The following article
appeared in Fortean Times, No 229,
November 2007, pp.38-41. It supported ‘Harry
Price Investigates’, a spin-off article by Richard Morris, who had recently written
a biography of Price. Morris also
contributed sidebars on Borley and Rudi Schneider, plus a further article on
ectoplasm. My title was reduced to
‘Displaying the Paranormal’, and some minor alterations of punctuation and
wording were made (most notably the deletion of the reference to Of Monsters and Miracles, though I did
refer to this event in a follow-up letter replying to some silliness by Morris,
who was keen to keep plugging his book). The editor inserted a sub-heading: “In
1925, Harry Price opened a remarkable event in London – a public display of
spirit photographs, automatic writing, apports and more. TOM RUFFLES tells the story of the Exhibition
of Objects of Psychic Interest.” It
appears here as submitted.
Displaying the Paranormal: The Exhibition of
Objects of Psychic Interest
Readers of this
magazine may remember the exhibition of Fortean objects, Of Monsters and Miracles, held at Croydon Clocktower in 1995. It had an antecedent seventy years before in
an even more ambitious enterprise staged at Caxton Hall on 20 and 21 May 1925. Boasting a slightly less snappy title than
the F.T. version, the Exhibition of
Objects of Psychic Interest contained a large quantity of items with a
paranormal element – almost 1,300 according to the catalogue produced to
accompany it, or “many thousands” in the illustrated report which appeared in
the July issue of the Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR).1 The exhibition aroused a great deal of
interest at a time, less than seven years after the end of the Great War, when
Spiritualism was flourishing.
The idea originated
with J.S. Jensen, president of the Danish Psykisk
Oplysnings Forening, the Society for the Promotion of Psychic
Knowledge. He had been collecting
objects related to the subject for some years, and had eventually gathered
enough material for an exhibition in Copenhagen in January 1925. Psychical researcher (and self-publicist)
Harry Price was invited open it.
Price had been a
last-minute replacement for Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had originally accepted
an invitation to lecture in Denmark . Unfortunately, according to Price’s later
account in Search for Truth, shortly
before Conan Doyle was due to leave he had attended a séance at which he was
warned by the spirit world that the trip might prove injurious to his health,
and he had cried off. Price went in his
stead, and the visit was a great success, especially the catering. Jensen suggested that the exhibition might
travel to London ,
and, impressed by the idea, Price agreed to make arrangements.
He needed a venue, and
fortunately the London Spiritualist Alliance (LSA, later the College of Psychic Studies
This was useful for
Price because in March he floated the idea of a National Laboratory of
Psychical Research, for which he required a home. He had used rooms at the LSA’s premises in
Queen Square previously, but he had ambitions for a much grander research
facility, and it made sense to cohabit with the LSA. One problem, though, was Price’s ambivalent
relationship with Conan Doyle who, being the most prominent exponent of
Spiritualism in the country, had a great deal of leverage with the LSA. Price’s efforts to organise the proposed exhibition,
thereby boosting the profile of the LSA’s bazaar, would provide him with an
advantage in his negotiations with them.
The LSA Council
announced the exhibition in its publication Light
on 18 April 1925, and launched an appeal for loans to supplement Jensen’s
collection, which was to be brought to London
in its entirety. Lenders were asked to
supply a statement giving the background to the object, plus “the signatures of
those able to testify to its genuineness.”
Given that there was only a month to the opening, the organisers did
well to obtain the amount they did.
However, the bulk of the display – items 1 to 1,109 – was made up of Jensen’s
material mounted on panels. These, with
objects gathered in Britain, filled Caxton Hall’s main space, two further rooms
and a gallery, totalling, according to Price’s estimate, about 5,000sq ft.
The 36-page catalogue
emphasised the breadth of a collection “illustrating the history, literature
and development of Spiritualism and psychical Research from the period of
Mesmer (1778) to the present day.” In
the foreword, Price warned that a guarantee could not be given that all objects
were genuine, and referred to “fraud, folly, self-deception” and “credulous
owners.” He stressed that no selection
to “segregate the sheep from the goats” had taken place on the grounds that
“the investigator does not yet know what is, or is not, psychic fraud.”2 Despite this caveat, he concluded that “No
one – however sceptical – can regard the mass of material brought together at
this Exhibition without coming to the conclusion that there is a strong prima facie case for very serious
investigation and scientific research.
The observer who will not admit this is
not honest” (italics in original).
On show was a
selection of books, portraits of mediums and Spiritualist leaders, and
“relics”, including Kate Fox’s marriage certificate which, along with pictures
of the Fox sisters, harked back to the origins of Spiritualism in 1848. There were examples of trance drawings and
automatic writing, including texts dictated by Solon, Bishop Wilberforce,
Plato, Seneca and Beethoven. Captain
Bartlett, drawing in semi-trance as John Alleyne, presented eight pastels of
Glastonbury Abbey as he envisioned it to have looked in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. There were a number
of notebooks and drawings which had belonged to William Stainton Moses, one of
the founders of the LSA, and various apports (objects transported by paranormal
means into the séance room), including a pair of polecat tails and a wreath of
leaves from Summerland.
There were many spirit
photographs on display, including examples taken by Ada Emma Deane (who had
been exposed by The Daily Sketch the
previous year), Harry Blackwell, Robert Boursnell, William Hope’s Crewe Circle
(investigated by Price in 1922 with ambiguous results), and Édouard Isidore Buguet, who had confessed to fraud – but later retracted – in 1875. Conan Doyle’s 85 spirit ‘Garscadden’ photographs
had an area to themselves. (By 1942, twelve years after Sir Arthur’s death,
Price felt brave enough to dismiss the “large collection, every one of which
was, apparently, a fake! Poor, dear,
lovable, credulous Doyle”; a verdict curiously absent from Price’s report
compiled while Doyle was still corporeal.)
American medium ‘Margery’ (Mina Crandon), “whose phenomena are the
wonder of the civilised world” according to the catalogue, was represented by
two photographs. One section was devoted
to what the catalogue described as fake photographs, the implication being that
all the others were genuine: “Anti-Spiritualistic experiments by Faustinus,
Marriott and Rinn.”
Slates used by the
medium Henry Slade were shown, as was his table, the catalogue noting that it
had been “described by [John Neville] Maskelyne as a ‘Trick Table’ in the
prosecution of Slade.” This piece of
furniture had been used in experiments by Price with the medium Stella C.
(Dorothy Stella Cranshaw) at Queen Square in 1923, and then by the LSA as a
packing table.3 There were
mementos of Madame d’Espérance and records of sittings with a large number of
mediums, including Slade, D.D. Home, Florence Cook, Kathleen Goligher, Stainton
Moses, Eusapia Palladino, and Mrs Guppy “of aerial transit fame”, i.e. she was
said to have teleported across London
in 1871. Captain Pearse’s trance drawing
of Elsie Cameron, who was killed in December 1924, and which was said to have
been drawn two days before the crime was uncovered, drew a great deal of prurient
interest in a
case that had achieved notoriety as the Crowborough Chicken Farm Murder
A number of people
well known in the field were on hand to explain the significance of the
exhibits to visitors. Among these was
Price who, with J.S. Jensen’s son, held sway over the Copenhagen material, as well as his own loans
and artefacts associated with Stella C.
Bligh Bond was present to explain the Glastonbury scripts and drawings,
and Conan Doyle did the same for his collection. Dr Abraham Wallace showed lantern slides of
the pioneers at work, and Blackwell discussed his spirit photographs.
A private view was
held on the afternoon of 19 May, mainly for the press, and according to Light the resulting publicity attracted
many non-Spiritualists. Notwithstanding
the organisers’ impression that the press was entirely sympathetic, the
sceptical Daily Sketch of 20 May
declared it to be the “queerest exhibition ever held in London” and felt
obliged to mention two spirits that had been photographed in a semi-nude state. It explained the pair’s unfortunate condition
thus: he had been an athlete while she
had given herself up to pleasure, and both, having neglected to attend to
spiritual matters while alive, were now unable to “weave” spirit robes on the
other side.
However, the dailies
were, on the whole, respectful in tone.
All were primarily fascinated by plaster casts of spirit hands
(‘pseudopods’) loaned by the British
College
There was a decidedly
Society component to the affair. The
first day was opened by Sybil Viscountess Rhondda, and the second by Susan
Countess of Malmesbury and Viscountess Molesworth. Conan Doyle made introductory remarks on both
occasions. As well as the exhibition,
there were stalls selling good quality bric a brac, an auction, concerts and
variety shows, and “seers” who, in the words of Light’s advance publicity, would “exercise their various gifts to
amuse, and perhaps enlighten, visitors for a few quiet minutes away from the
bustle of buying and of viewing exhibits…”
There were a number of
curious occurrences during the two days, such as Iltyd B. Nicholl, who claimed
that he was a frequent target for apports, being struck on the shoe by a safety
pin while walking up some stairs with Price.
Price picked it up and declared that it felt warm, though tactfully not
that it was the same sort of warmth which would have arisen from it being kept
in a pocket. Another apport, “in the
shape of an African native’s leather apron” arrived “especially for the
Exhibition.” As the description of these
wonders occurs in the same paragraph in the ASPR article in which Price warns
of folly and self-deception, one can assume he is being tongue-in-cheek.4
Attendance was
excellent, with £850 changing hands according to the ASPR Journal account (“nearly £1,000” in Search for Truth), which amounted to £600 profit. The article goes on to state that many
well-known people attended, including “everyone in the psychic world”, notably
the “late Sir William Barrett”, although it does not add that he was pre-mortem
at the time.
Light declared the event a resounding success, giving it extensive
coverage. There were a number of reviews
in its 30 May issue, concluding that the bazaar, fête and exhibition would
“leave a shining mark in the annals of our subject.” They noted that Kluski’s casts, Captain
Bartlett’s drawings and Conan Doyle’s photographs had attracted particular
attention, though in the last-mentioned case whether that was because of the
attraction of the pictures themselves or because the creator of Sherlock Holmes
was present to discuss them is open to question.
The success of the
exhibition oiled Price’s relationship with the LSA, which agreed that his
National Laboratory of Psychical Research could occupy the top floor of its new
premises in 16 Queensberry Place to which it moved later in the year, and the
laboratory duly opened on 1 January 1926.
Conan Doyle, though, continued to blow hot and cold in his relationship
with Price, and the intermittent antagonism seems to have caused the LSA some
embarrassment, caught as it was in the crossfire between the pair.
Price, foreseeing the
exhibition’s success, suggested in the catalogue’s foreword that it should form
the nucleus of a permanent museum, and in his ASPR Journal report stated that it had been decided to restage the
exhibition. In a note in the October
1925 Journal he mentioned that Conan
Doyle had acted on his suggestion by mounting a display of objects associated
with Spiritualism in the basement of his psychic bookshop that could be viewed
for a shilling.
Price, perhaps not to
be outdone by his rival, also announced that the Council of the National
Laboratory had decided to found a museum which would show items he had been
collecting for the purpose. And indeed,
Paul Tabori in his biography of Price mentions that Jensen sent material for a
display at the Laboratory, of which he became an honorary corresponding member.
While the exhibition
was undoubtedly fascinating, Price’s triumphant echoing of a newspaper verdict
that it had been “the most wonderful exhibition ever held in London” seems
peculiar given that as he wrote, over in Wembley the British Empire Exhibition
was in full swing, having opened in April 1924, and finally closing in October
1925.5 Perhaps Price felt
that the doings of the spirit realm were more wonderful than those of empire
builders...
Footnotes:
1 Although
unsigned, the Journal article was
written by Harry Price. It formed the basis
for the chapter entitled ‘A Unique Exhibition’, in Price’s Search for Truth. Price was
the ASPR’s ‘Foreign Research Officer’.
2 One feels that Price, with his first-hand
knowledge of the field, would have had a good idea of what was fraudulent. The verdict in Search for Truth was not so even-handed, adopting a sneering tone.
3 It now
resides in the President’s office at the College of Psychic Studies.
4 In the
ASPR account the gentleman remains anonymous and is identified by name only in Search for Truth, by which time he was
presumably dead.
5 One of
the Light reviews refers to the
Caxton Hall display as a “Wembley” of psychic exhibits.
Further reading:
[Harry Price], ‘The
Psychic Exhibition’, Journal of the
American Society for Psychical Research, July 1925, pp382-386.
Harry Price, Search for Truth – My Life for Psychical
Research, Collins, London ,
1942.
Paul Tabori, Harry Price: Ghost Hunter, The Athenæum
Press, London ,
1950.
Acknowledgements:
Thanks are due to Dr
Julia C Walworth, Head of Historic Collections at the University of London
Library, for producing the exhibition catalogue from the Harry Price Collection
(gone, alas, are the days when one could look for oneself); and especially to
Kay MacCauley, General Administrator of The College of Psychic Studies, for
delving into back issues of Light.
