PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES OF SPIRITUALISM. 



117 



eases,' 1 he continues, "whore servants of the 

 house were bribed into acting as accomplices." 

 And Sergeant Cox, speaking of the " materializa- 

 tion" performance, refers to "people who knew 

 it was a trick, and lent themselves to it." 



" The lesson," continues Sergeant Cox, " to he 

 learned from all this [the system of cheating he has 

 honestly exposed] is, that no phenomena should 

 be accepted as genuine that are not produced un- 

 der strict test-conditions. Investigators should be 

 satisfied with no evidence short of the very best that 

 the circumstances will ■permit.' 1 '' 



I feel sure, therefore, that, as an experienced 

 criminal judge, Sergeant Cox will bear me out in 

 saying that, in the case now under discussion, 

 the only " test-condition " that could be consid- 

 ered " demonstrative " would be a careful search 

 of every individual admitted to the seance. Such 

 a test, however, would probably be objected to 

 by Mr. Wallace, as showing an unreasonable de- 

 gree of suspicion, which might deter the " dear 

 spirits " from favoring the seance with their gifts ; 

 and he would argue that failure under such " rig- 

 id conditions" proved nothing against the gen- 

 uineness of successes obtained under more fa- 

 vorable circumstances. But I believe that the 

 common-sense of such as have not surrendered it 

 to the spiritualistic " prepossession " will bear me 

 out in the conclusion that Mr. Wallace's " demon- 

 stration " is no demonstration at all ; and that, 

 until some better shall have been given, we are 

 fully justified in deeming it more probable that 

 there is imposture somewhere than that " matter 

 can pass through matter." 



That there is good ground for suspecting even 

 ladies who are above receiving money as profes- 

 sional " mediums " of occasionally amusing them- 

 selves in this way for the mere pleasure of decep- 

 tion, I pointed out in my lectures, as a probability 

 well known to medical practitioners, of which 

 Mr. Wallace has not had — what I have had — per- 

 sonal experience. And I shall now give the par- 

 ticulars of a case of this kind, referred to in my 

 second lecture, my account of which has been 

 called in question by Mr. Wallace. 



In his zeal to defend a " lady-medium," whom 

 he considers that I have most unjustly aspersed, 

 Mr. Wallace suggests that my informant " manu- 

 factured the evidence;" asks for "independent 

 testimony that the salt was not applied to the 

 flowers after they appeared at the seance ; " and 

 states that " some of the flowers were sent to a 

 medical man in the town, and that no trace of 

 ferrocyanide of potassium could be detected." 

 As Mr. Wallace has no reserve about the case, I 



may now say that the " medium " was Mr. Wal- 

 lace's favorite performer — Miss Nichol, afterward 

 Mrs. Guppy, and now Mrs. Guppy Volckman — 

 the subject of the celebrated aerial transportation 

 from her house in Highbury Hill Park into a se 

 curely-closed room in Lamb's Conduit Street ; 

 and that the seance was one of several held dur- 

 ing the meeting of the British Association at 

 Belfast, three years ago, in a house into which 

 Mrs. Guppy had been received as a guest. Hav- 

 ing myself seen one of the hollyhocks " pro- 

 duced " on that occasion, and having learned 

 that a fraud had been chemically detected by a 

 young gentleman present at the seance, I put my- 

 self into communication with him, and soon re- 

 ceived an explicit statement of what had passed, 

 not only at this, but at a previous seance, with 

 full permission to publish it. The following vc /•- 

 batim extract from this statement, which, having 

 lain in my desk for more than three years, has 

 not been " manufactured " to meet Mr. Wallace's 

 objections — as its precise " fit " might seem to 

 suggest — contains all that is essential to the 

 case : 



" Having observed [in previous seances] that 

 the flowers were soaked in wet (dew does not soak 

 to the heart of a flower), I considered that the dew 

 on them was artificially produced ; and on August 

 21st I mixed a small quantity of solution of potas- 

 sium ferrocyanide with the water on the wash-stand 

 in Mrs. Guppy's rooms. 



" Seance No. 4, August 23, 1874.— Fifteen per- 

 sons sat; of these five were strangers — viz., Mr. 

 and Mrs. Guppy, and three gentlemen introduced 

 by them, one a professed medium. The candle 

 was put out, and the table began to oscillate vio- 

 lently. We were asked to wish for three kinds of 

 flowers. The table now jolted violently, and 1 

 struck some matches. It at once stopped. Mrs. 

 Guppy got very angry, and said it was as much as 

 to say they were cheating. Being pacified, the 

 candle was again extinguished, after we had found 

 on the table some sand, a plant like an onion, etc. 

 The table rocked violently, and scent was squirted 

 from one of the mediums. A large quantity of 

 flowers were thrown from their side of the table, 

 among which were china-asters, which I took out, 

 and, having wet a piece of white blotting-paper 

 with the ' dew' off them, poured some ferrous-sul- 

 phate solution on it. The result was the ordinary 

 Prussian-blue color. A spike of pink hollyhock 

 gave a very decided blue color. Similar flowers. 

 fresh from the garden, gave no reaction. The 

 flowers were allowed to remain hi my laboratory, 

 the door of which was not locked, till the morning 

 of August 25th, when I took some in to Dr. Hodg- 

 es, and he with several friends could find no trace 

 of the salt in them. I immediately wrote to a 



