Tales of Terror – A Review

Tales of Terror, presented by The Happiness Patrol, featuring ghost stories by Louisa Baldwin, M R James, Lafcadio Hearn and Edgar Allen Poe.

ADC Theatre, Cambridge, 25 May 2010.

Calling a production Tales of Terror is a hostage to fortune because you expect at the very least to have a chill down the spine at some point in the proceedings, even if the company does have ‘Happiness’ in its name. Unfortunately this was an event distinctly short on terror, or tension of any kind. You may also assume, given the venue, that it is going to involve some element of dramatisation (much as we had a perfectly serviceable adaptation of The Woman in White at the ADC a few weeks ago). Tales of Terror instead involved a cast of one giving us a recitation that would have worked well on Radio 4 but wasn’t best suited to the stage, even though the mise-en-scène nodded to the spooky by being completely black, with black-clad narrator Philip Holyman lit from below, and ‘eerie music’ between the stories.

Holyman knew the words, which as far as I can tell were word-perfect, and he varied his tone to match the speaker when there was dialogue (though they all appeared to be from the West Midlands). The tales were sufficiently different to prevent him from becoming monotonous. But the choice was surprising. There are plenty of out-of-copyright stories that he could have used, and one wonders why he selected these ones.

The first was ‘How He Left the Hotel’ by Louisa Baldwin, who was Prime Minister Stanley ‘Farmer’ Baldwin’s mother. It got us off to a good start, but unfortunately was entirely predictable, and Holyman was just not able to make it sound uncanny. ‘There was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard’, by M. R. James, was of course creepy, as you would expect. Unfortunately it has a frame which is perfectly understandable on the page, and would be if told around a roaring fire to a few admiring acolytes in the Jamesian manner, but in the larger space of the ADC sounded confusing.

‘In a Cup of Tea’, by Lafcadio Hearn, came across well, aided by the exoticism of its setting, but is just as incoherent a narrative when spoken as it is when read. The final one, given in isolation after the interval, was the strongest: Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Black Cat’, a splendid character study of Poe’s ‘imp of the perverse’, though a bit of an ordeal for animal lovers.

Alas for the element of surprise, none of these was a neglected story plucked from some dusty and long-forgotten repository. ‘The Black Cat’ would be known to many in the audience from page and screen, not least Roger Corman's 1962 effort in which he combined it with 'A Cask of Amontillado' as one of a trio of Poe stories in the film Tales of Terror. ‘In a Cup of Tea’ may be familiar to some because of its appearance in the 1964 portmanteau film based on Hearn’s writings, Kwaidan. Including M R James was nice because of his Cambridge connection, but again his work is well known, and Holyman’s effort suffered in comparison to the superb one-man adaptations done by Robert Lloyd Parry in which he creates a James persona. Only the Baldwin was relatively obscure, but even that has been anthologised and is not hard to find.

The venue was a problem because the stage was too big for just one person, and the effort of projection meant that subtlety was lost. Dressing it in black with minimal lighting was not enough to generate the required atmosphere. The intimacy of the Corpus Christie Playroom, where I have seen Lloyd Parry perform, might have given the material a better chance. Finally, the running time was a lot shorter than the 1 hour 20 minutes the programme promised. Both halves together clocked in at under an hour, which isn’t much of an evening’s entertainment at the theatre. There were mutterings in the audience which suggested that dismay was not mine alone.

Ann Moore: The Fasting Woman of Tutbury

This article was published in ‘The Skeptic’ (hence the spelling of that word in the text), Vol. 6, No. 6, November/December 1992, pp.9-11. It was illustrated with a picture of Ann Moore from the Mary Evans Picture Library, and the title page of the third edition of the pamphlet “An Account of the Extraordinary Abstinence of Ann Moor”. At one time the article was included on a Tutbury community website but the village doesn’t seem that bothered to emphasise the association these days, and the place is probably better known for having had the Most Haunted crowd descend on its castle. The asterisked information was omitted by the magazine’s editors, though they left the asterisk itself, otherwise the article is exactly as it appeared then.


The Fasting Woman of Tutbury

A close look at a nineteenth century ‘miracle’
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Ann Moore was born in 1761 in Rosleston, Derbyshire, and had spent her working life firstly in service and later in the cotton industry. Early in 1807 she declared that she could live without food. At the time she was living in Tutbury, Staffordshire, and consequently became known as ‘The Fasting Woman of Tutbury’.

The first watch

Moore agreed to be subjected to a watch in order to prove her story, so in September 1808 she was taken from her own home to that of a local grocer, Mr Jackson. The event was supervised by a surgeon, Robert Taylor, but all inhabitants of the village were invited to help, and 80-90 participated. The fast lasted for sixteen days, though Moore was allowed some water on the first three days. Then she was taken home, having apparently succeeded in establishing her claim.

Taylor published an account of the proceedings, declaring that Moore had lived without food, liquid or solid, for thirteen days. Her window was always kept open, and the hypothesis was advanced by Taylor that she was somehow obtaining nutrients from hydrogen in the air. Other cases of people fasting for lengthy periods without ill effect were adduced.

The claim, now seemingly verified, was believed by many, and large numbers flocked to see her. They left gifts, ostensibly for her children, and these were estimated to amount to about 250 shillings in two years, and perhaps as much as 400-500 by 1813. Moore professed to be very religious, and would discuss theological matters with visitors, in order to add weight to a divine interpretation of her ability. But it was felt that this was a mask, as she was capable of ‘virulent’ language when challenged by skeptics. It was the case that prior to the advent of her fame she had been morally depraved; she had been separated from her husband for about twenty years, during which time she had lived in adultery with a man by whom she had borne two children.

From the time the watch ended, she claimed to have eaten nothing, a declaration which was clearly profitable. Indeed, she said that she had now lost the power of swallowing - if she attempted to do so, she would suffocate. As a corollary she had not urinated nor defecated during that time, neither had she slept.

Various causes were advanced by Moore as to why she had been afflicted (or blessed, depending how one looks at it) in this way. To begin with she said that it had been caused by washing some clothes which had been used to bind the ulcerous wounds of a boy. Then, she said that it was due to extreme want. Latterly she stated that it had come on gradually, so that she ate less and less food, then took liquids only, then nothing at all.

The Henderson report

As a result of hearing of Moore's fame, Alexander Henderson and two friends on holiday visited her at her home during 1812. They had previously canvassed opinions of the phenomenon, and found that whereas the medical community was skeptical, members of the general public were convinced of her sincerity, and pointed to the nine-day watch as definite proof.

On meeting her they gave her a full examination, and found her healthy. She was thin, though not abnormally so, and her stomach had not caved in as would be expected in a case of starvation. On the other hand the lower part of her body appeared to be wasted and paralytic. She produced plenty of saliva, and her bed stank of urine. In addition to her ability to survive without food, she still claimed not to be able to sleep. She did doze, she said, but was always conscious. She also stated that she was subject to fits, had problems opening her mouth, and had lost the use of all but the index finger on her left hand. She said that she had lost all feeling in her lower limbs.

The party was not convinced and thought that she was fabricating her condition in order to ‘excite wonder and compassion’, carried out in collusion with others. Henderson produced fourteen reasons in support of his contention that Moore was not telling the truth. Some were direct, others circumstantial, based on previous cases of lengthy fasting.

To begin with, there was the natural and healthy appearance of her face and the strength of her pulse, muscles and voice. Moisture in her mouth, nostrils, eyes and the surface of her skin did not indicate any desiccation. Her intellect had not been impaired. On a moral note, the dissolute conduct of her earlier life and the admission that she had once passed as religious for worldly gain did not inspire confidence in her probity. There was the vested interest she and her attendants had in perpetuating the deception, as well as the declaration that she had made that she thought that a time might come when God would restore her appetite. This would be a useful escape should she be caught eating.

Other factors militating against her were: evidence of the concealment of the evacuation of urine; her dread at a repetition of the watch; a general dread of experiments performed upon her; variations and contradictions in her statements, for example the date upon which she ceased eating, using a finger she had declared to be useless, and whether she did or did not perspire; the performance of actions which were inconsistent with her statements, such as drinking when she had declared that it caused her pain; and the fact that her bodily state was about the same as when she began her fast, yet case histories of starving people consistently found that physical deterioration occurred quickly.

Instances of similar frauds from across Europe were discussed by Henderson, and it becomes apparent that there was a tradition of women claiming that they had not eaten for extended periods. He cites various cases of women who, like Moore, had been convincing at first, but had later been caught cheating. In any case, he continued, the previous scrutiny of Moore had only lasted sixteen days, which was not the same as five years, nor had it been scientific.

The second watch

Moore's claims were treated with skepticism by the scientific community, so she was invited to participate in a second watch which would be better controlled than its predecessor. It was reported in a pamphlet published, like Henderson's, in 1813. This was now six years after she first made claims of abstinence, and four and a half after the first watch. It was clear that despite these alleged privations she was still in good health. The Henderson pamphlet spurred her friends to encourage her to refute his allegations as quickly as possible.

This watch was to be more rigorous than the first, so only Church of England ministers, medical men and magistrates, upright citizens all, were to be allowed to participate. The committee was headed by Sir Oswald Mosley, Bart., of Rolleston. It met on 20 April 1813, and agreed that Moore should be watched for one month. She refused at first, but the medically qualified members were adamant that no shorter time would suffice to test her adequately, so she was forced to agree.

To begin with she was weighed and was put on a new bed which had a weighing machine attached. Moore was dissatisfied with these arrangements, and said that she expected to lose 2-3 lbs. The bed had been inspected and filled with chaff. The bedding was searched, and the move from the old to new bed watched. Her person was examined, as was the room. Naturally she was kept isolated, except for the investigators.

At the end of seven days, an announcement was made that she had taken no food in that time. Moore's supporters were confident that she would last the entire month, though it was clear to those observing that she was suffering, and had lost a lot of weight. She developed a fever, and asked for cloths dipped in a vinegar/water mixture with which she could wet her tongue and mouth. These were usually wrung out, but one watcher did not do so in order to see if she could swallow, despite her claim to the contrary. She swallowed the mixture avidly.

By the eighth day she was very distressed, and her pulse was registering 145 beats per minute. The day after she said that she had to give up the test as she was ill, and asked for her daughter to be sent for. The watchers were worried that she would die, and admitted the daughter. She, upon seeing her mother's condition, ran to a neighbour's house, but immediately returned, and it was supposed that she transferred a quantity of water from her own mouth to her mother's under the pretence of kissing her.

Moore was somewhat revived by these ministrations, and her daughter begged the team to leave the room, which they were loath to do. The daughter refused to assist her mother unless they did, and they felt that they had no choice as the doctors present opined that Moore appeared to have only a couple of hours to live. Her pulse was now 160 beats per minute in one wrist, and not discernible in the other. The watch therefore broke up, the daughter took charge, and Moore began to improve.

The aftermath

Despite the failure of the test, Moore said that she wanted to make an oath that she had taken no food during the preceding six years. This she did, no doubt hoping to retain her credibility. She might have succeeded in this endeavour, but Mr Bott of Tutbury, one of the investigators, discovered linen concealed in her room which seemed stained with urine and faeces. Her blanket was also wet through. When confronted, Moore broke down and made a written confession, dated 4th May 1813. At last she admitted that she had eaten during the six years, and asked forgiveness of the people she had deceived, as well as of God. She drank some milk in the presence of witnesses without difficulty, though when water had been placed in her mouth when she seemed to be dying she had imitated the act of suffocation and had brought up blood.

Conjectures as to why she had succeeded during the first watch were put forward by the writer of this third pamphlet. One was the possibility that the huge number of watchers had included collaborators, although this had not been proved. Her linen had been brought and removed by one woman, and could have been used as a vehicle for food, but again nothing had been found when it was searched. The daughter could have helped, as she had visited every day and had been permitted to approach the bed. The conditions of the second watch ruled out this possibility.

Any urine discovered during the first test would not have been seen as significant, as she had been allowed to drink during the first three days; it was only after the test ended that she claimed to have lost the power of swallowing. During it she took snuff, and also pretended to have a cold, so that she used nineteen handkerchiefs in two days. These were washed in case they contained starch, but were more likely used to absorb her urine. They would have been dried on her body before being returned, with the smell covered by the window always being kept open. She was also at first given hartshorn for a headache, the ammonia in which would have helped to disguise the smell of urine. This remedy was later withheld.
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With all these loopholes in the protocol of the first watch, Moore must have been confident of succeeding in the second, and it is unlikely that she would have agreed to participate had she appreciated how rigorous it was to be. During the nine days the only assistance she received was the supply of wet cloths. She was so grateful to Mr Wright, who had not wrung out the cloth he had given her, that she promised him her body for dissection after her death.

The report acknowledged that people can survive on very little, and postulated that Moore, never a hearty eater, had been tempted to exaggerate this ability. Her daughter did admit that her principal source of sustenance was tea. The writer concedes that had she had access to water, she would probably have been able to survive the entire month. This admiration for her constitution is tempered with the declaration that Moore was an imposter, her deception made worse by its religious cover story. It had been impious of her to offer herself as a miracle.

It is interesting to speculate on why Moore should have chosen to make such a preposterous claim. Apart from the monetary gain, which came after she had passed the first trial, she found herself an object of interest and celebration. Medical men came to visit her, which must have been gratifying to somebody who would not otherwise have been found interesting. Starvation, with all the discomforts it entailed, was one of the few ways for a working woman to gain social and financial advancement.
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It is possible too that the fraud got out of hand, so that something designed to impress the inhabitants of Tutbury blew out of proportion until it was a matter of national interest. On a larger scale, this was a time of uncertainty. The long war with France had created unrest and economic difficulties in the country, and industrialisation was affecting the cotton industry in which Moore worked. It is clear that fantastic claims flourish when times are hard.

Bibliography
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An account of the extraordinary abstinence of Ann Moor (sic), of Tutbury, Staffordshire, who has, since June 1807*, lived entirely without food; giving the particulars of her life to the present time, an account of the investigation instituted on the occasion, and observations on the letters of some medical men who attended it. Also other similar cases of abstinence. By a gentleman 
living near Tutbury. Uttoxeter. Third edition, 1810 (First edition issued in 1809).

An examination of the imposture of Ann Moore, called the fasting woman, of Tutbury; illustrated by remarks of other cases of real and pretended abstinence. By Alexander Henderson, M.D. Physician to the Westminster General Dispensary. London, 1813.

A full exposure of Ann Moore, the pretended fasting woman of Tutbury. London, 1813.


* The plate opposite the title page is captioned ‘Ann Moore, of Tutbury Staffordshire. Born 1761. Who has lived without Food, since July 17. 1807’"


Tom Ruffles is a freelance writer living in Norfolk.

Tony Cornell and the Cambridge Cinema Ghost Experiment

Some time ago I reviewed a book for the nthposition website called Six Feet Over by Mary Roach (Spook in the US), in which she described a series of experiments conducted in 1959-60 by Tony Cornell with members of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research. These involved a figure masquerading as a ghost in a variety of settings in order to test the reactions of the public. The final experiment consisted of “a white clad figure” (ie Tony wearing a sheet) walking both ways across the stage in a cinema, after which the investigators asked the no doubt bemused patrons whether they had seen anything. The procedure was carried out during a black and white trailer for the following week’s attraction, as it allowed the group time to quiz the audience before the single feature began.

What caused my eyebrows to levitate was Roach’s description of the cinema as a “porn theater“, a type of establishment most unlikely to exist in Cambridge, and even if it did, not the sort of place I could imagine Tony taking university students. It was also clear that women - one with her husband - were present during the discussion, which seemed even more unlikely if the cinema was showing pornographic films.

The original article describing this experiment, in the Society for Psychical Research Journal for December 1960, refers only to “a local cinema” (ie in Cambridge), and there were a number of these in the city. So I asked Tony which one they had used and he told me it was the Rex, no longer in existence, which was located behind the Shire Hall Council buildings. After such a long gap he could not recall the name of the film that was playing that night, but the article says that it was X certificate so that they could obtain the responses of adults with no children present.

In my review I speculated that the film might have been Peeping Tom, a strong film for the time (eliciting negative verdicts from the newspapers and effectively ending director Michael Powell’s career), which was released in May 1960. But, during a recent email exchange with Chris Romer, he said that Tony had told him that the cinema they used was known for dirty films, which suggested the type of fare that would have been shown at a membership-only cinema, rather like Soho‘s Compton Cinema Club which opened in 1960. As it seemed possible that even more people had this impression, I thought I would check to see what was on at the Rex the night of the experiment.

Fortunately Tony was very precise in his article about the date: 28 May 1960. Knowing the cinema’s name made it easy to establish what was showing as the local newspaper, then called the Cambridge Daily News, carried advertisements for all the cinemas each day. The film exhibited at the Rex on Saturday 28 May certainly was an X, but pornographic - no, although mentioning the word ‘panties’ was thought a bit racy at the time. It was Anatomy of a Murder, directed by Otto Preminger, with Lee Remick and James Stewart. The following week saw a double bill, The Last Angry Man and Edge of Eternity, both U certificate. Edge of Eternity is in colour, but The Last Angry Man is black and white, so it is likely that that was the trailer showing when Tony made his passage across the stage, with not a dirty mac in sight.

Why Mary Roach should have thought that the cinema was showing porn is unclear. I don’t think Tony can have given her this misinformation because he would have mentioned it to me when I discussed her book with him. It is possible that, being unfamiliar with British film certification and the Cambridge cinema scene of the period, she assumed an X-rated film would be pornographic, as its use in the United States before the introduction of NC-17 had those associations. Tony’s reason for telling Chris Romer that the cinema showed dirty films is harder to fathom. Most likely he was exaggerating for effect. Or, it could be, his standards were of a kind that considered Anatomy of a Murder to be such a film, though given the nature of some of his anecdotes, I somehow doubt it.


PS 13.9.10: At the 2010 annual conference of the Society for Psychical Research in Sheffield, Professor Bernard Carr gave a talk about Tony's life during which he referred to the cinema experiment. The following day, Professor Chris French gave a paper which among other things discussed inattentional blindness. This is the strange inability we often have to notice something which should be obvious when we are focusing on a cognitively resource-hungry task. The example he provided was the well-known Daniel Simons/Christopher Chabris 'Gorilla in our midst' video made in 1999: viewers are told to count the number of ball passes made by a group moving around a small space, and a surprisingly large number will fail to notice the person in a gorilla suit passing through. During the question session, Carmen Dell'Aversano pointed out that the experiment bore a striking similarity to Bernard's description of the cinema experiment, and that Tony was far ahead of his time. While there are differences (the cinema audience was not told to concentrate on a task, for example), the point remains that the CUSPR work was pioneering, and deserves to be better known.

Weighing the Soul - Comments on ‘Body and Soul’, by Paul Chambers

Weighing the Soul - Comments on ‘Body and Soul’, by Paul Chambers

When I tried to post some comments on the Fortean Times message board concerning an article called ‘Body and Soul’, by Paul Chambers, I was constantly thrown back to the profile update section. I thought that I would place them here instead, in an elaborated form.


Paul Chambers’ article on efforts to weigh the soul by Duncan MacDougall and others [FT262, May 2010] contained some omissions and errors. To begin with a popular and readily-available book, there is no mention of Len Fisher’s chapter on the subject in his volume with the giveaway title Weighing the Soul: The Evolution of Scientific Beliefs (2004). Fisher suggests an explanation for the weight reduction MacDougall found at the point of death: convection caused by the body cooling – precision balances being sensitive to air currents – which although not persuasive, could have at least been mentioned by Chambers. Interestingly, but not significantly, Fisher and the FT article both have photographs of Fairbanks Imperial Grocer’s Scales which are slightly different to each other (Fisher’s one also appears on the cover of the US edition of his book).

The Metaphysical Magazine (‘A monthly review devoted to science, psychology, philosophy, metaphysics and occult subjects’) for April 1907 (p.377) picked up on the press reports and included a short article on MacDougall’s efforts, entitled 'Weighing Human Souls'. The author had no doubt that MacDougall’s findings were accurate and thought that they supported the contention that the soul was “a material substance of a sublimated character”, but decided, in less esoteric terms, that weight loss might be due simply to the exhalation of breath as the lungs collapsed. Again, Chambers does not include this suggestion, even if it is about as plausible as convection.

Chambers does cite Mary Roach on weighing the soul, but rather than read the chapter in her book Spook (published as Six Feet Over in the UK) he has relied on it as reproduced on a website called Lost magazine. Unfortunately this is not the complete chapter, but has sections left out. A reference to the book would have been more useful than to an expurgated version, even if the latter was easier to find. One of the sections not in the online version, but which is included in Roach’s book, relates to Lewis Hollander’s experiments with sheep, which showed a small but temporary increase in weight at the moment of death. This work is mentioned by Chambers, as Hollander’s paper in the Journal of Scientific Exploration is available online. But he does not include Masayoshi Ishida’s 2009 paper ‘A New Experimental Approach to Weight Change Experiments at the Moment of Death with a Review of Lewis E. Hollander’s Experiments on Sheep’, also in JSE, which subjects Hollander’s work to a mathematical analysis and finds problems with his procedures and results. While Fortean Times is not the place for a technical discussion, a reference to this later examination would have helped to contextualise the apparent anomaly presented by Hollander’s research.

Chambers mentions, in passing, experiments carried out by H Lav. Twining and gives Hereward Carrington’s Laboratory Investigations into Psychic Phenomena as a source. According to Chambers, Twining found no change in weight at death during trials in which he killed thirty mice. In an appendix to his book, however, Carrington reprints extracts from a letter he had received from Twining (pp.243-5) in which Twining says that “after some thirty experiments I found that the loss of weight was caused by the expulsion of moisture at the instant of death.” There was only no loss when the container was hermetically sealed with the mouse inside. Carlos Alvarado describes these findings in a letter in the March 1980 issue of the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Fisher discusses them too but questions whether the loss of moisture would be that rapid, in either humans or mice. Chambers cannot have read any of these accounts to conclude erroneously that Twining claimed that no change in weight occurred (Chambers is not just referring to the trials with sealed containers).

Another piece of research that would have been of interest to FT’s readers was conducted at Addenbrooke’s hospital by Bernard Carr (better known these days as an astrophysicist) in 1969-70, and reported in the Proceedings of the SPR in 2008. This used sleeping patients rather than dying ones, but with the addition of hypnosis and meditation which might induce astral separation. Results were inconclusive and not written up at the time, but it was a useful attempt to update the original approach in a more ethical age.

Towards the end of his article, Chambers baldly refers to a mouse experiment mentioned in the New York Times on 13 March 1907 and states that he could find no other details of the work, but does not say what was in the newspaper on that day. The article on 13 March quotes an unnamed “eminent physiological chemist” describing experiments by anonymous German students. They, some unspecified years previously, had experimented on mice and found no weight loss when the animals were in a sealed container, whereas those in an open vessel did show loss of weight. The chemist asserted that a gas was given off at the point of death, and concluded that, as MacDougall was effectively replicating an open vessel with his human guinea pigs, gas was the factor in his experiments also, the weight loss being on the same scale as with the mice. These experiments sound so similar to Twining’s that one wonders whether he was the “German students” the chemist had in mind, or was even the ‘chemist’ himself. There is uncertainty over the date of Twining’s experiments. Chambers says it was 1915, but that was the year he published his book The Physical Theory of the Soul, and his experiments occurred earlier. The letter to Carrington is dated 12 September 1933, and although he reprints part of this and short extracts from Twining’s book, no date is given for the experiments.

Chambers gives a number of references from NYT in his list of sources up to 15 March 1907, but the story was alluded to after that date, culminating with a rather nice poem by Walter Beverley Crane on 21 October beginning “I cannot weigh my soul to-day, it is too heavy laden”. Correspondence in the newspaper was generally satirical in tone, and an entertaining article by ‘Diogenes’ on 4 August 1907 explored the implications of a compulsory quantitative analysis of the soul, in a society in which every member had to carry a “soul card” open to inspection, showing their foibles to anyone who asked to see it. The implication is that society would not be happier for such a facility.

Of course the function of FT is to entertain as well as inform, but Chambers’ article (surprisingly given first place in the magazine as the cover story) could have been strengthened with a little more primary research. It isn’t particularly long and there would have been space to expand on the post-MacDougall work. Weighing the soul is a fascinating subject, but its treatment here doesn’t do it justice.

Radio review - The Witch of Beacon Hill

This radio review appeared in The British & Irish Skeptic, Vol. 3, No. 5, September/October 1989, p.25. For some reason, perhaps to save a few lines, the published version ran several paragraphs together. Apart from reinstating the paragraph breaks, this is as printed then.


‘Margery’ revisited

The Witch of Beacon Hill, by Paul M. Levitt. Saturday Night Theatre, Radio 4, 30 September 1989.

The Witch of Beacon Hill purports to relate the events surrounding the investigation by the magazine Scientific American of the well known medium Mina Crandon, better known as ‘Margery’, in 1924. The best known member of the examining committee was Harry Houdini, and the play concentrates on the clash between him and Mina and her husband LeRoi, a noted Boston surgeon.

This was presumably done for dramatic emphasis, but as a result a misleading impression was conveyed. It was suggested at the end of the play that Mina won the battle with Houdini (though clearly by fraudulent means), and thereby achieved universal acceptance as being genuine. This was far from true: the phenomena she produced continued to be debated hotly. Rival interpretations were never reconciled, but merely faded away due to the new emphasis on laboratory experimentation in the 1930s, and the death of the protagonists (LeRoi in 1939 and Mina, by then an alcoholic, in 1941).

By concentrating on Houdini to the almost total exclusion of the role played by his colleagues, the listener is left with the impression that they did not play a significant part. This was not true. Also, no indication was given that the Scientific American investigation was one of a series carried out on Margery. Her fate in the play seemed to hang on Houdini's assessment, whereas in reality verdicts of fraud, including Houdini's, though numerous were always circumstantial. Whatever the outcome, she always bounced back.

Because this was not a documentary, it was difficult to know where attested facts stopped and the author's imagination began. For example, although rumours about Mina's sexual conduct circulated at the time, and her affair with Bird (the Scientific American's associate editor who was responsible for persuading the magazine's proprietor to put up the prize for which Margery was tested) seemed plausible, it was harder to believe that she attempted to seduce Houdini.

It was a pity that because of the concentration on Houdini and his particular motives for taking a keen interest in life after death, the furore over the famous thumbprints was totally ignored, occurring as it did from 1926 onwards. This scandal makes amusing reading, effectively killing scientific interest in Margery. The prints were supposed to belong to Margery's control ‘Walter’, but were attributed to Mina's dentist by her detractors in the Boston SPR, provoking claim and counterclaim which said more about the state of American psychical research than the merits of the Margery mediumship.

What were the results of the Margery episode? Basically there were two. Firstly, it hardened, although it did not cause, the rift in the American SPR which led to the formation of the Boston splinter group. Secondly and more importantly, J.B. and Louisa Rhine had attended some of Margery's séances, and were so concerned at the damage that was being caused to psychical research by the resulting internecine warfare that they decided to retreat into the laboratory, where results would be more clear cut. As it happened, interpretation there was just as difficult as it had been in the seance room, but at the time it must have seemed the only reasonable approach.

Alas the play failed to capture the pivotal nature of the Margery episode, although a flavour of the acrimony between the participants did emerge. It made a good radio drama, and any verdict on the play's value must hinge on one's attitude towards verisimilitude in fiction. The moral ambivalence of the Crandons was convincingly portrayed, so that it can be understood sixty years later why such passionate feelings were aroused by the case. It was a pity that the requirements of a good play and the demands of historiography did not coincide.