In 1869 he appeared again in New York, and commenced business on his old lines. Before he had been practising many months, however, the public authorities arrested him, and prosecuted him for fraud. At the trial the Boston evidence was disallowed and consequently little positive evidence of fraud was brought against him, for he had only been practising in New York for a short time. The chief ground of the prosecution was a spirit extra which he represented to be a dead relative of the sitter’s, whereas the latter declared it to be utterly unlike the relative in question. The trial was interesting, in that Mumler was defended by many of his sitters, who swore that they recognised his extras as their dead friends; and by others, including a professional photographer, who had investigated his processes and had found no evidence of trickery. He was acquitted for lack of evidence on the part of the prosecution; but he apparently gave up producing spirit photographs, for no more is heard of him. Three years later spirit photographs were being taken in this country. Hudson, the principal exponent, was introduced by Mrs. Guppy, a well-known medium of the time. His performance was on the same lines as Mumler’s, and his results similar, the faces of the extras being always partly obscured and the figures draped. Nevertheless, many of them were recognised. The usual unsatisfactory tests were applied by the more sceptical sitters; in particular we have the report of an optician named Slater, who took his own camera and lenses to Hudson, obtaining “a fine spirit photo” and observing “no suspicious circumstances.” However, a less easily duped critic soon appeared, in the person of one Beattie, a professional photographer of Clifton, and a man of high repute. He showed that in many of Hudson’s photographs not only did the background appear through the extra--as might perhaps be expected with an ethereal spirit--but that the background was clearly visible through the very material bodies of the human sitters! Sometimes the backgrounds had a double outline; and in one case at least he was able to point out that clumsy attempts had been made to obliterate, by retouching, the pattern of a carpet showing through the legs of the sitter. All this clearly pointed to double exposure and fraud; and Beattie was joined in denouncing Hudson by the editor of the _Spiritualist_. In fact, on closer inspection, Hudson’s pictures were found to be very poor frauds indeed; some of the “spirits” were stated by the critics to be Hudson himself dressed up!