SOME PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
I will first give an account of my own visit to Crewe which was in the
summer of 1919. I bought my plates in Manchester and then travelled over
to keep the appointment which had been made a week before. Arriving at
Crewe, I went down to the little house in Market Street, which is so
modest and humble that it furnishes an argument in itself against any
undue cupidity on the part of its tenant. Two spiritualistic friends, Mr.
Oaten, editor of the _Two Worlds_, and Mr. Walker, were my companions.
Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton were waiting for us, and, after a short
religious service, Mr. Hope and I went into the dark room. There I opened
the packet of plates, put two into the carrier and marked them then and
there. The carrier was then taken into the room and Mr. Hope inserted
it into the camera. We three spiritualists sat in front with a rug, or
blanket, as a background. The exposure having been made, the carrier was
taken back into the dark room where, with my own hands, I took out the
plates, developed them and fixed them. So far as I could judge, there was
at no stage any possibility of changing the plates.
But this question does not really arise. No changing of plates would
account for the effect actually produced. This effect I have shown in
Figure 1. There is a hazy cloud covering us of what I will describe as
ectoplasm, though my critics are very welcome to call it cotton-wool
if it eases their feelings to do so. In one corner appears a partial
materialisation of what seems to be the hair and forehead of a young man.
Across the plate is scrawled, “Well done, Friend Doyle, I welcome you to
Crewe. Greetings to all. T. COLLEY.”
I have already explained that Archdeacon Colley was the founder of the
Crewe Circle, and if, as we believe, we continue our interest after
death it would seem not unnatural that he should send a kindly word to
a visitor who was working for the cause. How can we determine that the
message was really from Archdeacon Colley? The obvious way would be to
get a sample of his writing in life and to compare it with that upon the
plate. This I have done, as shown in Figure 2. Can anyone deny that the
handwriting is the same in both instances, or can anyone suppose that
the rough script of Hope could possibly be modified into the scholarly
handwriting of the Archdeacon? Whence, then, did this message come?
Does anyone imagine that a private forger is retained by Hope and lurks
somewhere in that humble abode? It is a problem which calls for an
answer, and no talk about conjuring tricks or transposition of plates has
the least bearing upon it. It may be remarked incidentally that my own
strong desire was to obtain some sign from my son who had passed away the
year before. The result seemed to show that our personal wishes do not
effect the outcome.
Having failed to get what I desired, I remained at Crewe for the night,
and next morning went down to Market Street again. On this occasion I
used Hope’s own plates, having left mine at the hotel. He gave me the
choice of several packets. The result obtained under all the precautions
which I could adopt (it would only weary the reader if I gave every
point of detail) was a photograph of the face of a young man beside my
own. It was not a good likeness of my son, though it resembled him as
he was some eight years before his death. Of the three results which I
obtained at Crewe it was the one which impressed me least. On examination
with a lens it was noticeable that the countenance was pitted with fine
dots, as in the case of process printing. This is to be noticed in a
certain proportion, possibly one in ten, of Hope’s results, and occurs
in the case of persons whose faces could by no possibility have appeared
in newspapers. One can only suppose that it is in some way connected
with the psychic process, and some have imagined a reticulated screen
upon which the image is built up. I am content to note the fact without
attempting to explain it. I have observed the same effect in other
psychic photographs.
The third result was the most remarkable of any. I had read that Hope
can get images without the use of the camera, but the statement sounded
incredible. He now asked me to mark a plate and put it in a carrier,
which I did. We then placed our hands on either side of the carrier,
Mrs. Buxton and her sister joining in. At the end of about a minute Hope
gave a sort of shudder, and intimated that he thought a result had been
obtained. On putting the plate into the solution a disc the size of a
shilling, perfectly black, sprang up in the centre of it. On development
this resolved itself into a luminous circle with the face of a female
delicately outlined within it. Under the chin is a disc of white, and
two fingers which are pointing to it. The disc is evidently a brooch,
and the pointing seemed to indicate that it was meant to be evidential.
The face bore a strong resemblance to that of my elder sister, who died
some thirty years ago. Upon sending the print to my other sisters they
not only confirmed this, but they reminded me that my sister had a very
remarkable ivory brooch in her lifetime and that it was just the one
object which might best have been chosen as a test. I regret that this
picture is so delicate that it will not bear reproduction.
Such were my three results at Crewe, and I should, I hold, have been
devoid of reason had I not been deeply impressed by them. Here was a
message in Archdeacon Colley’s own handwriting. Here was a test from my
own dead sister which seemed to be beyond all possible coincidence, apart
from the extraordinary way in which the picture was obtained. Neither
sleight-of-hand nor transference of plates could have any bearing upon
such results as those. Their full significance was not realised until I
had made enquiries, but after that time I felt it impossible to doubt the
supernormal nature of the powers which had produced such effects.
It might perhaps be argued that as Archdeacon Colley’s writing was
familiar to Hope, he had, in spite of his disabilities, made some
special effort to master and reproduce it. As a matter of fact, however,
this case does not stand alone, and many evidential writings have been
obtained at Crewe, notably those of W. T. Stead and of the late Dr.
Crawford. The latter is a recent incident, and I would take it as my next
example, since it illustrates this phenomenon of writing, and is again
free from the bogey of transposition.
Upon June 30 of this year (1922) three delegates from Belfast, Mr.
Skelton, Mr. Gillmour and Mr. Donaldson, were coming over to the London
Spiritualists’ Conference. They broke their journey at Crewe in order
to have a sitting with Mr. Hope, who was in deep distress at the time
on account of the attack made upon him in Mr. Price’s report. It is
worth noting that Mrs. Crawford, the widow of Dr. Crawford, had come
over with them on the boat, and that Dr. Crawford’s affairs had been
under discussion, though Hope had no means of knowing it. Under good
fraud-proof conditions, on their own specially-marked plate, the visitors
obtained a message in Dr. Crawford’s handwriting, which runs thus, I
supplying the punctuation:
“DEAR MR. HOPE,
“Needless to say I am with you where psychic work is concerned,
and you can be sure of my sympathy and help. I know all the
difficulties and uncertainties connected with the subject. I am
keenly interested in your circle and will co-operate with you.
Regarding your enemies who would by hook or by crook dispose of
the phenomena, leave them alone. I, W. J. Crawford, of Belfast,
am here in Crewe on Friday, June 30th.
“W. J. CRAWFORD.”
Each word is on its own little patch of ectoplasm, or upon its own pad
of cotton-wool, if the critics prefer it, though it would puzzle them,
I think, to reproduce the effect which is given in Figure 3. The plate
alongside (Figure 4) shows a reproduction of an actual note of Crawford’s
which will enable the reader to judge the extreme similarity of the
script. Once more we confront the critic with this fact and ask him to
face the difficulty and to tell us whence this writing came; whether it
is a production of Mr. Hope’s, or whether the theory of a private forger
upon the premises can be sustained.
Apart from these cases of the reproduction of handwriting, copies of
documents have appeared upon the plates at Crewe which could by no means
have got there in a normal fashion. A case in point is given in detail
by the Reverend and venerable Professor Henslow on p. 217 of his _Proofs
of Spiritualism_. In this case, the truth of which is vouched for by the
Professor, although it did not actually occur to him, the plates were
held between the hands of the sitters in the manner already described,
but the packet had not been opened and was as it had come from the
chemist. When the packet was opened and the plates developed there was
found impressed upon the fifth plate a number of Greek characters, which
proved to be a copy of four lines of the _Codex Alexandrinus_, a rare
Greek text kept in a glass case in the British Museum. The interesting
point appears that the two documents are not facsimiles, and that there
is some slight difference in the formation of the letters, thus meeting
the objection that the text photographed might have been got from some
facsimile of the original _Codex_. The photographs of the original Greek
and of the Crewe reproduction are given in Professor Henslow’s work.
Here, again, we may well ask the critic to face the facts and give us
some feasible explanation as to how this Greek text was precipitated
on to a plate in a sealed packet under the mediumship of an unlearned
carpenter at Crewe.