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vol. title: vol. period: 1879-1880 pages in vol.: 577 |
< An Unique Phenomenon - Recognitions (continued from page 10-479) >
percipient. How often, also, are natural objects, seen in a fog, transformed into the creatures of fantastic imagination! If the unimpassioned fancy plays such tricks with our senses, how large a discount must we not make for the suggestive effect of the faintest similarity, observed in semi-darkness, and instantaneously calling forth in every vivid trait the treasured images of the memory?
A New Work by Captain and Mrs. Barton
We have in the press, and it will shortly be issued, a book by those able and popular writers, Captain and Mrs. R. F. Burton, on the Passion Play at Oberammergau, as Seen by Four Eyes. Captain Burton describes the play in the first half of the book, from a realistic point of view, such as is much needed to balance the large amount of “gush” previously let loose by nearly every writer on the subject. Mrs. Burton, in the second half, describes it from a Roman Catholic point of view, so that a somewhat “all round” description will be presented within the limits of a single cover.
The Prosecution of Mediums by Spiritualists
As already published in these pages, Dr. Mack, a healing medium with an influential connection in London, has been taking active steps to prosecute Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Fletcher, American mediums, for the alleged practising of what is known as “the confidence trick” on another Spiritualist, Mrs. Hart Davies, an English lady. Several of the Boston (Massachusetts) newspapers agree in stating that according to Mrs. Davies the Fletchers induced her to deposit with them in London, a large amount of personal property, and that she became so entangled with them as to get personally somewhat under their control. At last she explained the circumstances to Dr. Mack, the medium, at the Lake Pleasant camp meeting; he espoused her cause, made the Fletchers give up at once about half the property, and set the law and the police to work to obtain the remainder. The total value of the property originally deposited with the Fletchers is said by The Boston Herald to have been 60,000 dollars, and that Dr. Mack at once made them refund 30,000 dollars.
In London Fletcher set up as a religious teacher, but Mr. C. C. Massey convicted him in these columns, of publishing a wilful untruth, since which we ignored his public work here as much as possible. The details of the exposure by Mr. Massey will be found on another page. In Boston Fletcher has just published, and subsequently withdrawn, another untruth, that his friend Signor Rondi—an honourable Spiritualist and a friend of Garibaldi—did not pay his hotel bills. But these circumstances should not prejudice the minds of our readers in regard to the present confidence trick charge, no information whether it has been proved or disproved having yet reached us. Moreover there are discrepancies in the details given by various Boston newspapers of some of the alleged misdeeds of the two mediums.
False charges against mediums are commonly printed in the lower section of the ordinary secular press, and the replies to the false accusations arbitrarily suppressed. But if this charge against the Fletchers is true, Dr. Mack deserves warm thanks, if only in consequence of its having long been felt by respectable people in the movement, that the prosecution of shady mediums by Spiritualists would do much good to Spiritualism. Especially will such action aid upright mediums, who must feel greatly pleased to see dishonest persons ejected from their ranks. We hope the case against the Fletchers is not so black as alleged in the American newspaper reports.
Cabinet Seances
Several mediums have been getting themselves into trouble of late by giving cabinet seances, nor are they entitled to the slightest sympathy. About two years ago the question of cabinet seances was very fully ventilated in public, and the general conclusion arrived at that, except for purposes of scientific research, they do more harm than good to the mediums and to the movement, and prejudice against Spiritualism more persons than they convert. Nine out of every ten public scandals which have injured Spiritualism in America, originated with cabinet seances. All the best London mediums have long since abolished cabinet seances, and obtain materialisation phenomena while they are held hand and foot, in private houses, away from their own premises. The forms at cabinet seances are very often nothing more than the mediums in a trance, and in those cases in which there is a genuine materialisation, the presence of the cabinet usually destroys all evidence thereof.
<Untitled> (W.—The correspondent of the Banner of Light...)
W.—The correspondent of the Banner of Light who signed himself “Fidelity,” wrote to that journal, from London, a general description of the first number of The Theosophist (published in Bombay) long before any copy of The Theosophist reached England. Was he a clairvoyant medium?
Editor's notes
- ↑ A New Work by Captain and Mrs. Barton by unknown author, London Spiritualist, The, No. 423, October 1, 1880, p. 162
- ↑ The Prosecution of Mediums by Spiritualists by unknown author, London Spiritualist, The, No. 423, October 1, 1880, p. 162
- ↑ Cabinet Seances by unknown author, London Spiritualist, The, No. 423, October 1, 1880, p. 162
- ↑ W.—The correspondent of the Banner of Light... by unknown author, London Spiritualist, The, No. 423, October 1, 1880, p. 167
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 423, October 1, 1880, p. 167