The Birth of Spiritualism

Posted on January 6th, 2008.

No discussion of Spiritualism can be complete without considering the story of three sisters living in Hydesville, N.Y. USA.

On the 31^st March 1848 Catherine (Kate), Margaret (Maggie) and Leah (Ann) Fox (above) reported ‘strange noises, raps
and knocks’ which could not be accounted for. Mr and Mrs Fox quickly concluded that a restless spirit might be plaguing their home.

The children would play at responding to these knocks and taps and Catherine is reported to have spoken aloud whilst
doing so.

“Mr Splitfoot, do as I do”… the signals tapped out by the girls were responded to by the entity which seemed to be visiting the Fox household.

Establishing a series of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ response the Fox family learned that their otherworldly guest was a man, aged 31
years who had been murdered in their house and buried in the cellar.

The Fox family invited neighbours and guests to be witnesses to these events and although the basement was excavated
nothing was found. (Although there are unconfirmed reports that a skeleton was unearthed in 1904 ‘in the vicinity’ of the Fox cellar)

News of the Fox sisters spread and the Fox sisters became celebrities. The more people who came to visit the sisters
the more ‘ghostly goings on’ there were. Soon the sisters were communicating with other spirits and what we know today as ‘sittings’ were arranged.

By 1849 the sisters were giving public performances. Some writers record that Maggie, Ann and Kate were taken under the wing of P.T. Barnum and the “girls who could talk to the spirits” became the greatest known mediums of their time.

In a very real sense the Fox sisters, and those who promoted them, were the basis of what we now know as the spiritualist movement.

Soon others discovered their own mediumistic skills and séances became the in thing.

The first Spiritualist church opened in 1853 in Keighley in Yorkshire. The church was opened by David Richmond who had returned home from America bringing with him a knowledge about Spirit communication and a mediumistic ability.

In 1855 the first spiritualist news paper, “The Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph” was published – also in Keighley.

The spread of the ‘philosophy’ and doctrine of spiritualism was ensured as some leading academics and ‘personages
of note’ became devotees of the belief. Robert Owen in 1854, scientist William Crooks in 1871 and later in 1918 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to name some of the earliest ‘converts’.

Various gifted mediums became well known and written about, they helped to spread the knowledge of Spiritualism
further. Significant among these was Emma Hardinge Britten who had spread the word extensively in America. In 1865, Emma returned to her native land England and demonstrated her gift of mediumship and inspired, semi-trance public
speaking on the subject of the Philosophy of Spiritualism.

Legally in the UK Mediums could be moved on or prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act 1735 and the Vagrancy Act 1824
and even as late as 1944 mediums were being prosecuted. In that year Helen Duncan was the last person to be tried and imprisoned for acting as a medium, accused under the Witchcraft Act. In 1951 however the Fraudulent Mediums
Act was passed that affectively legalised Spiritualists to practice their religion openly and publicly. This did not stop further police raids on Mrs Duncan’s soiree’s. In 1956 the police raided another of Helen Duncan’s séances in Nottingham and 36 days afterward she died, partly it is claimed due to the shock of being disturbed from her mediumistic trance state.

The fact that the spiritualist movement spread so rapidly must in part be due to social changes that were happening
throughout the developing world. In particular the innovations which had started to transform the way people communicated.

William Sturgoen (British inventor) had introduced the world to the potential of the electromagnet (1825) and by 1830
Joseph Henry (US inventor) demonstrated how the electromagnet could be used for long distance communication. The electric telegraph was born which was to be fully exploited in a commercial sense by Samuel Morse.

In 1880, building upon the ideas of Poul la Cour, Innocenzo Manzetti, Elish Gray and others Alexander Graham Bell
‘invented’ the telephone. Many claim that Bell’s patents were invalid since credit for the invention of this device should go to Antoni Meucci who in 1860 demonstrated the first version of what was to all intents and purposes ‘the’ telephone.

This new science of communication heralded rapid transmission of news and ideas. It may well have also raised
questions as to the possibility of communicating with the ‘beyond’. The philosophy and practice of Spiritualism was in keeping with this spirit of broadening horizons through developing new ways of talking to one another.