OF THE EXPOSURE.

That the inventors of an infamous fraud should deal to it its death-blow, is the poetic justice of fate.

Over the creature, the creator has power of life and death.

The creators of Spiritualism abjure its infamy.

They decree its death.

They condemn it to final destruction.

They fasten upon those who continue to practice it the obloquy of history, and the scorn of mankind for all time to come.

Margaret and Catharine Fox, the youngest of three sisters, were the first to produce “spiritualistic manifestations.”

They are now the most earnest in denunciation of those impostures; the most eager to dissipate the foolish belief of thousands in the flimsiest system of deception that was ever cloaked with the hypocrisy of so-called religion.

When, as by accident, they discovered a method of deceiving those around them by means of mysterious noises, they were but little children, innocent of the thought of wrong, ignorant of the world and the world’s guile, and imagining only that what they did was a clever lark, such as the adult age easily pardons to exuberant and sprightly youth.

Not to them did the base suggestion come that this singular, this simple discovery, should be the means of deluding the world, of exalting them in the minds of the weakly credulous and of bringing them fame and splendor and sumptuous pleasure.

No one who learns their true history can still believe them guilty of the willful inception of this most grotesque, most transparent and corrupting of superstitions.

The idea had its monstrous birth in older heads, heads that were seconded by hearts lacking the very essence of truth and the fountain of honest human sympathy.

The two children, who had at first delighted, as younglings will, in what was but a laughable mystification, were dragged into a sordid, wicked and loathsome speculation, built upon lying and fraud, as unforgivable as the sin of Satan, and of which they were but the unthinking instruments, often reluctant and remorseful, yet docile and compliant by nature.

Thus the “Rochester knockings,” the example and prototype of all later so-called spiritualistic “phenomena,” began merely in a curious childish freak, disguised without effort, and which, from the first, was encouraged to partly formed understandings by the wonder and intense spirit of inquiry it provoked.

The young operators were carried away by the undreamt-of current of enthusiasm and awe in which they soon became involved. They felt the natural need of maintaining with unabating dexterity, that false sense of the miraculous which by chance they had called forth.

Thus they went from one stage to another of this queer illusion, and, being compelled by a harder and more mature intelligence to repeat their part over and over again, became the chief means of establishing that injurious belief in communications from the spirits of the departed, of which such great numbers have become the victims.

Many an older offender against common sense, reason and strict morality persists through force of circumstance in the pathway he has chosen, and does not turn backward, merely because he cannot do so without wearing the face of shame.

From such slight and trivial beginning came the great movement—great because of the number which it comprised and of the sensation which attended its progress—that for more than forty years has alternately surprised, puzzled, disgusted and amused the world.

From so little a plant has grown a gigantic weed of deceit, corruption and fraud, nurtured upon the fattening lust of money, and of the flesh.

What has developed from it is not alone a system of so-called communications through a puerile code of signals with an unseen world; but, as Dante describes, in his incomparable epic, forms of monstrosity which combine a hideous human semblance and a loathly animal foulness, so this venomous evil has become conglomerate in its hateful phases of delusion, and its petty sordidness and depravity.

Thus the Tuscan bard describes the spirit of fraud:

“’Lo! the fell monster with the deadly sting!
Who passes mountains, breaks through fenced walls
And firm embattled spears, and with his filth
Taints all the world! Thus me my guide addressed,
And beckon’d him, that he should come to shore,
Near to the stony causeway’s utmost edge.
“Forthwith that image vile of fraud appear’d,
His head and upper part expos’d on land,
But laid not on the shore his bestial train.
His face the semblance of a just man’s wore.
So kind and gracious was its outward cheer;
The rest was serpent all; two shaggy claws
Reach’d to the armpits, and the back and breast,
And either side, were painted o’er with nodes
And orbits. Colors variegated more
Nor Turks nor Tartars e’er on cloth of state
With interchangeable embroidery wove,
Nor spread Arachne o’er her curious loom.
As ofttimes a light skiff, moor’d to the shore,
Stands part in water, part upon the land;
Or, as where dwells the greedy German boor,
The beaver settles watching for his prey;
So on the rim, that fenced the sand with rock,
Sat perched the fiend of evil. In the void
Glancing, his tail upturn’d its venomous fork,
With sting like scorpion’s armed.”

The world has not seen in all its long procession of follies, vagaries, and strange mania, one so utterly devoid of a reasonable foundation as this.

Yet none has been more eagerly believed; and this very tendency has evolved into so strong a desire to believe that thousands of those who have professed to investigate it have done so only ostensibly, their eyes, figuratively speaking, tightly bandaged, to shut out everything but the artificial vision that they were most eager to see.

It is to be hoped that the world will now form its ultimate conclusion upon this flagrant and audacious system of humbuggery:—that, regarded as a superstition, it ranks even below voudooism and fetich-worship, and, as an illusion, below the effects produced by the most ordinary magician at a country fair.

Dragged into this life when infants, rescued from it for an interval by two men[1] whose names are historical, the one as a hero and explorer, the other as a journalist and daily philosopher; borne back to it again by the tide of ill-fortune; used and controlled, by those whose heart’s were “dry as summer’s dust,” for their own hateful purposes; menaced when conscience rebelled and suggested retraction and amends; driven to seek momentary oblivion of their present degradation in a vice that was the result of their enforced public career; finally, persecuted in a stealthy and treacherous way by those who had profited most by the fraud that they had set up, because it was feared that sooner or later they could no longer keep silent and would betray its real origin; seeing their existence slipping away from them with nothing but Dead Sea fruit remaining to their bitter portion; feeling more and more the need of an atonement to conscience and the opinion of the world—Margaret and Catherine Fox now denounce and anathematize Spiritualism as absolutely and utterly false from beginning to end; and they declare their solemn intention to devote themselves henceforth to the noble task of undoing the great evil which they have done, and of leaving no single stone of foundation behind them for weak-minded future generations to base a futile faith upon.

In these pages will be found the full and truthful story of Spiritualism, as it was and is, as gathered from the lips of both Margaret Fox Kane and Catharine Fox Jencken, and verified by letters, documents and published data. It is written with their full knowledge and earnest sanction.

The bold fabric of lies built up to sustain the claim that the “rappings” in which all spiritualistic so-called phenomena originated were unaccountable except on the supernatural hypothesis, can no longer be cited to an intelligent mind. The elaborate narrative published by the eldest sister, Mrs. Ann Leah Fox Underhill, who is now the only remaining stay of spiritualistic deception, is proven to be false from title-page to finis.

I have given in the following pages, the real lives of Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Jencken, in so far as they bear in any important degree upon the development of the fraud of Spiritualism.

II. RENUNCIATION.

CHAPTER I.

GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT.

The world of “spiritualists” and non-spiritualists was startled on the 24th of September, 1888, by the publication in the New York Herald, of an article with the following head-lines:

“GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT.”

A Celebrated Medium Says the
Spirits Never Return.

CAPTAIN KANE’S WIDOW.

One of the Fox Sisters Promises an Interesting
Exposure of Fraud.

To many, an article of this kind seemed in a degree sensational. Not to those, however, who had previously had some inkling of the secret history of Spiritualism, and who for years had looked for the day of its inevitable confounding.

A sudden disclosure like this, by one of the “Mothers of Spiritualism,” if the term may be used, suggested a sort of reckless vagary, a species of extravagance, due, as might have been fancied, to some abnormal condition of the mind.

Yet to those who had had an intimate acquaintance with Maggie Fox Kane this step had long been foreshadowed. As will appear later, no one could have imagined the real intensity of moral pain that for years she had endured.

In recent years, both she and her sister, Catharine Fox Jencken, had been but poorly provided with this world’s goods. Obliged to depend almost wholly on themselves for support, they had dropped more and more out of sight, till the public at last hardly recognized their names, if perchance they appeared in print, as those of the principal instruments in the founding of Spiritualism. For this, there was a reason. It was a deep-seated and long increasing disgust with their fraudulent profession—the fuller realization to their minds, as their knowledge of the world grew broader, of the monstrous evil to which, innocently at first, they had given birth. So at intervals they were filled with despairing despondency and remorse. Their weaknesses, their self-indulgence, their lack of providence for themselves, are largely attributable to these causes. It could not be said of them that they were ever remarkably selfish, or cold-hearted or calculating. Such a character, however, has of right been coupled with the name of their elder sister, who by reason of the ties of blood and of her older experience ought long ago to have led them out of the by-ways of imposture, instead of persistently seeking to shut off their escape from this horrible bondage, and to plunge them deeper into the mire of guilt and infamy, so that the chance of their rising above it, and denouncing it, might grow less and less.

The impulse to set herself right on the record of the world, after years of enslavement in the hateful gyves of charlatanism, must stand to Maggie Fox’s credit alone. It sprang from her own bosom, not from the inspiration, suggestion or persuasion of any one else. Returning from Europe in September, 1888, after a peculiar experience, which had convinced her that those chiefs of spiritualistic fraud who feared her and her sister, because they held the key of the whole of the artificial mystery, were bent upon persecuting them into an abject silence, she at once put in execution the resolution which had been so long in process of growth, but until then had never been fully ripened.

This was to effect the unqualified exposure of the false system of Spiritualism. She naturally chose as a medium for her repentant message to the world, that great cosmopolitan journal, the New York Herald, which is known in every corner of the earth, and is ever ready to perform an important service to mankind. Before she started on her homeward voyage, she committed herself once and for all to this courageous and worthy step.

The disclosures regarding the notorious Madam Diss De Barr had offended Mrs. Kane more than anything which had occurred in Spiritualism in a long time, for they presented the enforced association of her name and the simple, childish origin of the “Rochester knockings,” with the gross and revolting frauds which had been their outgrowth. So imbued had she become, by this time, with the idea that the developed system of Spiritualism was something to be loathed, as Milton loathed the hideous creature who sat by the inner portals of hell, that words could not express her utter scorn and hatred of this common woman, who posed as an agent of sacred communications between the living and the dead.

The New York Herald of May 27, 1888, contained this letter, written by Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane in London:

THE CURSE OF SPIRITUALISM.

Gower Street, Bedford Square, W. C.,
London, May 14, 1888.

To the Editor of the Herald:

I read in the Herald of Saturday, May 5, an account of the sad misfortune that has befallen my dear sister Katie, Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, and in the article it is stated that I am still a resident of New York, which is a mistake. I sailed for England on the 22d of March, and I presume my absence has added to my darling sister’s depressed state of mind. The sad news has nearly killed me. My sister’s two beautiful boys referred to are her idols.

Spiritualism is a curse. God has set His seal against it! I call it a curse, for it is made use of as a covering for heartless persons like the Diss De Barrs, and the vilest miscreants make use of it to cloak their evil doings. Fanatics like Mr. Luther R. Marsh, Mr. John L. O’Sullivan, ex-Minister to Portugal, and hundreds equally as learned, ignore the “rappings” (which is the only part of the phenomena that is worthy of notice) and rush madly after the glaring humbugs that flood New York. But a harmless “message” that is given through the “rappings” is of little account to them; they want the “spirit” to come to them in full form, to walk before them, talk to them, to embrace them, and all such nonsense, and what is the result? Like old Judge Edmonds and Mr. Seybert, of Philadelphia, they become crazed, and at the direction of their fraud “mediums” they are induced to part with all their worldly possessions as well as their common sense, which God intended they should hold sacred. Mr. Marsh’s experience is but another example of hundreds who have preceded him.

No matter in what form Spiritualism may be presented, it is, has been and always will be a curse and a snare to all who meddle with it. No right minded man or woman can think otherwise.

I have found that fanatics are as plentiful among “inferior men and women” as they are among the more learned. They are all alike. They cannot hold their fanaticism in check, and it increases as their years increase. All they will ever achieve for their foolish fanaticism will be loss of money, softening of the brain and a lingering death.

MARGARET F. KANE.

This anathema dismayed those who had basely profited by Spiritualism, and it brought a deeper shock to the hearts of many who were sincere believers. The publication, however, in the Herald, three months later, of an interview with Mrs. Kane on her arrival in this city, the striking head-lines of which I have cited above, capped the climax of consternation. This article is well worthy of reproduction.

The eccentric circles wherein “isms” reign in discordant supremacy will be probably as deeply exercised over an approaching exposure of the tricks and illusions of Spiritualism, as they were over the rude logic of common sense and justice which drew aside the thin veil of fraud in the case of Madam Diss De Barr, and revealed the real nature of her flimsy system of deception in all its vulgar absurdity.

I called yesterday at a modest little house in West Forty-fourth street, and was received by a small, magnetic woman of middle age, whose face bears the traces of much sorrow and of a world-wide experience. She was negligently dressed, and she was not in the calmest possible mood. But she knew what she was talking about when, in response to my questions, she told a story of as strange and fantastic a life as has ever been recorded, and declared over and over again her intention of balancing the account which the world of humbug-loving mortals held against her, by making a clean breast of all her former miracles and wonders. In intervals of her talk, when she had risen from her chair, and paced the room, or had covered her face with her hands and almost sobbed with emotion, she would seat herself suddenly at a piano and pour forth fitful floods of wild, incoherent melody, which coincided strangely with that reminiscent weirdness which, despite its cynical reality, still characterized the scene.

This woman, albeit a notorious career has classed her with mountebanks and worse in the minds of reasonable beings, had yet by some element or other in her character retained a degree of public respect. Perhaps it is because months ago she abandoned the art of deception and has since to her intimate friends evinced no ordinary measure of contempt for all who still pursue it. She is known on both sides of the Atlantic, and when in London, is entertained by some of the best-to-do of the great and comprehensive middle class.

Circumstances had brought me to this house, and I did not at first know her. I soon found, however, that this was the most famous of the celebrated trio of witches, the Fox sisters, among the earliest spiritualistic mediums in this country. She is also the widow of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, the heroic Arctic explorer, who died of the effects of his exposure in searching for Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated party. Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane has lately returned from England for a brief visit here, and she purposes in a very short time to deliver just one lecture, and no more, which shall shame and dumfound all the spiritualistic frauds who have not yet repented into poverty or exile of their nebulous ways. She will reveal one after another of the methods by which willing believers have been so briskly duped and robbed, and will herself demonstrate how simple, natural and easy are most of those methods.

Brooding upon the troubles that had been brought upon her by Spiritualism and on her personal guilt in connection with it, it is hardly strange that Mrs. Kane, even when bent upon making a sweeping confession of the whole imposture, should in intervals of nervous excitement have turned to the thought of suicide.

“‘My troubles weighed upon me,’ she said, ‘and when I was coming over on the Italy, I do believe that I should have gone overboard but for the Captain and the doctor and some of the sailors. They prevented me, and when I landed, I could not express to them the gratitude I felt. I had very little English money with me, but all of that I distributed to the men.’”

As Mrs. Kane told of her impulse to commit suicide her manner became tragic and she clutched her listener’s arm. After a moment, however, she reverted quietly enough to the original subject.

But she speedily became much excited again, as what follows will show. It was but natural:

“Since you now despise Spiritualism, how was it that you were engaged in it so long?” I asked.

“Another sister of mine,” and she coupled the name with an injurious adjective, “made me take up with it. She’s my damnable enemy. I hate her. My God! I’d poison her! No, I wouldn’t, but I’ll lash her with my tongue. She was twenty-three years old the day I was born. I was an aunt seven years before I was born. Ha! ha!

“Yes, I am going to expose Spiritualism from its very foundation. I have had the idea in my head for many a year, but I have never come to a determination before. I’ve thought of it day and night. I loath the thing I have been. As I used to say to those who wanted me to give a séance, ‘You are driving me into hell.’ Then the next day I would drown my remorse in wine. I was too honest to remain a ‘medium.’ That’s why I gave up my exhibitions.

“When Spiritualism first began Kate and I were little children, and this old woman, my other sister, made us her tools. Mother was a silly woman. She was a fanatic. I call her that because she was honest. She believed in these things. Spiritualism started from just nothing. We were but innocent little children. What did we know? Ah, we grew to know too much! Our sister used us in her exhibitions and we made money for her. Now she turns upon us because she’s the wife of a rich man, and she opposes us both wherever she can. Oh, I am after her! You can kill sometimes without using weapons, you know.

“Dr. Kane found me when I was leading this life. [The woman’s voice trembled just here and she nearly broke down.] I was only thirteen when he took me out of it and placed me at school. I was educated in Philadelphia. When I was sixteen years old he returned from the Arctic and we were married. Now comes the sad, sad tale. He was very ill. The physicians ordered him to London, but before he arrived he had a paralytic stroke of the heart. Then he was sent back from London and to Havana. Newsboys shouted in the streets of New York the news of his critical condition. Oh, my God! it was anguish to my ears! Mother and I were to have joined him in two weeks. He died before we arrived. Then I had brain fever. No one but God can know what sorrows I have had!

“When I recovered I was driven again into Spiritualism, and I gave exhibitions with my sister Katie. I knew, of course, then, that every effect produced by us was absolute fraud. Why, I have explored the unknown as far as human will can. I have gone to the dead so that I might get from them some little token. Nothing ever came of it—nothing, nothing. I have been in graveyards at dead of night, having permission to enter from those in charge. I have sat alone on a gravestone, that the spirits of those who slept underneath might come to me. I have tried to obtain some sign. Not a thing! No, no, the dead shall not return, nor shall any that go down into hell. So says the Catholic Bible, and so say I. The spirits will not come back. God has not ordered it.

“You want to know what are the points of my coming exposé? First the ‘rappings.’”

Mrs. Kane paused here, and I heard first a rapping under the floor near my feet, then under the chair in which I was seated, and again under a table on which I was leaning. She led me to the door and I heard the same sound on the other side of it. Then, when she sat on the piano stool, the legs of the instrument reverberated more loudly, and the tap, tap, resounded throughout its hollow structure.

“It is all a trick?”

“Absolutely. Spirits, is he not easily fooled?”

Rap, rap, rap!

“I can always get an affirmative answer to that question,” she remarked.

Then I addressed certain suppositions to her. At last she said, “Yes, you have hit it. It is, as you say, the manner in which the joints of the foot can be used without lifting it from the floor. The power of doing this can only be acquired by practice begun in early youth. One must begin as early as twelve years. Thirteen is rather late. We children, when we were playing together, years ago, discovered it, and it was my eldest sister who first put the discovery to such an infamous use.

“I call it infamous, for it was.”

CHAPTER II.

THE DISCOMFITED ENEMY.

What has gone before is the whole story, in a sense.

The article in the Herald either relates or suggests it. Indeed, no refutation of it has been attempted. If there is one striking negative feature in the circumstances surrounding this exposure of Spiritualism, it is the entire absense of any reply from the great body of professional spiritualists commensurate with the accusation made.

This confession of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane was to them the handwriting on the wall, the “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin,” of Spiritualism.

Leah Fox Fish-Brown-Underhill, who has published a book of the flimsiest and most absurd narrative, intended to be accepted as a proof of Spiritualism, is the one person in all the world who could be expected to defend the system from this fatal attack, if any defense were possible. Reporters of the daily press would have been but too glad to record whatever she might say, were it even the veriest drivel, on an issue that jeopardized the existence of the brazen and pretentious “ism” which, as by an obscene spell, still enlists the curiosity of a great proportion of the world.

But as Mrs. Underhill’s book itself, which I shall notice more in detail hereafter, shows to the critical mind how futile would be an attempted refutation on her part, the public can very readily understand the reason of this most careful silence. Blunderingly, however, prior to having consulted her, Mr. Daniel Underhill, her husband, consented to talk upon the subject. The statements hostile to Mrs. Kane, to be found in the excerpt here given, were, of course, to be expected. Were they ever so true, however, they could not in any way lesson the damning force of her repentant avowals:—

Mr. Daniel Underhill, president of a wealthy insurance company, whose office is in Wall street, and who is the husband of the eldest of the Fox sisters, whom Margaret declares to be her “damnable enemy,” is a Spiritualist, but in a moderate sense. Mrs. Underhill’s maiden name was Ann Leah Fox. She was twice married before she met her present husband, and she is twenty-three years older than Margaret.

A large part of the public do not realize that Ann Leah, Margaret and Cathie Fox were the founders of what is specifically known as Spiritualism. The first so-called phenomena came to the two youngest girls in 1848, at Hydesville, in this State, while their sister Leah was residing elsewhere. When she heard of what had taken place and of the intense public excitement which it had created, she joined them, and then began the public history of Spiritualism. She took the incipient “ism” vigorously in hand, and for a series of years gave exhibitions in all the principal cities, which were attended by the most eminent men and the most brilliant women in the country.

Of late years Mrs. Underhill has entirely withdrawn from public participation in spiritualistic exhibitions. She is still held, however, in high estimation by all who accept supernatural communications, and her reply to what her sister Margaret has said regarding the practice of fraud, would at this time be interesting. Unfortunately she is now in the country, and there is no person in the city to speak for her excepting her husband. I obtained an interview with him yesterday. He was reluctant to be brought into the controversy, but, while speaking in a most uncomplimentary manner of Margaret and denouncing her proposed new departure, did not evince any great amount of indignation.

“I have for years,” he began, “helped both Maggie and Katie, and my wife has done everything in the world for them. We have furnished apartments for Maggie twice. They might both do well if they would only keep sober. Maggie can be as nice as you please or as vicious as a devil. Several persons have undertaken to manage her, but all have failed. Nobody can do anything with her. The first I knew that she was back in the city was through the Herald.

“I don’t think she’s in her right mind. I have done so much for her and she has behaved so badly in return that I have given her up now and will have nothing to do with her. She says she will lecture, does she? Well, I don’t believe she ever will. She’s incapable of it.

“It’s a great pity, though, that she should say such things about Spiritualism, because of the odium which will result from it. But it isn’t the first time she has said that she would declare against Spiritualism. She has had such spells before. It is astonishing to me that people have stuck to her and Katie as they have. It is all bosh about revealing the manner of producing the raps. I don’t believe she can do it. I don’t believe she knows how they are produced, except that it is done by an occult agency. Of course, there are frauds in Spiritualism. Mme. Diss De Barr was one of them. I don’t believe much in materialization, but I’ve seen some real manifestations. They were in my own house. Nearly all my spiritualistic experience has been in my own house, and these sisters were the mediums.

“Of course Maggie’s statement will be something of a shock to spiritualists the world over, because they regard her and her sisters as the founders of their belief. In my opinion she is not accountable for what she says.”

Mrs. Underhill remained quietly in the country many weeks after the exposé, safe from the keen inquisition of reporters.

The notorious “mediums” in New York who were approached on the subject, were all excessively guarded in their comments upon the step taken by Mrs. Kane, yet they admitted her personal importance as an originator of Spiritualism. Mrs. E. A. Wells, whose fraudulent exhibitions have had a certain success, expressed herself as much shocked at the determination of Mrs. Kane; “‘but,’ she added to the reporter, with seeming naîveté, ‘you don’t believe she will do it, do you?’”

The account from which I am quoting, continues as follows:

“I sought the presence of Mrs. E. A. Wells, a medium of great celebrity, whose abode is not far from Adelphi Hall, where spiritualists congregate on Sunday.” Mrs. Wells expressed herself as shocked at the determination of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane, “but,” she added, with seeming naîveté, “you don’t believe she will do it, do you?”

“How have you regarded Mrs. Kane heretofore, Mrs. Wells?”

“Why, with a good deal of respect as one of the first to get messages from the unseen world. The Fox sisters have a great name. I have no idea, though, if she really intends to do what she says she will, that she’s in her right senses.”

Another “medium,” who has a wealthy clientèle, and who gives only private séances, whence all unfriendly influences are rigorously excluded, did not desire to appear in print, as she told her visitor, since it would look like “bad form” to those who came to her for supernatural enlightenment.

She was asked, however, if she held the Fox sisters in much esteem as the pioneers of Spiritualism. She said she did, but personally knew nothing of them.

When told about the threatened exposure she expressed very great surprise, and declared that it would be a deep mortification to believers in Spiritualism.

“I don’t believe she can expose any fraud. But if fraud exists, why, then, I say let it be exposed; the sooner the better. There’s no fraud about me, that’s very certain, and I’ve some of the very best people in New York to come here.”

“I’ll tell you what! I have heard that the Fox sisters are dreadfully addicted to drink. I don’t know how far it is true, but I wouldn’t believe anything she might say in the way of exposure. May be she’s out of money and thinks the spiritualists ought to do something for her. I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Now, if you’ll come up here some time, and if you’ll give me a fair report, I shall be glad to show you how I can materialize.”

I thought there was a good deal of material about her already, and so I thanked her.

At their public gatherings in Adelphi Hall, New York, now most meagerly attended, the spiritualists, just after the initial exposé in the Herald, refrained very wisely from taking up the gauntlet of truth thrown down by their chief apostle, Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane. In an interview, however, which was had by a reporter with Mr. Henry J. Newton, the President of the First Spiritual Society of New York, the latter indulged in a number of emphatic statements regarding the “manifestations” produced by the “Fox Sisters,” all of which rested upon his own veracity only. The spirit of what he said may be easily gleaned from this passage:

“I had supposed all along,” he said, “that Mrs. Kane was still in Europe, and that she would never return to this country. I even heard at the time when Katie, her sister, was sent abroad, that Maggie was in Rome, in company with a well known gentleman. I am very much surprised to know that she is in this city, and more surprised that she threatens to make such silly pretended revelations as you say she proposes. They can only be revelations in name. She cannot reveal anything that can injure the spiritualist cause or that will weaken in any one’s mind the truth of what we teach.

“I have been absent in the country and have not read all that the Herald has published on this matter. I have read enough, however, to show me how utterly absurd and ridiculous her position is.

“The idea of claiming that unseen ‘rappings’ can be produced with joints of the feet! If she says this, even with regard to her own manifestations, she lies! I and many other men of truth and position have witnessed the manifestations of herself and her sisters many times under circumstances in which it was absolutely impossible for there to have been the least fraud.

“Nothing that she could say in that regard would in the least change my opinion, nor would it that of any one else who has become profoundly convinced that there is an occult influence connecting us with an invisible world, I have seen Margaret Fox Kane herself, when lying on a bed of sickness and unable to rise, produce ‘rappings’ in various parts of the room in which she was, and upon the ceilings, doors and windows several feet away from her. I have seen her produce the same effects when too drunk to realize what she was doing.”

On the 25th of September, 1888, the following, which was published in the New York Herald, expressed very tersely the situation among the spiritualists, who had by that time partly recovered from the first effect of the blow:

Recrimination against the two younger Fox sisters, Margaret and Katie, has begun with characteristic violence, and many unlovely truths are betrayed which do not alter the essential significance of the former’s denunciation of spiritualistic fraud. Several of the mediums said that they could hardly believe their eyes when they read of Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane’s determination, and they declared almost unanimously that “she would not do it if she were in her senses.” They accuse her of excessive indulgence in drink and hint that she is not responsible for what she says. It appears, however, that in private, on many occasions, but never before in public, she has stated that Spiritualism was a tissue of fraud, and that some day she would prove the charge to the world. She has during the last few mouths given many séances in London, but always disclaimed any personal supernatural connection in producing the effects at which others wondered. With a number of rich patrons, among them Mr. H. Wedgewood, of Cavendish Square, she proceeded to a certain point in the process of delusion and then frankly undeceived them, convincing them of the ease with which they could be practiced upon.

Prior to this, the following had been published:

As Mrs. Kane’s sincerity in making her proposed exposures is questioned by her enemies, the following brief note from a well known English spiritualist is of interest:

“31 Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square,
“London, W., July 19, 1888.

“Dear Mrs. Kane: I am not so much surprised as I might be at what you have revealed to me if I had not already been led to believe that many spiritualistic mediums practice upon the credulous.

“The illusion, however, was perfect while it lasted.

“You do well to expose these infamous frauds, and I thank you for having enlightened me.

“Sincerely yours,
“H. WEDGEWOOD.”

And later Mrs. Kane, in outlining her proposed public lecture, said:

“I am going to expose the very root of corruption in this spiritualistic ulcer. You talk about Mormonism! Do you know that there is something behind the shadowy mask of Spiritualism that the public can hardly guess at? I am stating now what I know, not because I actually participated in it, for I would never be a party to such promiscuous nastiness, but because I had plenty of opportunity, as you may imagine, of verifying it. Under the name of this dreadful, this horrible hypocrisy—Spiritualism—everything that is improper, bad and immoral is practiced. They go even so far as to have what they call ‘spiritual children!’ They pretend to something like the immaculate conception! Could anything be more blasphemous, more disgusting, more thinly deceptive than that? In London I went in disguise to a quiet séance at the house of a wealthy man, and I saw a so-called materialization. The effect was produced with the aid of luminous paper, the lustre of which was reflected upon the operator. The figure thus displayed was that of a woman—was virtually nude, being enveloped in transparent gauze, the face alone being concealed. This was one of those séances to which the privileged non-believing friends of believing spiritualists could have access. But there are other séances, where none but the most tried and trusted are admitted, and where there are shameless goings on that vie with the secret Saturnalia of the Romans. I could not describe these things to you, because I would not.”

Thus, the only one of the “Fox Sisters” who still adhered to the imposture practiced for over forty years, and the only spiritualist who could deny the statements of Margaret Fox Kane with anything approaching to authority, found her safest and most fitting defense in the kindly shelter of silence.

This quasi-confession was not needed to complete the conviction in intelligent minds that Spiritualism was, in its inception, and is now, a fraud and a lie. But the significance of the negative circumstance is none the less worthy of note.

CHAPTER III.

A SECOND BLOW.

Barely had the professional spiritualists a breathing-spell—after the shock of Mrs. Kane’s confession—when a new blow fell upon them.

Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken arrived from Europe, and though ignorant until landing, of the grave step her sister Margaret had taken, at once announced her intention of joining and sustaining her in the complete exposure of Spiritualism in all its phases of deception and hypocrisy.

This news staggered the spiritualistic world.

And now it but remains for the other of the three “Fox Sisters” to see the hopeless folly of continued imposture, and to add her confession to the historical record of the dissipation of this unholy fraud. That she will ever do this, however, those who are aware that to her malevolent will was due the first evil growth and the wide extension of Spiritualism, cannot easily bring themselves to believe.

The following account of Mrs. Jencken’s arrival in New York and of her determination to add her testimony to that of her sister Margaret against the fraud of Spiritualism, was published on the 10th of October, 1888, and is of sufficient interest to excuse my quoting it here at large:

AND KATY FOX NOW.

The Youngest of the Mediumistic Pioneers
Will “Give the Snap Away.”

SHE ARRIVES FROM EUROPE.

Spiritualism a Humbug from Beginning
to End—Alleged Immoralities.

Katie Fox Jencken arrived yesterday from England on the Persian Monarch and she intends to co-operate with her sister—Margaret Fox Kane—in her proposed exposé of the fraudulent methods of so-called Spiritualism.

Mrs. Jencken’s coming was unexpected to her sister, and it will surprise the enemies of both.

The blow to Spiritualism which Maggie Fox struck not long ago, caused a good deal more of consternation than spiritualists generally have cared to confess. There is ample reason for stating that underneath a plausible surface of enforced calm there have been the hurried exchange of forbodings and doubtings, and many consultations and goings to and fro. It is known that an overture was made to Maggie Fox suggestive of a money consideration for her silence, and that she rejected it with much indignation.

Mrs. Jencken walked into the parlor where Mrs. Kane was sitting about five o’clock yesterday, and the sisters at once fell on each other’s necks, in an ecstasy of affection and delight at being together once again. Mrs. Kane had but just been talking to me about her projected lecture on “The Curse of Spiritualism,” and Mrs. Jencken, who had heard nothing of the proposed exposé, except as it was casually rumored in her ear at the steamship dock, promptly gave her acquiescence to it as soon as she understood the situation.

“I do not care a fig for Spiritualism,” she said, “except so far as the good will of its adherents may affect the future of my boys. They are all I have in this life, and I live or die for them.”

Mrs. Jencken looks a far different person than she was when in deep trouble in this city and when she had to do with the rather unsympathetic measures of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. No matron could bear a more placid and comely expression, and she declares with heartfelt earnestness that she is done forever with her once-besetting vice.

“Mrs. Jencken, are you willing to join with your sister in exposing the true modus operandi of Spiritualism?” I asked.

“I care nothing for Spiritualism,” was her reply. “So far as I am concerned I am done with it. I will say this, I regard it as one of the very greatest curses that the world has ever known. If I knew those powerful spiritualists who have done their utmost to harm me in the past could not do so in the future, I would not hesitate a moment to expose it. The worst of them all is my eldest sister, Leah, the wife of Daniel Underhill. I think she was the one who caused my arrest last spring, and the bringing of the preposterous charge against me that I was cruel to my children and neglectful of them. I don’t know why it is, she has always been jealous of Maggie and me; I suppose because we could do things in Spiritualism that she couldn’t.”

“Why don’t you come squarely out, then, with the truth, and make the public your friends? You needn’t fear any persecution if you do that.”

“Well, if my sister’s health were only fully restored and I knew she was fully herself I would certainly join her in showing Spiritualism to be what it really is. I want to be sure of that, however. I want the thing done properly when it is done.”

“Then you will not deny that what she has said of Spiritualism is true?”

“I will not deny it. Spiritualism is a humbug from beginning to end. It is the greatest humbug of the century. I don’t know whether she has told you this, but Maggie and I started it as very little children, too young, too innocent, to know what we were doing. Our sister Leah was twenty-three years older than either of us. We got started in the way of deception, and being encouraged in it, we went on, of course. Others, old enough to have been ashamed of the infamy, took us out into the world. My sister Leah has published a book called ‘The Missing Link of Spiritualism.’ It professes to give the true history of this movement, so far as it originated with us. Now, there’s nothing but falsehood in that book from beginning to end, excepting the fact that Horace Greeley educated me. The rest is nothing but a string of lies.”

“And about the manifestations at Hydesville in 1848 and the finding of bones in the cellar and so on?”

“All humbuggery, every bit of it.”

“And yet Maggie and I are the founders of Spiritualism!” concluded Mrs. Jencken.

On the next day Mrs. Jencken made the statement which appears in the following:

Mrs. Jencken was asked about the alleged spirit manifestations which have taken place in Carlyle’s old home at Chelsea, London, where she has lately resided. The English papers have been filled with stories, more or less sceptical, regarding these queer occurrences. Mrs. Jencken said: “All that took place there of that nature is utterly false. I haven’t the slightest idea that the noises which we heard in the house had any connection with Carlyle’s spirit. I certainly know that every so-called manifestation produced through me in London or anywhere else was a fraud. Many a time have I wept because when I was young and innocent I was brought into such a life. The time has now come for Maggie and I to set ourselves right before the world. Nobody knows at what moment either of us might be taken away. We ought not to leave this base fabric of deceit behind us unexposed.”

As may be seen, nothing could be stronger than the language employed in these interviews by both of the repentant sisters, in denouncing their former adhesion to a system of humbug and hypocrisy.

CHAPTER IV.

THE HAND OF THE PERSECUTOR

The public had every reason to feel a deep sympathy with the two younger Fox sisters in the courageous attitude which they had taken.

The deadliest hatred is always to be feared, by those who abandon a faith or a system, from those who still adhere to it.

Think you, if Mahomet had turned about, forty years after the Hegira, and had boldly anathematized the religion he had established, he might not have been reviled and persecuted, even by those in whom he had first inculcated his bastard faith?

Who can doubt this who knows human nature?

Even the lies of an impostor rebel against him, when, with a repentant word, he would damn them again to all eternity.

Mrs. Jencken had ample reason to fear that the disclosures which had been made by her and her sister would redouble the hostile zeal of those who before had persecuted her. In the first account which had been published of her return to this country, it was not stated that her two boys had accompanied her. In fact, however, they had.

The pressure brought to bear to induce her to retract her denunciation of Spiritualism, and the ground of her fear for the safety of her children, are well set forth in the following, which appeared on October 11th, 1888:

FEARING THEIR ENEMIES.

THE JENCKEN BOYS WERE HERE, BUT ARE SENT AWAY.

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.”

CHAPTER V.

SOLEMN ABJURATION.

The news that Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane and Mrs. Catherine Fox Jencken had renounced and exposed Spiritualism, flew from one end of the country to the other, and caused excitement among spiritualists and non-spiritualists. Every newspaper in every city of the United States, and many in Europe, repeated the story published in New York.

The general opinion everywhere, where the wish was not the opposite, was that Spiritualism as such had received its death-blow.

Letters began to pour in upon Mrs. Kane which were strongly significant of the effect of her action. Many of them were written by persons who had been believers from the very first of the public exhibitions of the “rappings,” and who had based their whole faith on the truth and veritable inspiration of the “Fox Sisters.” It was almost pitiable to witness the honest-hearted distress of people of this sort, who now saw the fondest illusion of their lives dissolve before their eyes; their dearest, assured hope of an invisible world ruthlessly torn from them.

The anger of those who now anathematized the founders of the spiritualistic faith, and declared that all that they could now say in way of recantation was utterly false, while all that they had formerly said or performed as miraculous proof, was, of course, as true as gospel, or as the fact that the sun shines, was quite as ridiculous as the other sentiment was worthy of sympathy.

It was natural that those who had fed their baser passions upon Spiritualism—as the harpy upon carrion—should resort to the vilest methods of attacking Mrs. Kane, and in doing so should shelter themselves behind the cowardly refuge of anonymity.

A single communication from one of those who thus set the gauge for our estimate of spiritualistic hypocrisy, will suffice to complete the reader’s impression regarding them. It was written on a postal card and unsigned, and the italics and other literary peculiarities are wholly those of the person who wrote it:

“Mrs. Kane. Your anticipated action Thursday night reminds me very forcibly of several lines of ‘Beautiful snow’ only your Course is even more despicable and your rank in the history of the present day will be on a par with Benedict Arnold in ‘Beautiful Snow’ we find ‘Selling her soul to whoever would buy’ &c. you are going to sell your soul to an ignorant public by pretending to Expose what you very well Know cannot be Exposed by any man, woman or child dwelling in the Mortal sphere of Life—shame on you, but you will soon meet your reward in other spheres and suffer for your wickedness.”

It is hard to determine whether the above communication emanated from a professional spiritualist of the mercenary type or from one who finds his or her profit of self-gratification in the licentious tendencies and opportunities of private spiritualistic intercourse. In any event, it bears the stamp of ignorant selfishness and narrow vulgarity.

It is with a degree of pleasure that one may turn to letters which were written by the sincere disciples of the “Fox Sisters,” and which breathe a deep anxiety for the fate of that fantastic creed in which they have so much delighted.

The reader has but to think for an instant of the actual meaning of this long-deferred exposé to these persons. They had greedily fed their souls upon the delusion that they had held intercourse with the spirits of their dear departed. The supposed messages which they had received seemed a sure earnest of that union with those they loved on earth for which the true heart most longs. In view of this expectation and in the light of this exposure of its utter fallacy—so far as any material evidence is concerned—it is most difficult to find adequate terms with which to characterize the work of those who still persist in contributing to a delusion which has numbered so many victims.

Here is a letter from a resident of Southern California, enclosing a clipping from a newspaper containing Mrs. Kane’s renunciation of Spiritualism:

“Buena Park, Los Angeles Co., Cal.,
Sept. 29, A. D. 1888.

“Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane,

“Dear Madam:

“I have just read the enclosed item, taken from one of our Los Angeles city papers. Please let me know if the statements therein contained are true, and you will greatly oblige,

“Yours for truth,
“T. J. House.”

The following was written by one of the best known early settlers of San Francisco, a man whose example and absolute faith have influenced hundreds, probably, to embrace Spiritualism:

“San Francisco, Cal., Oct. 2, 1888.

“Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane,

“Dear Madam:

“I inclose a cutting from one of our local papers, purporting to be an interview with you in regard to the subject of Spiritualism. I have taken the liberty to inquire of you if the statements therein contained are true.

“I have been a believer in the phenomena from its first inception through you and your sister, believing it to be true since that time.

“I am now eighty-one years old and have but a short time, of course, to remain in this world, and I feel great anxiety to know through you if I have been deceived all this time in a matter of vital interest to us all.

“Will you greatly oblige me with an answer?

“Very respectfully yours,
“E. F. Bunnell.
“No. 319 Kearny St.”

And here is a communication which is signed by what is evidently only a part of the writer’s name, but which carries with it in every line the absolute impress of truth and of a deep and pathetic earnestness:

“Boston, Mass., Oct. 15, 1888.

“Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane,

“Dear Madam:

“Hundreds of thousands have believed through you and you alone. Hundreds of thousands eagerly ask you whether all the glorious light that they fancied you have given them, was but the false flicker of a common dip-candle of fraud.

“If, as you say, you were forced to pursue this imposture from childhood, I can forgive you, and I am sure that God will; for he turns not back the truly repentant. I will not upbraid you. I am sure you have suffered as much as any penalty, human or divine, could cause you to suffer. The disclosures that you make take from me all that I cherished most. There is nothing left for me now but to hope for the reality of that repose which death promises us.

“It is perhaps better that the delusion should be at last swept away by one single word, and that word ‘fraud.’

“I know that the pursuit of this shadowy belief has wrought upon my brain and that I am no longer my old self. Money I have spent in thousands and thousands of dollars within a few short years to propitiate the ‘mediumistic’ intelligence. It is true that never once have I received a message or the token of a word that did not leave a still unsatisfied longing in my heart, a feeling that it was not really my loved one after all, who was speaking to me, or if it was my loved one, that he was changed, that I hardly knew him and that he hardly knew me. Oh! how I have hated the thought that used to come to me sometimes, in spite of myself, that it was not really he. But that must have been the true intuition. It is better that the delusion is past, after all, for had I kept on in that way, I am sure I should have gone mad. The constant seeking, the frequent pretended response, its unsatisfying meaning, the sense of distance and change between me and my loved one—oh! it has been horrible, horrible!

“He who is dying of thirst and has the sweet cup ever snatched from his lips, just as the first drop touches them—he alone can know what in actual things is the similitude of this spiritualistic torture.

“God bless you, for I think that you now speak the truth. You have my forgiveness at least, and I believe that thousands of others will forgive you, for the atonement made in season wipes out much of the stain of the early sin.

“Yours sincerely,
“Anna Suzanne.”

To these letters and to hundreds of others which Mrs. Kane and her sister Mrs. Jencken have received, this volume is their response.

But besides this, they have appeared in public on the platform, as an earnest of their present sincerity, and will probably continue so to appear in various parts of this country and Europe.

On the 21st of October, 1888, Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane first fulfilled her intention of publicly denouncing, with her own lips, Spiritualism and its attendant trickery. She appeared at the Academy of Music in New York before a large and distinguished audience, and without reservation demonstrated the falsity of all that she had done in the past in the guise of spiritualistic “mediumship.”

The ordeal was a severe one. The great nervous strain under which she had labored rendered her mind highly excitable, and the large number of spiritualists in the house tried to create a disturbance, or a traitorous diversion which would break the force of her renunciation. In this they utterly failed, however, thanks to the superior character of a majority of her auditors.

The moral effect of the exposure could not have been greater.

Mrs. Kane stood before the footlights trembling with intense feeling, and made the following most solemn abjuration of Spiritualism, while Mrs. Catharine Fox Jencken sat in a neighboring box and gave assent by her presence to all that she said:

“That I have been chiefly instrumental in perpetrating the fraud of Spiritualism upon a too confiding public, most of you doubtless know.

“The greatest sorrow of my life has been that this is true, and though it has come late in my day, I am now prepared to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth,—so help me God!

“There are probably many here who will scorn me for the deception I have practiced, yet did they know the true history of my unhappy past, the living agony and shame that it has been to me, they would pity, not reproach.

“The imposition which I have so long maintained began in my early childhood, when, with character and mind still unformed, I was unable to distinguish between right and wrong.

“I repented it in my maturity. I have lived through years of silence, through intimidation, scorn and bitter adversity, concealing as best I might, the consciousness of my guilt. Now, thanks to God and my awakened conscience, I am at last able to reveal the fatal truth, the exact truth of this hideous fraud which has withered so many hearts and has blighted so many hopeful lives.

“I am here to-night as one of the founders of Spiritualism, to denounce it as an absolute falsehood from beginning to end, as the flimsiest of superstitions, the most wicked blasphemy known to the world.

“I ask only your kind attention and forgiveness, and as I may prove myself worthy by the step I am now taking, may you extend to me your helping hands and sustain me in the better path I have chosen.”

The demonstration of the method by which the “rappings” were produced was a perfect success, as is best shown by the following succinct account, which formed a part of the article on the subject published by the New York World on the following morning:

A plain wooden stool or table, resting upon four short legs, and having the properties of a sounding board, was placed in front of her. Removing her shoe, she placed her right foot upon this table. The entire house became breathlessly still, and was rewarded by a number of little short, sharp raps—those mysterious sounds which have for more than forty years frightened and bewildered hundreds of thousands of people in this country and Europe. A committee, consisting of three physicians taken from the audience, then ascended to the stage, and having made an examination of her foot during the progress of the “rappings,” unhesitatingly agreed that the sounds were made by the action of the first joint of her large toe.

Only the most hopelessly prejudiced and bigoted fanatics of Spiritualism could withstand the irresistable force of this common-place explanation and exhibition of how “spirit rappings” are produced. The demonstration was perfect and complete, and if “spirit rappings” find any credence in this community hereafter, it would seem a wise precaution on the part of the authorities to begin the enlargement of the State’s insane asylums without any delay.

III. HISTORY.

CHAPTER VI.

ORIGIN OF THE FRAUD.

There are spiritualists who pretend that so-called “spirit rappings” originated long before the Hydesville disturbances took place. These declarations, however, are of no value as actual evidence.

In any event, there is no claim that in their cause and general character these manifestations, so-called, were very different from similar ones of the present day.

The “rappings” produced by the “Fox Sisters” are certainly the first of which there is an authentic account. They began in a little rustic cottage at a place called Hydesville, in the town of Arcadia, near Newark, Wayne County, New York. Here John D. Fox and his wife Margaret dwelt with their two daughters, Margaret and Catherine. Two other children, Ann Leah and David S., lived elsewhere. There was sometimes a fifth member of the household, also a child. This was Elizabeth Fish, the daughter of Leah, and therefore the niece of Margaret and Catherine. She was seven years older than the elder of the two latter.

The elder Fox and his wife had not been always united since their marriage. They were separated for a number of years. The three older children, Ann Leah, Maria and David S., were conceived before this separation took place, and Margaret and Catherine afterwards. The two broods had distinctive characteristics. The father, in the interval, is said to have become addicted to intemperate habits. The taint of heredity may excuse much in the younger generation that sprang from a weakness of will-power and made them the too easy victims of colder and more mercenary natures. To many it is well known that they are still incapable of guarding their interests in a business way, and that they have always been too largely at the mercy of any one who could acquire an influence over them.

Margaretta, or Margaret, Fox, as she always signs herself, was born in the year 1840, and Catherine Fox a year and a half later. The eldest sister Leah was born twenty-three years before the former. The little girls, one eight years old and the other six and a half, had rarely seen this sister prior to the beginning of the spiritualistic movement. She knew nothing of it until the popular excitement over the “rappings” had almost reached its climax. Very early in life she had married a man named Fish, who had deserted her, and she was supporting herself at this time in the city of Rochester by teaching the rudiments of music. David S. Fox, son of John and Margaret Fox, lived about two miles from the home of his father in Arcadia.

Maggie and Katie Fox were as full of petty devilment as any two children of their age ever were. They delighted to tease their excellent old mother, who by all who knew her is described as simple, gentle and true-hearted. In their antics, they would resort to all sorts of ingenious devices, and bed-time witnessed almost invariably the gayest of larks. One of their frequent amusements was to plague their niece, Elizabeth, who slept in the same bed with them, by kicking and tickling her, and by frightening her at almost any hour of the night out of sound sleep.

Their riotous fancy soon hit upon the plan of bobbing apples up and down on the floor in their bedchamber, as a means of scaring Elizabeth and of puzzling their mother without much risk of detection. They tied strings to the stems of the apples, and thus let them hang down beside the bed. The noise of dropping them more or less quickly upon the floor resembled almost anything that the imagination chose to liken it to, from raps on the front door to slippered foot-falls on the narrow stairway. Whenever a search was made for the cause of the noises, the apples were easily hauled up into the bed and hidden in the bedclothes, where no one would think of looking for them, at least at that stage of the investigation.

The plan had everything in it to charm a juvenile mischief-maker. It succeeded admirably. It was not till the wonder which was caused by these strange “knockings” had extended beyond the humble Fox household, that the suggestion of any other means of affording to that growing feeling its daily food of seeming evidence came to the roguish youngsters.

The family had moved into the house at Hydesville on December 11, 1847. The mother began to hear strange sounds almost from that date—strange because they occurred with great frequency and were oddly repeated. The children slept in what was called the East Room; the parents in an adjoining chamber. At all hours of the night, almost, the sounds were heard; but it happened that they always occurred when one or both of the children were wide awake. The mother, in a statement which has been published as one of the so-called proofs of the genuineness of these manifestations, says that the sounds could with difficulty be located. “Sometimes it seemed as if the furniture was moved; but on examination we found everything in order. The children had become so alarmed that I thought best to have them sleep in the room with us. * * * On the night of the first disturbance we all got up and lighted a candle and searched the house, the noises continuing during the time, and being heard near the same place.”