![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/26\/2023\/03\/GettyImages481656371-dae6f8d.jpeg?quality=90&resize=620%2C395"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>The first spiritualist church was established in Keighley, Yorkshire, in 1853, and the north became a stronghold of working-class spiritualism. Newspapers and journals emerged asserting the merits of the spiritualist faith; the first, the Yorkshire Spiritual Telegraph<\/em>, was published in 1855, and ran for two years. One of the contributors was London-born Emma Hardinge Britten, an advocate for the nascent British spiritualist movement. She eventually became a medium, her background training as an opera singer and stage actor lending itself well to her new work. She travelled to America to display her talents, predicting the future for people, telling them of her visions, and pre-emptively playing songs on the piano that her audience were about to request. Many young mediums went on to have a working life on the stage.<\/p>\n In London, the Charing Cross Spirit-Power Circle was formed in 1857, and grew at a fast rate; it is now the Spiritualist Association of Great Britain. Women became notably prominent in the movement. It was thought that women picked up supernatural powers more easily than men, and were more likely to be gifted with a natural inclination towards speaking to the dead.<\/p>\n Although many of the earlier mediums were older women, pretty young girls also took up the opportunity of making a living. Typical of this new breed was 16-year-old Mary Rosina Showers, who emerged on the scene in May 1872. She was the daughter of a general in the Bombay army; it was alleged that she could see spirits when she was a child. A s\u00e9ance with her family produced all the usual manifestations, most notably the spirit form of a \u2018John King\u2019 and an entity called \u2018Peter\u2019. Two years later her mother took her to London from Teignmouth, and she started to give s\u00e9ances.<\/p>\n A supporter, author Florence Marryat, was impressed enough to write about her in There is No Death<\/em> (1891). Her close connection with Showers set the spirits off: \u201cWe could not sit next [to] each other at an ordinary tea or supper table when we had no thought of or desire to hold a s\u00e9ance, without manifestations occurring in the full light. A hand that did not belong to either of us would make itself apparent under the table-cloth between us \u2013 a hand with power to grasp ours\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n By the 1870s there were numerous spiritualist societies and churches throughout the country, with little consensus among them about basic doctrines of spiritualism. Spiritualist churches were informal gatherings, unconnected to any official ecclesiastical body. Most of the attendees came together to hold readings or undertake clairvoyance in order to commune with the spirits of the dead; some might hold mediumship classes or conduct healing; some believed in God, others asserted that spiritualism was its own religion.<\/p>\n New ways of looking at the world were emerging. Conflicts between orthodox religion and Charles Darwin\u2019s new theory of evolution through natural selection had already erupted with the publication of his book On the Origin of Species<\/em> in 1859. Whether or not the emergence of spiritualism was a crisis in faith as a result of scientific assertions or simply a new splintered form of orthodox religion, it won increasing status. Eminent men declared themselves supporters; naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, another proponent of natural selection, called himself a friend of the plebeian spiritualists and believed that the entities they were witnessing could be scientifically explained.<\/p>\n Sceptics were beginning to question how the manifestations were being made, as s\u00e9ances became increasingly theatrical with ghostly apparitions, ectoplasm and floating entities. In 1876 the Spiritual Magazine<\/em> warned that \u201cthese days\u2026 trickery in connection with Spiritualism is so rife that it threatens to swamp the entire movement\u201d. Conjurors, journalists and scientists were invited to s\u00e9ances to witness the phenomena, and some debunkers caught mediums out in acts of fraud. However, in many cases they found no evidence of fakery. Some even changed tack after witnessing a particularly triumphal manifestation, and professed spiritualism to be real.<\/p>\n The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 by a group of leading thinkers to investigate mediumship, mesmerism, apparitions and other inexplicable phenomena. Their aim was \u201cto approach these varied problems without prejudice or prepossession of any kind, and in the same spirit of exact and unimpassioned enquiry which has enabled science to solve so many problems, once not less obscure nor less hotly debated\u201d. Early members included classical scholar Frederic WH Myers and philosopher and economist Henry Sidgwick, who both concentrated on exposing fraud.<\/p>\n Escapologist Harry Houdini and novelist Arthur Conan Doyle became friends, both sharing an interest in spiritualism. After witnessing one s\u00e9ance Conan Doyle declared himself a believer, while Houdini spent his life searching for evidence of life after death, while exposing the tricks of fraudulent mediums. Their friendship deteriorated after Conan Doyle\u2019s wife, who was a medium, claimed to have automatically written a letter by Houdini\u2019s mother \u2013 however, it was in English, a language that Houdini\u2019s Hungarian mother hardly spoke.<\/p>\n S\u00e9ances gradually diminished in popularity as more mediums were exposed as tricksters. Philosopher George Henry Lewes may be best known today for his long relationship with Mary Ann Evans, the real name of novelist George Eliot. Lewes published an article claiming to have caught Maria B Hayden out by submitting a trick question to her \u2018spirit\u2019 asking if she was a fraud. Nonetheless, after returning to America Hayden graduated as a doctor and was f\u00eated for her healing powers.<\/p>\n Mary Rosina Showers was eventually unmasked on 2 April 1894 at the house of lawyer and publisher Edward William Cox. At her s\u00e9ances the medium would withdraw behind a makeshift cabinet, then apparently fall into a trance and manifest the spirit \u2018Florence Maple\u2019 who showed her face through an opening in the cabinet\u2019s curtained doorway. However, instead of politely maintaining her position in the circle with the other sitters, Cox\u2019s daughter jumped up and grabbed \u2018Florence\u2019. She pulled the drapery off the \u2018spirit\u2019, revealing her to be Showers. According to Edward Cox, a voice cried out \u201cYou have killed my medium!\u201d \u2013 an obvious attempt at distraction. After much shrieking, the medium was put to bed in an apparent delirium.<\/p>\n The Fox sisters themselves eventually admitted that communication with the dead at their s\u00e9ances had all been hoaxes. However, belief in spiritualism survived the end of the Victorian era and continues to this day, with many churches holding meetings where believers pray and channel spirits.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Discover how our Victorian ancestors believed they could communicate with the dead at seances <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":23639,"template":"","categories":[1,19],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"7"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism.jpg",600,350,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism-300x175.jpg",300,175,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism.jpg",600,350,false],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism.jpg",600,350,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism.jpg",600,350,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/03\/what-was-victorian-spiritualism.jpg",600,350,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Discover how our Victorian ancestors believed they could communicate with the dead at seances","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/23638"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/26\/2023\/03\/GettyImages613492968-a33e6a9.jpeg?quality=90&resize=301%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
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