Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reviews the work of Sir William Crookes

From A History Of Spiritualism, Vol. I (1926) by the great afterlife researcher, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of "Sherlock" fame:

THE RESEARCHES OF SIR WILLIAM CROOKES
(1870-1874)

THE research into the phenomena of Spiritualism
by Sir William Crookes or Professor Crookes,
as he then was during the years from 1870 to
1874 is one of the outstanding incidents in the history
of the movement.

It is notable on account of the high
scientific standing of the inquirer, the stern and yet
just spirit in which the inquiry was conducted, the
extraordinary results, and the uncompromising declar-
ation of faith which followed them. It has been a
favourite device of the opponents of the movement to
attribute some physical weakness or growing senility
to each fresh witness to psychic truth, but none can
deny that these researches were carried out by a man
at the very zenith of his mental development, and that
the famous career which followed was a sufficient
proof of his intellectual stability. It is to be remarked
that the result was to prove the integrity not only of
the medium Florence Cook with whom the more
sensational results were obtained, but also that of
D. D. Home and of Miss Kate Fox, who were also
severely tested.

Sir William Crookes, who was born in 1832 and
died in 1919, was pre-eminent in the world of science.
Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863, he
received from this body in 1875 a Royal Gold Medal
for his various chemical and physical researches, the
Davy Medal in 1888, and the Sir Joseph Copley Medal
in 1904. He was knighted by Queen Victoria in
1897, and was awarded the Order of Merit in 1910.
He occupied the position of President at different
times of the Royal Society, the Chemical Society, the
Institution of Electrical Engineers, the British Asso-
ciation, and the Society for Psychical Research. His
discovery of the new chemical element which he
named "Thallium" his inventions of the radiometer,
the spinthariscope, and the "Crookes' tube," only
represent a slight part of his great research. He
founded in 1859 the Chemical News, which he
edited, and in 1864 he became editor of the
Quarterly Journal of Science. In 1880 the French
Academy of Sciences awarded him a gold medal
and a prize of 3,000 francs in recognition of his
important work.

Crookes confesses that he began his investigations
into psychical phenomena believing that the whole
matter might prove to be a trick. His scientific
brethren held the same view, and were delighted at the
course he had adopted. Profound satisfaction was
expressed because the subject was to be investigated
by a man so thoroughly qualified. They had little
doubt that what were considered to be the sham pre-
tensions of Spiritualism would now be exposed. One
writer said, " If men like Mr. Crookes grapple with
the subject ... we shall soon know how much to
believe." Dr. (afterwards Professor) Balfour Stewart,
in a communication to Nature, commended the bold-
ness and honesty which had led Mr. Crookes to take
this step. Crookes himself took the view that it was
the duty of scientists to make such investigation. He
writes : "It argues ill for the boasted freedom of
opinion among scientific men that they have so long
refused to institute a scientific investigation into the
existence and nature of facts asserted by so many com-
petent and credible witnesses, and which they are
freely invited to examine when and where they please.
For my own part, I too much value the pursuit of
truth, and the discovery of any new fact in Nature, to
avoid inquiry because it appears to clash with pre-
vailing opinions." In this spirit he began his
inquiry.

It should be stated, however, that though Pro-
fessor Crookes was sternly critical as to the physical
phenomena, already he had had acquaintance with the
mental phenomena, and would appear to have accepted
them. Possibly this sympathetic spiritual attitude
may have aided him in obtaining his remarkable
results, for it cannot be too often repeated because it
is too often forgotten that psychic research of the
best sort is really "psychic," and depends upon
spiritual conditions. It is not the bumptious self-
opinionated man, sitting with a ludicrous want of pro-
portion as a judge upon spiritual matters, who attains
results; but it is he who appreciates that the strict use
of reason and observation is not incompatible with
humility of mind, and that courteous gentleness of demeanour which makes for harmony and sympathy between the inquirer and his subject.

Crookes's less material inquiries seem to have
begun in the summer of 1869. In July of that year
he had sittings with the well-known medium, Mrs.
Marshall, and in December with another famous
medium, J. J. Morse. In July, 1869, D. D. Home
who had been giving stances in St. Petersburg,
returned to London with a letter of introduction
to Crookes from Professor Butlerof.

An interesting fact emerges from a private diary
kept by Crookes during his voyage to Spain in
December, 1870, with the Eclipse Expedition. Under
the date December 31, he writes:

I cannot help reverting in thought to this time last
year. Nelly (his wife) and I were then sitting together
in communion with dear departed friends, and as twelve
o'clock struck they wished us many happy New Years.
I feel that they are looking on now, and as space is no
obstacle to them, they are, I believe, looking over my dear
Nelly at the same time. Over us both I know there is one
whom we all spirits as well as mortals bow down to as
Father and Master, and it is my humble prayer to Him
the Great Good as the mandarin calls Him that He will
continue His merciful protection to Nelly and me and our
dear little family. . . . May He also allow us to continue
to receive spiritual communications from my brother who
passed over the boundary when in a ship at sea more than
three years ago.

He further adds New Year loving greetings to his wife
and children, and concludes:

And when the earthly years have ended may we con-
tinue to spend still happier ones in the spirit land, glimpses
of which I am occasionally getting.

Miss Florence Cook, with whom Crookes under-
took his classical series of experiments, was a young girl
of fifteen who was asserted to possess strong psychic
powers, taking the rare shape of complete material-
ization. It would appear to have been a family
characteristic, for her sister, Miss Kate Cook, was not
less famous. There had been some squabble with an
alleged exposure in which a Mr. Volckman had taken
sides against Miss Cook, and in her desire for vindica-
tion she placed herself entirely under the protection of
Mrs. Crookes, declaring that her husband might make
any experiments upon her powers under his own con-
ditions, and asking for no reward save that he should
clear her character as a medium by giving his exact
conclusions to the world. Fortunately, she was deal-
ing with a man of unswerving intellectual honesty.
We have had experience in these latter days of
mediums giving themselves up in the same unre-
served way to scientific investigation and being
betrayed by the investigators, who had not the moral
courage to admit those results which would have
entailed their own public acceptance of the spiritual
interpretation.

Professor Crookes published a full account of his
methods in the Quarterly Journal of Science, of which
he was then editor. In his house at Mornington Road
a small study opened into the chemical laboratory, a
door with a curtain separating the two rooms. Miss
Cook lay entranced upon a couch in the inner room.
In the outer in subdued light sat Crookes, with such
other observers as he invited. At the end of a period
which varied from twenty minutes to an hour the
materialized figure was built up from the ectoplasm
of the medium. The existence of this substance and
its method of production were unknown at that date,
but subsequent research has thrown much light upon
it, an account of which has been embodied in the
chapter on ectoplasm. The actual effect was that
the curtain was opened, and there emerged into the
laboratory a female who was usually as different from
the medium as two people could be. This apparition,
which could move, talk, and act in all ways as an
independent entity, is known by the name which she
herself claimed as her own, "Katie King."

The natural explanation of the sceptic is that the
two women were really the same woman, and that
Katie was a clever impersonation of Florence. The
objector could strengthen his case by the observation
made not only by Crookes but by Miss Marryat and
others, that there were times when Katie was very like
Florence.

Herein lies one of the mysteries of materialization
which call for careful consideration rather than sneers.
The author, sitting with Miss Besinnet, the famous
American medium, has remarked the same thing,
the psychic faces, beginning when the power was weak
by resembling those of the medium, and later becom-
ing utterly unlike. Some speculators have imagined
that the etheric form of the medium, her spiritual body, has been liberated by the trance, and is the basis
upon which the other manifesting entities build up
their own simulacra. However that may be, the fact
has to be admitted ; and it is paralleled by Direct Voice
phenomena, where the voice often resembles that of
the medium at first and then takes an entirely different
tone, or divides into two voices speaking at the same
time.

However, the student has certainly the right to
claim that Florence Cook and Katie King were the
same individual until convincing evidence is laid before
him that this is impossible. Such evidence Professor
Crookes is very careful to give.

The points of difference which he observed
between Miss Cook and Katie are thus described:

Katie's height varies; in my house I have seen her
six inches taller than Miss Cook. Last night, with bare
feet and not tip-toeing, she was four and a half inches taller
than Miss Cook. Katie's neck was bare last night ; the
skin was perfectly smooth both to touch and sight, whilst
on Miss Cook's neck is a large blister, which under similar
circumstances is distinctly visible and rough to the touch.
Katie's ears are unpierced, whilst Miss Cook habitually
wears ear-rings. Katie's complexion is very fair, while
that of Miss Cook is very dark. Katie's fingers are much
longer than Miss Cook's, and her face is also larger. In
manners and ways of expression there are also many
decided differences.

In a later contribution, he adds :

Having seen so much of Katie lately, when she has
been illuminated by the electric light, I am enabled to
add to the points of difference between her and her medium which I mentioned in a former article. I have the most
absolute certainty that Miss Cook and Katie are two separate individuals so far as their bodies are concerned. Several little marks on Miss Cook's face are absent on Katie's. Miss Cook's hair is so dark a brown as almost to appear black ; a lock of Katie's, which is now before me, and which she allowed me to cut from her luxuriant tresses, having first traced it up to the scalp and satisfied myself that it actually grew there, is a rich golden auburn.

On one evening I timed Katie's pulse. It beat steadily
at 75, whilst Miss Cook's pulse a little time after was going
at its usual rate of 90. On applying my ear to Katie's
chest, I could hear a heart beating rhythmically inside, and
pulsating even more steadily than did Miss Cook's heart
when she allowed me to try a similar experiment after the
stance. Tested in the same way, Katie's lungs were found
to be sounder than her medium's, for at the time I tried
my experiment Miss Cook was under medical treatment
for a severe cough.

Crookes took forty-four photographs of Katie King by the aid of electric light. Writing in The Spiritualist (1874, p. 270), he describes the methods he adopted :

During the week before Katie took her departure, she
gave seances at my house almost nightly, to enable me to
photograph her by artificial light. Five complete sets of
photographic apparatus were accordingly fitted up for the
purpose, consisting of five cameras, one of the whole-plate
size, one half-plate, one quarter-plate, and two binocular
stereoscopic cameras, which were all brought to bear upon
Katie at the same time on each occasion on which she stood for her portrait. Five sensitizing and fixing baths were
used, and plenty of plates were cleaned ready for use in
advance, so that there might be no hitch or delay during
the photographing operations, which were performed by
myself, aided by one assistant.

My library was used as a dark cabinet. It has folding
doors opening into the laboratory ; one of these doors was
taken off its hinges, and a curtain suspended in its place
to enable Katie to pass in and out easily. Those of our
friends who were present were seated in the laboratory
facing the curtain, and the cameras were placed a little
behind them, ready to photograph Katie when she came
outside, and to photograph anything also inside the cabinet,
whenever the curtain was withdrawn for the purpose.
Each evening there were three or four exposures of plates
in the five cameras, giving at least fifteen separate pictures
at each stance ; some of these were spoilt in the developing, and some in regulating the amount of light. Altogether I have forty-four negatives, some inferior, some indifferent, and some excellent.

Some of these photographs are in the author's
possession, and surely there is no more wonderful
impression upon any plate than that which shows
Crookes at the height of his manhood, with this angel
for such in truth she was leaning upon his arm.
The word "angel" may seem an exaggeration, but
when an other-world spirit submits herself to the dis-
comforts of temporary and artificial existence in order
to convey the lesson of survival to a material and
worldly generation, there is no more fitting term.

Some controversy has arisen as to whether Crookes
ever saw the medium and Katie at the same moment.
Crookes says in the course of his report that he
frequently followed Katie into the cabinet,

"and have sometimes seen her and her medium together, but most generally I have found nobody but the entranced medium lying on the floor, Katie and her white robes having instantaneously disappeared."

Much more direct testimony, however, is given by
Crookes in a letter to the Banner of Light (U.S.A.),
which is reproduced in The Spiritualist (London) of
July 17, 1874, p. 29. He writes :

In reply to your request, I beg to state that I saw Miss
Cook and Katie together at the same moment, by the light
of a phosphorus lamp, which was quite sufficient to enable
me to see distinctly all I described. The human eye will
naturally take in a wide angle, and thus the two figures
were included in my field of vision at the same time, but
-the light being dim, and the two faces being several feet
apart, I naturally turned the lamp and my eyes alternately
from one to the other, when I desired to bring either Miss
Cook's or Katie's face to that portion of my field of view
where vision is most distinct. Since the occurrence here
referred to took place, Katie and Miss Cook have been seen together by myself and eight other persons, in my own house, illuminated by the full blaze of the electric light. On this occasion Miss Cook's face was not visible, as her head had to be closely bound up in a thick shawl, but I specially
satisfied myself that she was there. An attempt to throw
the light direct on to her uncovered face, when entranced,
was attended with serious consequences.

The camera, too, emphasizes the points of difference between the medium and the form. He says :

One of the most interesting of the pictures is one in
which I am standing by the side of Katie; she has her bare
foot upon a particular part of the floor. Afterwards I
dressed Miss Cook like Katie, placed her and myself in
exactly the same position, and we were photographed by the same cameras, placed exactly as in the other experiment, and illuminated by the same light. When these two pictures are placed over each other, the two photographs of myself coincide exactly as regards stature, etc., but Katie is half a head taller than Miss Cook, and looks a big woman in comparison with her. In the breadth of her face, in many of the pictures, she differs essentially in size from her medium, and the photographs show several other points of difference.

Crookes pays a high tribute to the medium, Florence Cook :

The almost daily seances with which Miss Cook has
lately favoured me have proved a severe tax upon her
strength, and I wish to make the most public acknowledg-
ment of the obligations I am under to her for her readiness to assist me in my experiments. Every test that I have proposed she has at once agreed to submit to with the utmost willingness ; she is open and straightforward in speech, and I have never seen anything approaching the slightest symptom of a wish to deceive. Indeed, I do not believe she could carry on a deception if she were to try, and if she did she would certainly be found out very quickly, for such a line of action is altogether foreign to her nature. And to imagine that an innocent schoolgirl of fifteen should be able to conceive and then successfully carry out for three yearsso gigantic an imposture as this, and in that time should submit to any test which might be imposed upon her, should bear the strictest scrutiny, should be willing to be searched at any time, either before or after a seance, and should meet with even better success in my own house than at that of her parents, knowing that she visited me with the express object of submitting to strict scientific tests - to imagine I say, the Katie King of the last three years to be the [image] of imposture, does more violence to one's reason and common sense than to believe her to be what she herself [testified].

Granting that a temporary form was built up from
the ectoplasm of Florence Cook, and that this form
was then occupied and used by an independent being
who called herself "Katie King," we are still faced
with the question, "Who was Katie King?" To this
we can only give the answer which she gave herself,
while admitting that we have no proof of it. She
declared that she was the daughter of John King, who
had long been known among Spiritualists as the pre-
siding spirit at seances held for material phenomena.
His personality is discussed later in the chapter upon
the Eddy brothers and Mrs. Holmes, to which the
reader is referred. Her earth name had been Morgan,
and King was rather the general title of a certain class
of spirits than an ordinary name. Her life had been
spent two hundred years before, in the reign of Charles
the Second, in the island of Jamaica. Whether this be
true or not, she undoubtedly conformed to the part,
and her general conversation was consistent with her
account. One of the daughters of Professor Crookes
wrote to the author and described her vivid recol-
lection of tales of the Spanish Main told by this kindly
spirit to the children of the family. She made herself
beloved by all. Mrs. Crookes wrote :

At a seance with Miss Cook in our own house when
one of our sons was an infant of three weeks old,
Katie King, a materialized spirit, expressed the liveliest
interest in him and asked to be allowed to see the baby.
The infant was accordingly brought into the seance room
and placed in the arms of Katie, who, after holding him
in the most natural way for a short time, smilingly gave
him back again.

Professor Crookes has left it on record that her
beauty and charm were unique in his experience.

The reader may reasonably think that the subdued
light which has been alluded to goes far to vitiate the
results by preventing exact observation. Professor
Crookes has assured us, however, that as the series of
seances proceeded toleration was established, and the
figure was able to bear a far greater degree of light.
This toleration had its limits, however, which were
never passed by Professor Crookes, but which were
tested to the full in a daring experiment described
by Miss Florence Marry at (Mrs. Ross-Church). It
should be stated that Professor Crookes was not pre-
sent at this experience, nor did Miss Marryat ever
claim that he was. She mentions, however, the name
of Mr. Carter Hall as being one of the company pre-
sent. Katie had very good-humouredly consented to
testing what the effect would be if a full light were
turned upon her image:

She took up her station against the drawing-room wall,
with her arms extended as if she were crucified. Then
three gas-burners were turned on to their full extent in a
room about sixteen feet square. The effect upon Katie
King was marvellous, She looked like herself for the space
of a second only, then she began gradually to melt away
I can compare the dematerialization of her form to nothing
but a wax doll melting before a hot fire. First the features
became blurred and indistinct ; they seemed to run into
each other. The eyes sunk in the sockets, the nose dis-
appeared, the frontal bone fell in... like a crumbling edifice. At last there was nothing but her head left above the ground then a heap of white drapery only - which disappeared with a whisk, as if a hand had pulled it after her and we were left staring by the light of three gas-burners at the spot on which
Katie King had stood.

Miss Marryat adds the interesting detail that at
some of these stances Miss Cook's hair was nailed to
the ground, which did not in the least interfere with
the subsequent emergence of Katie from the cabinet.

The results obtained in his own home were
honestly and fearlessly reported by Professor Crookes
in his Journal, and caused the greatest possible com-
motion in the scientific world. A few of the larger
spirits, men like Russel Wallace, Lord Rayleigh,
the young and rising physicist William Barrett,
Cromwell Varley, and others, had their former
views confirmed, or were encouraged to advance
upon a new path of knowledge. There was a fiercely
intolerant party, however, headed by Carpenter the
physiologist, who derided the matter and were ready
to impute anything from lunacy to fraud to their
illustrious colleague. Organized science came badly
out of the matter. In his published account Crookes
gave the letters in which he asked Stokes, the secre-
tary of the Royal Society, to come down and see
these things with his own eyes. By his refusal to do
so, Stokes placed himself in exactly the same position
as those cardinals who would not look at the moons
of Jupiter through Galileo's telescope. Material
science, when faced with a new problem, showed itself
to be just as bigoted as medieval theology...

The sensational nature of Professor Crookes's ex-
periments with Miss Cook, and the fact, no doubt, that
they seemed more vulnerable to attack, have tended
to obscure his very positive results with Home and
with Miss Fox, which have established the powers of
those mediums upon a solid basis. Crookes soon found
the usual difficulties which researchers encounter, but
he had sense enough to realize that in an entirely new
subject one has to adapt oneself to the conditions,
and not abandon the study in disgust because the
conditions refuse to adapt themselves to our own
preconceived ideas. Thus, in speaking of Home, he says:

The experiments I have tried have been very numerous,
but owing to our imperfect knowledge of the conditions
which favour or oppose the manifestations of this force,
to the apparently capricious manner in which it is exerted, and to the fact that Mr. Home himself is subject to unaccountable ebbs and flows of the force, it has but seldom happened that a result obtained on one occasion could be subsequently confirmed and tested with apparatus specially contrived for the purpose.

The most marked of these results was the alteration
in the weight of objects, which was afterwards so com-
pletely confirmed by Dr. Crawford working with the
Goligher circle, and also in the course of the " Mar-
gery " investigation at Boston. ' Heavy objects could
be made light, and light ones heavy, by the action of
some unseen force which appeared to be under the
influence of an independent intelligence. The checks
by which all possible fraud was eliminated are very
fully set out in the record of the experiments, and must
convince any unprejudiced reader. Dr. Huggins, the
well-known authority on the spectroscope, and Ser-
jeant Cox, the eminent lawyer, together with several
other spectators, witnessed the experiments. As
already recorded, however, Crookes found it impos-
sible to get some of the official heads of science to
give the matter one hour of their attention...

So finishes the legend of cracking toe-joints,
dropping apples, and all the other absurd explanations
which have been put forward to explain away the
facts. It is only fair to say, however, that the painful
incidents connected with the latter days of the Fox
sisters go some way to justify those who, without
knowing the real evidence, have had their attention
drawn to that single episode which is treated else-
where.

It has sometimes been supposed that Crookes
modified or withdrew his opinions upon psychic sub-
jects as expressed in 1874. It may at least be said
that the violence of the opposition, and the timidity of
those who might have supported him, did alarm him
and that he felt his scientific position to be in danger.
Without going the length of subterfuge, he did un-
questionably shirk the question. He refused to have
his articles upon the subject republished, and he would not circulate the wonderful photographs in which the
materialized Katie King stood arm-in-arm with him-
self. He was exceedingly cautious also in defining
his position. In a letter quoted by Professor Angelo
Brofferio, he says:

All that I am concerned in is that invisible and intelli-
gent beings exist who say that they are the spirits of dead
persons. But proof that they really are the individuals
they assume to be, which I require in order to believe it,
I have never received, though I am disposed to admit
that many of my friends assert that they have actually
obtained the desired proofs, and I myself have already
frequently been many times on the verge of this convic-
tion.

As he grew older, however, this conviction hard-
ened, or perhaps he became more conscious of the
moral responsibilities which such exceptional experi-
ences must entail...

Nearly twenty years later his belief was stronger
than ever. In the course of an interview, he said:

I have never had any occasion to change my mind on
the subject, I am perfectly satisfied with what I have
said in earlier days. It is quite true that a connexion has
been set up between this world and the next.

In reply to the question whether Spiritualism had
not killed the old materialism of the scientists, he
added:

I think it has. It has at least convinced the great
majority of people, who know anything about the subject,
of the existence of the next world.

The author has had an opportunity lately, through
the courtesy of Mr. Thomas Blyton, of seeing the
letter of condolence written by Sir William Crookes
on the occasion of the death of Mrs. Corner. It is
dated April 24, 1904, and in it he says:

"Convey Lady Crookes's and my own sincerest sympathy to the family in their irreparable loss. We trust that the
certain belief that our loved ones, when they have
passed over, are still watching over us a belief which
owes so much of its certainty to the mediumship of
Mrs. Corner (or Florence Cook, as she will always be in
our memory) will strengthen and console those who
are left behind."

The daughter in announcing the death said, "She died in deep peace and happiness."