(1876.)
We have just had a couple of professional “mediums” in the police
courts, and it is to be heartily hoped that all their colleagues of any
notoriety will soon be submitted to the same searching test, and duly
rewarded according to their merits. At Huddersfield the Rev. Francis
Ward Monck, formerly a minister at Bristol, was cleverly caught out by
Mr. Lodge, a woollen merchant and amateur conjurer, who at the close of
a private seance offered to do all the “Doctor” had done, and insisted
on seeing his “paraphernalia.” The Doctor protested with profuse
virtuous indignation, but his detecter was firm. At length this reverend
medium took refuge in his own bedroom and locked himself in, and while
the profane sceptics were besieging the door he managed to escape from
the window by the help of a sheet. In his sore haste he left behind him
some of the “paraphernalia,” whose existence he had so indignantly
denied, including “spirit hands” and prepared musical boxes. He took out
a warrant against Mr. Lodge for the recovery of these precious articles,
and was met by a counter-warrant issued by the chief constable under the
Vagrant Act, for using subtle craft means and devices to deceive and
impose on certain of her Majesty’s subjects; he being charged with thus
defrauding one person of £20, while Mr. Heppleston, a general dealer, in
whose house the exposure took place, had paid him £4 for two séances,
the prisoner assuring him that the manifestations were genuine, and were
produced by spiritual agency. The prisoner’s solicitor said that the
Vagrant Act did not apply to a gentleman in the position of Dr. Monck,
who kept his carriage and yacht at Bristol. We may admit that the
application of the Vagrant Act is an awkward and round-about mode of
dealing with such cases, and the sooner Parliament in its great wisdom
provides a more direct and effectual remedy, the better; nor could a
stronger argument for its provisions be adduced than the fact, if fact
it be, that this reverend medium by the illicit production of spirits
very much below proof, has been getting money enough to keep a carriage
and yacht. When the Huddersfield magistrates remanded him for a week at
the request of the chief constable, offering to accept bail, himself in
£250, and two sureties in £100 each, the bail was not forthcoming; and
the prisoner made a high-minded and pathetic appeal to the bench,
“asking them not to make him suffer the indignity of incarceration in
the police-cells; he said he had forsaken everything to follow this
calling, believing in his inmost soul that it was right.” So far as I
can see, a convicted burglar or manufacturer of counterfeit coin, might
with as good reason make just such an appeal; pleading pathetically that
he had forsaken everything to follow this calling, affirming nobly that
he believed in his inmost soul that it was right; while as to the jemmy
and the skeleton keys, or the moulds and the battery, which had been
seized in his possession, they were manifestly for purely scientific
experimental investigations—exactly as were the spirit-hands affixed to
wires and the musical boxes of the Rev. “Doctor” Monck.
The London case of “Doctor” Slade, is too well known to require being
detailed here. As his fee was a sovereign, well-off people having much
time to kill with any excitement, and empty heads to fill with any
nonsense (much the same sort of silly people as those for whom some
West-end High Church is the half-way house to the Pro-Cathedral), must
have been his most numerous visitors. Thus Society with a capital S took
great interest in him, and our penny daily press, always ready to pander
to Society, and to the snobbery of its readers who are not in Society
but ever on their knees worshipping it—our penny daily press furnished
full reports of the proceedings. Mr. Flowers, the magistrate at Bow
Street Police Court gave a written judgment on the case, sentencing the
“Doctor” to three months’ imprisonment with hard labor in the House of
Correction; which sentence to the credit of our common sense, sadly
discredited by much that came out on the trial, was received with some
applause, and Mr. Lewis the prosecuting solicitor was cheered by a large
crowd on leaving the court. Of course, there being money to back the
“medium,” notice of appeal was given, and bail accepted—the defendant in
£200, and two sureties of £100 each.
In the course of the defence there was read from the _Spiritualist_ an
account of a sitting with Slade by Mr. Serjeant Cox, who, as Mr. Flowers
observed, would, if an appeal were raised, be one of the judges of that
appeal. The said account, after relating various wonders, concludes
thus: “I offer no opinion on the causes of the phenomena, for I have
formed none. If they be genuine, it is impossible to exaggerate their
interest and importance. If they be an imposture it is equally important
that the trick should be exposed in the only way in which trickery can
be explained—by doing the same thing, and showing how it is done.” Now
this, at any rate, seems to show judicial fairness if not judicial
sagacity; and is beyond blame, as having been written before the learned
Serjeant (unless warned by the spirits) could have had any expectation
of being called upon to deliver a legal judgment on the matter. But
after Mr. Flowers had passed sentence, and the appeal had been raised,
this same Serjeant Cox, having become a prospective judge of the case,
opened the third session of the Psychological Society of Great Britain,
whereof he is president, and which, under such a president, will
doubtless do a vast deal for the science of psychology. According to the
report of the _Standard_ of Friday the 3rd inst., much of the address of
this admirable judge and philosophical president “was an indictment of
materialist scientists for their attitude towards psycho-logy, and on
this point he said the most important event of the year in relation to
psychology had been the recent prosecution. Of the true motive for that
proceeding there could be no doubt. The pretence of public interests was
transparent.” To a mere layman the words of this judicial Serjeant read
very much like a reckless libel. Perhaps only a lawyer can properly
appreciate them. “The object really sought was plain enough. It was not
to punish Dr. Slade, but to discredit through him all psychological
phenomena, the proof of whose existence was destruction to the doctrines
of materialism.... Whether Dr. Slade was or was not guilty, the trial
had had the unlooked-for effect [!] of directing the attention of the
whole public to the fact that phenomena were asserted to exist... which
swept away now and for ever _the dark and debasing doctrines of the
materialists_.” After which, according to the same report, a Mr. Dunlop,
with admirable gravity, whether sincere or ironical, expressed a high
opinion of the judicial mind of the president! and said that he felt
sure that if the appeal in the Slade case came before Mr. Serjeant Cox,
he would give as dispassionate a decision as if he had had no previous
knowledge of the circumstances!! For myself, as a mere unlearned layman,
I can only ask in astonishment, Is this Serjeant Cox, with his indecent
partizanship and wild personal imputations, fit to sit in judgment—I
will not say on this Slade business—but on any case at all which
requires impartiality and discretion?
“The dark and debasing doctrines of the materialists”! Can anything be
darker and more debasing in a so-called civilised time and country than
this Spiritism has proved itself from the beginning until bow? I have
yet to learn that the whole of its world of spirits, now for many years
at the beck and call of countless mediums, professional and private, has
ever dictated or written a single great sentence, revealed a single
great truth—discovered a single important fact. Nothing but the
dreamiest drivel, or delirium, the most wretched and imbecile juggling
tricks, with all sorts of evasions, and deceptions and lies! Mr. Wallace
himself, one of the few good men it has got hold of by some weak place
in their minds, in his evidence for Slade said “that he attached no
importance to the subject-matter of a message, but only to its being
written intelligibly, the subject-matter seldom being of any value.” And
for seldom he might fairly have said never. The truth is the truth,
whether dark or bright, debasing or ennobling; but if we are called upon
to consider a theory in these aspects, what, I ask again, can be more
dark and debasing than this, that we live after death to rap and turn
tables, play villainous snatches on light musical instruments, write
badly-spelt balderdash, dictate ungrammatical imbecilities or lies,
grasp hands and jog knees—all for the profit of showmen and the
hysterical wonder of fools? Who would not prefer annihilation to such a
degraded and idiotic immortality? Shakespeare, Bacon, Byron, Shelley,
and countless others who on earth were splendid geniuses, have been
called from their spheres by knaves or dupes, for what?—to show
themselves reduced to the hideous state of Swift’s Struldbrugs. The only
famous character I have heard of, not intellectually degraded since
death, was Bucephalus (see _Secularist_, number 40), who told the
company that he still took great interest in literary pursuits,
particularly in connection with education; Bucephalus, whose name
doubtless suggested an ancient philosopher to the shrewd medium, having
been the war-horse of Alexander the Great!
We are compelled to accuse the religion which has been so long dominant
among us, of fostering the state of mind which welcomes these miserable
marvels instead of rejecting them with scorn. The Bible with its Witch
of Endor, its recognition of witchcraft, its magicians, its angels
releasing the Apostles, its doctrines of the supernatural, its abounding
miracles, has saturated the people with superstitiousness, whose evil
effects Science can but slowly counteract. And of those who have ceased
to submit themselves to the Bible, the larger number are still infected
with its non-natural spirit; having renounced one set of irrational
marvels, they yearn more or less consciously for another to replace it.
In this connection, the point on which Mr. Flower’s judgment turned is
very significant, and its significance is increased by the approval of
our most Christian press: “_I must decide according to the well-known
course of nature._” This is exactly what Science demands. Carry out
honestly and thoroughly the application of this rule to the miracles of
the Bible, from the speaking serpent, to the birth, resurrection and
ascension of Jesus, and what sentence must be passed upon them? The Bow
Street Magistrate has given us a really excellent, concise, practical
maxim of rethought. When a Christian comes with his supernatural dogmas
and non-natural occurrences, one has but to answer on the judicial
authority of Mr. Flowers: “I must decide according to the well-known
course of nature.”