Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical ResearchSage, Michael
Religion
Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research
Sage, Michael
Mediums -- Practice -- Great Britain; Parapsychology -- Investigation -- Great Britain; Piper, Leonora, 1859-1950; Spiritualism
If Mrs Piper obtained the information through spies in her employment,
these spies would be obliged to send her private details about all the
families in the United States and Europe, since she hardly ever knows to
whom she will give a sitting the next day. Dr Hodgson arranges for her.
Formerly Professor James did this, at least in a large number of cases.
Now the scientific honesty of Dr Hodgson or Professor James (I mention
this only for foreign readers who may not be acquainted with the
reputation of these two gentlemen) can no more be suspected than that of
a Charcot, a Berthelot, or a Pasteur. Then, what interest could they
have in deceiving us? These experiments had cost them considerable sums,
not to speak of time and trouble; they have never profited by them.
Again, Mrs Piper is without fortune. She would not have the means to pay
such a police as she would need. She is paid for her sittings, it is
true; she gains about two hundred pounds a year, but such a police
service would cost her thousands. But there was an excellent way of
putting the hypothesis of fraud out of question; it was to take Mrs
Piper out of her habitual environment, to a country where she knew
nobody. This was done. Certain members of the Society for Psychical
Research invited her to England, to give sittings in their houses. She
consented without any difficulty. She arrived in England on 19th
November 1889, _on_ the Cunard Company's steamer _Scythia_. Frederic
Myers, whose recent loss is deplored by psychology, should have gone to
the docks and have taken her to his house at Cambridge. But at the last
moment he was called to Edinburgh, and asked his friend, Professor
Oliver Lodge, of whom we have already spoken, to receive Mrs Piper in
his stead. Professor Lodge installed her in an hotel with her two little
girls who came with her. The same evening Mr Myers arrived, and took her
to his house next day.
Experiments at Cambridge began at once. This is what Mr Myers says about
them:--[10]
"I am convinced that Mrs Piper, on her arrival in England, brought with
her a very slender knowledge of English affairs or English people. The
servant who attended on her and on her two young children was chosen by
myself, and was a young woman from a country village whom I had full
reason to believe both trustworthy and also quite ignorant of my own or
my friends' affairs. For the most part I had myself not determined upon
the persons whom I would invite to sit with her. I chose these sitters
in great measure by chance; several of them were not resident in
Cambridge, and except in one or two cases, where anonymity would have
been hard to preserve, I brought them to her under false names,
sometimes introducing them only when the trance had already begun."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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