九州影院

Despite its claims of searching for meaning and fulfilment, Spiritualism had its down-to-earth side. In addition to these existential searches, everyday problems were solved and more ambitious schemes hatched. The Psychic Research Scrapbook abounds with cases where the psychic was a daily tool for better living.

听

Psychic Insurance

On a warm January night in 1924, the Archer family in Linwood undertook their typical evening tapping on a Ouija board. Before long, Daisy Archer鈥檚 brother, who had been killed in the First World War, began to contact them, and informed them that he had a very late insurance policy, which was to be found in the garden shed. A series of precise instructions was given; which shelf, in which cupboard, and indeed, an insurance policy of several hundred pounds was found. It had however lapsed due to a lack of payments for some time, much to the family鈥檚 disappointment. It was ample evidence that the souls of the departed gave assistance to their grieving, struggling kin, if only contacted by the usual channels.

At least, that was the account given.

The Insurance case was one of the most peculiar and also elusive of the Psychic Research Society鈥檚 investigations. An enormous amount of effort was sunken into finding empirical evidence for a case which at first seemed to have concrete evidence in its favour. Yet the story remains testament to the possibilities believed in the summer night s茅ance.

听

Psychic Healing

Under the unassuming title 鈥楤edtime Suggestion for Children鈥�, Daisy Butler argued that hypnotic speech to sleeping children could develop positive habits. Stern commands given to children who had just fallen asleep would penetrate their subconsciousness. Thumb-sucking, if ordered to go away, could be banished 鈥榠n just four or five nights鈥�. Similarly, bed-wetting could be cured with the stern words, 鈥榶ou will control yourself to-night鈥�, as well as 鈥榶ou will be able to wake up when you need to鈥�. Use of positive thought before sleeping was also sure to cure minor injuries, and stop chills.

The Outlawed Baronet

Genealogical daydreaming was another of the preoccupations to be found in the Spiritualist. The possibility of talking to the departed offered the opportunity to ask about family history, and investigate hoary family tales.

Edgar McLeod Lovell-Smith had heard family legends of an outlawed baronet in the family tree. 鈥楾he legend came from James Smith鈥檚 great-great-grandfather, also called James Smith, who claimed to have quarrelled with his father in the early part of the eighteenth century, been disinherited and then, for various unspecified deeds, outlawed. In later life his son smuggled him back to England, where he finished his life in Crews Hole, near Kingswood, informing his son鈥hat he was a member of the Smyth family of Ashton Court and, but for his own folly, would have inherited it鈥�.

His contacts via a medium to question his ancestors asked about James Smith. Originally, the voices claimed, James 鈥楽mith鈥� was originally Smyth, but his hot-tempered, sadistic baronet father had been outlawed, and James had changed his surname out of shame. The baronet had travelled the world, and become very rich, but was frequently callous to his family.

He went to Spain. He was in New York. He was in Mexico. He tried everything once, was the companion of kings. He has a wonderful faculty, for getting out of tight places.

His wife was very much beneath him in rank. He neglected her and his son. He was a bad man, full of energy. There is no doubt he was a pirate...

One medium鈥檚 vision described the deadly sparkle in James Smyth鈥檚 eye, and the fearful expression and hollow face of his wife. However, the exact deeds, bar some dark murmuring on murder (who and what are hidden in the illegible scrawl of the entranced medium), remain a mystery. A confirmation of the legend could be found, but the exact details stay hidden.

The s茅ance reports fill the better part of two folders kept in the Canterbury Museum, brittle both with age and trepidation. Whatever the truth of such tales, it is worth considering the literary influences on the spirit imagination. Novels such as听The Forsyth Saga, Lorna Doone听and听Tess of the d鈥橴rbervilles,听with their clan intrigues against an historical background, had long become classics, and would have likely influenced genealogical daydreaming. Combine this with a spiritualist belief in contacting the souls of the dead, and a fantastic hybrid emerges. Similar literary echoes can be found in Violet Barker鈥檚 鈥楢ffair of the Blue Brooch鈥�, with its overtly intriguing title and focus on a blue enamel brooch with silver chasing, a trinket to seal a cunning detective plot. The distinctive character of spiritualism was its injection of the supernatural into everyday fantasies, allowing daydreams to be enacted within the 鈥榮cientific鈥� walls of the s茅ance room.

Scrapbook of the Christchurch Psychical Research Society Inc., Macmillan Brown 九州影院, 九州影院 Manuscript 165, 94

Ibid., 120

Margaret Lovell-Smith,听Plain Living, High Thinking: The Family Story of Jennie and Will Lovell-Smith, (Pedmore Press, 1995), 129-130

Lovell Smith Family Papers 1743-1943, Canterbury Museum ARC1988.88.