DEAD MEN’S EMBERS: AN IN DEPTH REVIEW

Emma-Louise Rhodes

In his introduction of the book Dead Men’s Embers, Gerald O’Hara tell how ‘as serendipity would have it’ the minutes books for the St. Saviourgate Spiritualist Society in York, England came into his possession, along with ninety spirit photographs, taken by local photographer, William Hope (who Conan Doyle championed in his book The Case for Spirit Photography).

It is clear that O’Hara’s book, although bringing to the reader’s attention some of the research carried out by investigators and sceptics of Spiritualism, is very much aimed at believers. Indeed, even though the majority of images in the book are those taken by Hope (the famous Katie King pictures also feature), O’Hara only dedicates a page to the experiment carried out by Harry Price on Hope (more of this later), hastily following this up with the huge amount of praise that was bestowed upon him in Spiritualist circles.

O’Hara states in his introduction that:

‘What I do not do is follow some that argue that
“paranormal” events cannot occur and therefore do
not occur, and any that say supernatural events do
happen are fools. Such scepticism on my part
would devalue the biographical process.’

However, it is my opinion that, though Dead Men’s Embers is a very interesting resource for factual dates and the general history and growth of Spiritualism in northern England, it is by no means questioning and should be placed alongside pro-Spiritualism histories of a similar ilk.

The slight irony of O’Hara not wanting to sceptically analyse some of the mediums he writes about in his book, is the fact that a great deal of the Spiritualists in question are shown in photographs posing with ‘spirit extras’ behind them, as previously mentioned. The numerous scientific tests since carried out, along with the very evident lack of recent spirit photography (not even the most brazen mediums of today dare replicate anything close to what early Spiritualists ‘captured’) have proven such apparent miracles as clearly fraudulent. Therefore by including these images - which are, without doubt, an integral part of the Spiritualist faith - O’Hara somehow invalidates the mediums in question by the very fact that they were seen to be somehow in cohorts with such deception, whether or not they were aware of it.

This is not to say that the historical fact recorded in Dead Men’s Embers is in any way marred by the lack of inquiry by the author regarding the nature of early Spiritualism. The book provides the reader with a very interesting insight into the experimental days of the movement in England, along with written accounts by the Spiritualists of the ‘phenomena’ witnessed.

EARLY SPIRITUALSIM IN THE NORTH OF ENGLAND

In 1853, Spiritualist convert and socialist reformer David Richmond returned home from his eleven year residence in America, bringing with him great revelations of the American Movement, along with the fact that, during his time living in a commune with the Shaker faith, he had found his own mediumistic powers. Only one year previously, Mrs Hayden had come to Britain amid huge excitement, promising that she would ‘gratify serious and enlightened minds with spiritual communication from departed friends.’ O’Hara confirms the widespread craze of Spiritualism and that, with the help of Richmond, the impact it had on Yorkshire.

‘Between the arrival of Mrs Hayden and the initial
reports in the regional press a lapse of time
occurred of only eight months. Within nine months
in a small sleepy Yorkshire market town a lecturer
could give a talk and a demonstration of a
phenomenon that the audience attending knew and
understood what was meant by the subject under
discussion.’

Beginning in Darlington, Richmond gave lectures on Spiritualism and conducted séances to the intrigue of locals, moving on to Keighley, where he was commonly known as Father David.

O’Hara informs us that the first Spiritualist church ‘The Spiritual Brotherhood and Lyceum’ was formed the same year, the costs of which were underwritten by David Weatherhead and David Wilkinson, both affluent local businessmen. Richmond died in 1891 and his gravestone reads:

‘Social reformer and first Missionary Spiritualist
Medium in Great Britain, Who introduced the subject
of Modern Spiritualism or the phenomenal labour of
the divine Spirit to Public notice in Darlington and
Keighley Yorkshire in 1853.’

The ‘Brotherhood’ grew dramatically and became quite widespread across the country, with publications such as The Medium and Daybreak being published in London and distributed nationwide. O’Hara points out, as other historians of the subject have done before, that there was a very clear link to Spiritualism and the working classes (not just that forged by Richmond), with the Newcastle Chronicle reporting that ‘the society … is composed of the poor who persistently sit for development, amid the discouragement of debt, and ridicule …’ O’Hara also goes on to quote ‘Fritz’ a correspondent in the Medium and Daybreak in 1873, who wrote:

‘There are a number of well-to-do and highly
intelligent Spiritualists in this city as there are in
London and elsewhere, who cannot afford, without
risk of great pecuniary sacrifices, that would
entirely cripple their means of aiding the movement,
to identify themselves publicly to Spiritualism.’

And so it seems, from O’Hara’s research, that the early days of Spiritualism saw a class divide in terms of those who could be ‘out and proud’ about their religious convictions and those who would merely fund the movement from a distance. The prominence of educated men such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge opened the faith up to those who had felt they could not be seen to support it, and lifted Spiritualism from being a predominantly working class and somewhat obscure religion, to that of significant importance.

THE SPIRITUALIST FAITH AND THE FIRST WORLD WAR

Dead Men’s Embers looks at the impact World War One had on the Spiritualist movement and ‘the comfort afforded by mediumship during the stressful war year.’ O’Hara quotes a number of séances conducted during this time, one where dead ‘Tommys’ had returned to their families. During this sitting, the participants were ‘baptised’ with water and witnessed a trumpet flying around the dark room.

The book goes on to tell of two campaigns launched by the Spiritualist’s National Union during the First World War. The first was ‘The Witchcraft Act Amendment’, which urged to repel the Witchcraft Act of 1735. The second was known as ‘The League of Defence’, which sought to put a stop to any defamatory article or letter in the press that might appear hostile to Spiritualism. The former was finally granted in 1951, when the Witchcraft Act was replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act, but the later made little headway, other than to confirm the apparent paranoia of the Spiritualists.

In 1917, the President of Spiritualist Lyceum, Ernest Vickers, organised the conference ‘All War is Murder’. This supported the refusal to take up arms, a second motion of which was lost, but hotly debated in the Spiritualist press thereafter. Vickers, who had been enlisted at the time of the conference, was killed later that year at Flanders.

O’Hara states that the York Society of Spiritualist was overly concerned by the social questions of the day, predominantly due to the war. The minutes book stated in 1916 that:

‘…all mediums both local and national should
refrain from forecasting the future at all public
meetings.’

However, this did not detract the attention of those who wished to bring the war dead back and, as O’ Hara writes:

‘In 1919 the York committee accepted the gift of
a dozen copies of ‘Rupert lives’ (the ‘memoirs’
of a dead solder) by Rev. W. Wynn offered by the
Leeds District Council. Many other titles could be
added to the list of Spiritualist literature that were
published giving post-mortem accounts by those
who died in fighting, notably ‘Raymond’ by Sir
Oliver Lodge.’

Indeed the fact that Sir Oliver Lodge’s son, Second Lieutenant Raymond Lodge, was killed at Flanders in September, 1915, bears a huge amount of relevance on the Spiritualist movement. As previously mentioned, the influence of such men had a large relevance and a profound impact on Spiritualism. Had Sir Oliver and Co. not lost their sons in the Great War, their faith in the movement might well have been minimal if not entirely negligent. Yet their unutterable belief in contacting the dead was resolute and these men are still quoted as being the linchpins of early Spiritualism, validating it without doubt and presenting the religion to those other than the working class and bringing it to the nation’s attention as never before.

WOMEN AND THE MOVEMENT

One of the most interesting features of Dead Men’s Embers is the statistics at the back, chronicling different data predominantly from the minutes book of the York society. O’Hara illustrates, through graphs and pie charts, the amount of women active in the early Spiritualist movement in York, in comparison to men.

The percentage of female members throughout the thirty years in question (1889 – 1929) was 65% and the percentage of women speakers booked during that time was 57%. A steep rise in the participation of female speakers is seen between the years 1910 and 1929, outnumbering men by almost twenty percent.

O’Hara writes that:

‘…given the restricted nature of women’s lives;
for a woman to appear on an open stage, to be
enquiringly looked at by an audience, including
men, was fundamentally a challenge to orthodox
morals … Spiritualism could by-pass the make
authority of the pulpit, and by-pass the male
dominated religious establishment, that precluded
women’s participation in any form of religious
ministry.’

Indeed, Emma Hardinge Britten (who was said to have had the Seven Principals of Spiritualism dictated to her, whilst in a trance, by the spirit of the socialist Robert Owen) was a prominent pioneer in the Spiritualist movement and wrote extensively about the fatih, along with giving lectures and séances.

However, O’Hara also looks at the fact that more substantial roles for women on the stage led to a lack of interest in Spiritualism, as researched by Alex Owen in his book The Darkened Room.

‘… the increasingly sophisticated theatre audience
of the later part of the 19th century allowed for the
creation of more substantial roles for women on the
stage, as a consequence of which women gave up
the development of mediumship.’

Nonetheless, Dead Men’s Embers states that:

‘ …it is not a simple case that women gave up
physical mediumship because of increasing job
or career opportunities’.

O’Hara goes on to explore a whole range of leading women in the mediumistic field, not forgetting the infamous Florence Cook (aka Katie King) and Sir William Crookes’ favourable experiments on Cook and her apparent spirit manifestations. Other women looked at are Estelle Stead, ‘the Reverend Susan Harris’ and Cora Tappan (who Henry James is said to have modelled his hostile portrait of a medium).

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY AND WILLIAM HOPE

Hope was born in Manchester in 1864 and, O’Hara tells us, ‘was said to have seen spirits during a childhood illness’. Experimenting in spirit photography early on. Hope soon formed a circle of fellow Spiritualists in Crewe and embarked on a career that lasted over thirty years.

In 1908, Hope was ‘tested’ by Archdeacon Colley (a great believer of Francis Ward Monck, who was imprisoned for spirit fraud), who was ‘sufficiently impressed’ by his apparent abilities.

Most of the spirit manifestations in Hope’s work are thought to be unknown deceased relatives or spirits who took interest in the ‘sitters’. Few were thought to be spirit guides, although O’Hara states that possibly when non-European faces were depicted in the photographs, ‘almost certainly the ‘spirit guide’ hypothesis would have been regarded as an explanation’.

O’Hara tells how each sitter provided his or her own set of plates, which were individually loaded into the wooden ‘plate’ housing, having been previously signed to avoid duplication. A description of the process used by Hope was described in Independent Spirits, by Logie Barrow:

‘As soon as the plate was dry a rough print was
made by placing a sheet of printing paper over
the negative and holding it up to the window
through which the sun was shining. That rough
print showed normal figures and the ‘extra’ as
they were afterwards printed by Mr Hope.’

However, in 1922 William Hope was accused of fraud by Harry Price who exposed the fact that Hope actually swapped the plates when the sitter wasn’t aware. In his booklet Cold Light on Spiritualistic "Phenomena" - An Experiment with the Crewe Circle, Price described the private sitting that he had had with Hope and the process used by the photographer in producing the spirit images. Price had the emblem of the Imperial Dry Plate Company (a Lion) etched on the plates covertly before Hope took the photographs. When the pictures were developed, spirit extras were visible on the two plates, but not the Lion Rampant trademark. Furthermore, the plates that the photographs were developed on were of a different weight, colour and thickness to those brought in by Price and were all fast in exposure, whereas Hope’s were ’slow’.

HISTORIES AND FANTASIES

The beauty of the book lies in the fact that it chronicles a part of the history of British Spiritualism that has not previously been covered in such detail in literature. The documents recorded by Gerald O’Hara shed light on an incredibly interesting subject and the book should not be glossed over due to the author’s inability to highlight some very apparent fraudulent activity.

O’Hara glances at certain reported frauds, yet dwells more on the criticism and ridicule that the Spiritualist found themselves under. He writes that:

‘The strength of the movement lay not in its
public hall mediums, but in the closed home
circle. It was in the home circle of family and
friends that the movement drew the strength to resist
the critics. For the phenomena that was said to occur
in the home circle and which was spoken of in many
reports sent to the Spiritualist press, indicates the
phenomena was wide-spread in the safety of home
circles’.

Maybe a slightly naïve view that the ‘best’ phenomena took place when there were no researchers/critics/investigators present to note an occurrence that might have been caused by something other than the supernatural.

Although O’Hara states very early on in Dead Men’s Embers that condemnation or scepticism of any kind would have devalued the biographical nature of his work, surely the use of hindsight, along with a range of analyses are appropriate when compiling a true history of events. The list of books consulted at the back of Dead Men’s Embers are all pro-Spiritualism, written by mediums or supporters of the movement (Emma Hardinge Britten, D.D Home, Conan Doyle) and one cannot help but think that it wouldn’t have done O’Hara any harm to have read slightly more objective literature on the subject. However, the book is a valuable resource in terms of cataloguing the events of early Spiritualism in York, as well as providing the reader with a collection of William Hope’s incredulous spirit photographs.

The title Dead Men’s Ember’s, is derived from Robert Graves’ quote ‘Blow on a dead man’s embers and a fire will start.’ Thus the early sparks of Spiritualism in Britain soon turned into a nationwide blaze that still burns as strongly and uncontrollably to this day.

Dead Men’s Embers by Gerald O’Hara. Published by Saturday Night Press Publications, 2006.

© Emma-Louise Rhodes, 2007