A SAD TALE SOFTLY TOLD

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF FRANK PODMORE

BY

BARRY VAN-ASTEN

 

It is my intention to shine ‘new light on old ghosts’, to borrow a title of one of Trevor Hall’s volumes and to look a little deeper into the mysterious death of Frank Podmore, that pioneer of psychical research who along with Frederick Myers and Edmund Gurney produced the two volumes ‘Phantasms of the Living’ which caused praise and controversy alike. In exploring Podmore it is essential to consider the Brighton telepathic experiments and the youths who were involved –  I have unearthed the names and identities of several ‘Brighton Boys’ who were instrumental in the Brighton Psychical Research experiments in thought-transference. In researching Podmore one must also look at the life, work and also mysterious death of Edmund Gurney, and as fascinating as Trevor Hall’s volume, ‘The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney’ (1) is, I believe he is incorrect in assuming that there is no evidence to support the fact that (a) Gurney committed suicide because of fraudulent behaviour connected with the Brighton experiments, particularly George Albert Smith’s corrupt part in the research, and (b) that there was no homosexual activity connected with the Brighton experiments. Without wishing to take anything from the brilliance of Hall’s research and hypothesis, we know that Gurney had failed several times previously in his career choices: music, medicine and Law and although he suffered from moments of great depression, he did not succumb to suicide and I believe he did not commit suicide because of any damage to his reputation as an investigator of psychic phenomena, but something more damaging which he kept secret and could not explain even to his wife; even at the cost of leaving his six year old daughter, Helen behind to spare them the shame and ridicule. Then there is the part Frederick Myers’ brother, Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers, who was also on the Society of Psychical Research council, plays in the performance of Gurney’s death which is very suspicious indeed, having arrived in Brighton to identify Gurney, visit his brother to (we assume) create a cause of death other than suicide and mislead the inquest – Dr. Myers later took his own life by an overdose of drugs on 10^th January 1894. In fact, I must confess, I was of the same mind as Hall until further information came to light in the form of Lord Battersea, Cyril Flower (1843-1907), a mutual friend of Myers (with his disturbing influence over Edmund Gurney) and the Gurneys, who was a notorious homosexual and whom Edmund Gurney dined with at the House of Commons the night before his death in Brighton – Lord Battersea, it appears, escaped a major homosexual scandal in August 1902 when his friend, Arthur Balfour (1848-1930), the then current Prime Minister, silenced the scandal which ‘involved thirty prominent and aristocratic gentlemen’; Lord Battersea, an M.P. who was married to Constance de Rothschild, was found to be the ringleader and played a prominent part in the scandal; for more on this see ‘A Secret Between Gentlemen: Lord Battersea’s hidden scandal and the lives it changed forever’ by Peter Jordaan (Alchemie Books. 2022). The question of sex and sexuality is, I believe, fundamental in assessing the life and death of Podmore (and also Gurney) and I would recommend reading the ‘Memoirs of John Addington Symonds’ [edited by Phyllis Grosskurth. New York, Randon House. 1984] which is an excellent example of how sexual identity and the yearning for physical fulfilment at a time when such relationships were considered criminal and shameful shows how the sensitive man, consumed with guilt for a natural act made objectionable and offensive, can descend into depressive torment and touch the brink of suicide, as Symonds did himself, and as so many others have done. Symonds, who unlike his friends, Roden Noel (1834-1894) and the translator, Claude Delaval Cobham (1842-1917), who found their guilt-free gratification in the arms of young choristers, considered the physical act repugnant and consoled himself in thoughts of naked soldiers and peeping on the young bathers in the Serpentine; the very notion of how one form of love and sexual intimacy is seen as sinful and depraved was enough to carry many innocent souls to the rope, the river, the razor or the revolver. Symonds believed, perhaps as many believed at the time, that marriage would cure him of his illicit desires and homo-erotic obsessions; of course he was wrong and he went through much turmoil of mind and body before he accepted his natural inclinations towards men; some married to deflect suspicion from their ‘obscene’ pleasures and matrimony provided a convenient veil of respectability, sometimes acceptable by mutual understanding and agreements but oftentimes at a great cost and many marriages broke under the strain of such subterfuge and deception leading to ruined reputations and miserable deaths to silence a scandal. It is my estimation that both Gurney and Podmore, reached such depths but were unable to escape what they saw as an inevitable end. Perhaps it will be seen as arbitrary but it is merely my intention to shine the light on these facts with a dim bulb before history lessens the light of that bulb further. But one can’t help thinking that the three leading investigators of their day, Myers, Gurney and Podmore, were under some strange spell or curse connected to ‘Phantasms of the Living’, that colossal yet insubstantial monster they created!
Frank Podmore was the third son of Rev. Thompson Podmore, M.A. (1823-1895), Headmaster of Eastbourne College and Georgina Elizabeth Barton (1827- 1915) (2), Frank, born in Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire on 5^th February 1856 was one of six children born to Thompson and Georgina Podmore, the other children being: Robert Podmore (1852-1910) (3), George Podmore (1854- 1933) (4), Edith Jane Podmore (1858-1936) who never married; Austin Podmore (1861-1937) (5), and Claude Podmore (1868-1948) (6).
Frank was educated at Elstree Hill School from 1863-68 and won a scholarship to Haileybury College where he then won a classical scholarship to Pembroke College, Oxford; he entered Pembroke College, Oxford on 29^th October 1874 aged 18, scholar 1874-78, B.A. 1877 and M.A. 1883. In 1879 Frank Podmore entered the General Post Office as a clerk, working at the London headquarters located at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. Around this time he became a member (and member of the council) of the British National Association of Spiritualists (BNAS) which was formed in 1873; Podmore had been questioning the Anglican faith of his clergyman father during his time at university and the popularity of spiritualism had grown and naturally Podmore was drawn towards new thoughts and ideas concerning the endurance of the spirit after death. Towards the end of 1882, he became a member of the ‘Progressive Association’ which met every Sunday evening in Islington to discuss and listen to ‘ethical sermons, political speeches and secular hymns’ [The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Janet Oppenheim. London. Cambridge University Press. 1985. p. 146], from this, Podmore and fellow friend from the Progressive Association, Mr. Edward Reynolds Pease (1857-1955), (who also like Podmore, joined the SPR), formed the ‘Fellowship of the New Life’ in the autumn of 1883, October in fact, in their quest for a Socialist Utopian vision of society; Podmore, as a founding member, gave the group its name - the Fabian Society, in honour of the Roman General Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus, in January 1884. Meetings of the society were mostly held at Edward Pease’s rooms at 17 Osnaburgh Street, London but sometimes held in Podmore’s rooms at 14 Dean’s Yard, Westminster. The Fabian Society attracted the likes of Annie Besant and Sir Oliver Lodge, Edward Carpenter and George Bernard Shaw [for more on the Fabian Society see the History of the Fabian Society by Edward R. Pease. London. A. C. Fifield, (Clifford’s Inn). 1916.]
Another group to which Podmore belonged was the Oxford Phasmatalogical Society, which investigated phenomena of paranormal origins and was active from 1879-1885. The Society was founded by Edward Ridley (1843-1928) of University College, Oxford; Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (1864-1937) of Rugby and Balliol College, Oxford and Charles William Chadwick Oman (1860-1946) also of University College. Meetings were generally held in Schiller’s rooms at Balliol College, Oxford. Professor Sir Charles Oman relates the origins of the Oxford Phasmatalogical Society in a paper printed in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research [March-April 1946, volume xxxiii, number 622-623. pp. 208-216] saying that the first meeting took place on 29^th October 1879 when a ‘small meeting of undergraduates interested in Psychical Research’ (Podmore by this time had left university and was working for the Post Office), ‘sat in University College to discuss the formation of a Society for the investigation of the occult.’ [pp. 208-209] The Society had four Presidents: Edward Ridley, Alfred Percival Keep (1858-1941) of University College, Oxford, Sir Charles Oman and Dr. Arthur Headlam (1862-1947) who later became the Bishop of Gloucester.

 

THE SOCIETY FOR PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

 

Throughout the mid-nineteenth century popularity in spiritualism had grown and in 1882 the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) was formed and amongst its founding members were the physicist, William F. Barrett, philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900) who became the Society’s first President from 1882-84 (and again from 1888-92), Frederick W. H. Myers, President from 1900-01 and Edmund Gurney who was appointed Hon. Secretary from 1883 until his death in 1888 (at which time, Myers and Podmore were appointed joint Hon. Secretaries). The Society was formed to investigate the validity of claims of spirit communication and the existence of the spirit realm by means of controlled scientific experiments, and to expose fraudulent behaviour; its main objectives being: (a) the transmission of definite thoughts from one mind to another, by means independent of the ordinary organs of sense:- Thought-Transference or Telepathy; (b) the nature, power, and effects of suggestion:- Mesmerism, Hypnotism, Psychic Healing; (c) undeveloped or unrecognised Faculties of the Mind:- the Subliminal Self; (d) Apparitions and Hauntings; (e) evidence of the existence of Intelligences other than “the Living”, and of the reality of intercommunication. Frank Podmore became an early member of the Society, along with the likes of the chemist, William Crookes, physicist Sir Oliver Lodge and psychologist, William James. Podmore, along with Myers, Gurney and William Fletcher Barratt (1844-1925) a founding member of the SPR, were active members in the ‘Committee on Thought-Transference’ (see the ‘Third Report on Thought-Transference’ which was prepared on 24^th April 1883 [Proceedings, SPR. volume i. 1882-3. pp. 161-215]; Podmore also became Hon. Secretary and was later elected to the Council of the SPR and was on the ‘Committee on Mesmerism’, the ‘Committee on Haunted Houses’ and the ‘Literary Committee’.

 

THE WORKSOP POLTERGEIST

 

The Worksop disturbances began towards the end of February 1883, around the 20^th or 21^st, at a house in St. John’s Road, the home of Joe White, a horse dealer in Worksop. Following the accounts in the local newspapers (7) it was brought to the attention of the SPR and Frank Podmore as a member of the Haunted House Committee went to the location on the afternoon of Saturday 7^th April to make inquiries and he interviewed the seven principle eye witnesses in the case; the three most important witnesses, gave and signed their statements, Mr. Arthur Currass (signed Sunday 8^th April), Police Constable William Higgs (signed Tuesday 10^th April) and of course, Joe White who also read and signed Podmore’s notes. Also interviewed were Joe White’s wife, his brother Tom who was between 18-20 years of age; Mr. Soloman Wass and his wife who were next door neighbours of the Whites and Mr. George Ford (Buck Ford) about 28 years of age. (8) But it is interesting to mention that the poltergeist activity only commenced when a young girl named Eliza Rose, who was 18 years old and whom Podmore describes as ‘half-witted’ stayed at the house, sharing Mrs. White’s bed. Subsequently Podmore was criticised for gathering his evidence five weeks after the incidents occurred and he placed any notion of incompetence squarely on the witnesses who were in many cases ‘uneducated’ and unreliable as to their testimony due to contradictory evidence caused by ‘embellished memory’; this can be seen as a failing on Podmore’s behalf as the newspapers of the time can confirm the same evidence as reliably given. Podmore changed his view of the Worksop disturbance twelve years later in 1896 believing that the supernatural ‘poltergeist’ cause was indeed the young ‘imbecile’ girl, Eliza Rose who stayed at the house and was the only one present during all disturbances. Mr. Andrew Mackenzie-Barker says in his book, ‘A Gallery of Ghosts: An Anthology of Reported Experiences’ (1973. pp. 90-110) that Podmore was a ‘man of acute intelligence’ and that he was ‘too critical of the standards of human observation, for some of his contemporaries in the SPR, such as Andrew Lang, but it is this sceptical approach to the value of human testimony that has made him such a respected figure to modern writers on psychical research.’ (p. 108)
During a council meeting of the SPR held at Garden Mansion, Queen Anne’s Mansions, St. James’s Park, London from 8.30 p.m. on Friday 28^th March 1884, with Gurney and Myers present, it was agreed that the council approved the arrangement by which Dr. W. H. Stone would take certain rooms at 14 Dean’s Yard with additional rooms to be used by the Society for a term of three years and that also, additional rooms would be let to Frank Podmore, the Hon. Sec. of the Mesmeric Society, who at the time was living at 16, Southampton Street, Fitzroy Square, London (by the following month, Podmore was living at Dean’s Yard). [Journal of the SPR. volume i. 1884-85. p. 33]
 
The Oxford branch of the SPR was formed in January 1885 under the presidency of Mr. Arthur Sidgwick, M.A. of Corpus Christi College, Oxford (the Secretary being Earl Russell of Balliol College, Oxford) and the ‘branch owes its formation chiefly to the efforts of Mr. Frank Podmore who paid a visit to Oxford in the Michaelmas term’ [Journal of the SPR. volume i. 1884-85. p. 375] It is also worth noting that by April 1885, Podmore’s father, Reverend Thompson Podmore M.A. of the College, Eastbourne, had become an associate member.
The first significant publication from the Society in an effort to support the claims of telepathy and apparitions was ‘Phantasms of the Living’ (9) published in two volumes in 1886 by its co-authors, Frederick Myers, Edmund Gurney and Frank Podmore. ‘Phantasms’ presented over 700 cases and although it is an outstanding work the two volumes were not accepted as giving credible evidence of either telepathy or of the existence of apparitions and it was heavily criticised as lacking written testimonies and substantial evidence and therefore flawed and unreliable. Edmund Gurney who had tirelessly supplied the main body of cases presented throughout over 1,300 pages, jumped to its defence but accounts such as the Creery Sisters who were presented as reliable evidence and were subsequently discovered to be using codes during their séances destroyed the credibility of ‘Phantasms’. Sir Oliver Lodge who had visited Gurney while researching Phantasms says in his memoirs, ‘Past Years’ [London. 1931. pp. 270-71] that the book was a ‘meaningless collection of ghost-stories which he [Gurney] was classifying and arranging…’ he goes on to say that it was a ‘futile occupation for a cultivated man’. But who was this ‘cultivated man’ who persevered through such a laborious task?

 

THE SAD FATE OF EDMUND GURNEY

 

The author Trevor H. Hall has presented a detailed account of Edmund Gurney’s life and the mystery surrounding his death that it is only necessary to give a brief outline of Gurney’s life. He was born on 23^rd March 1847 at Hersham near Walton-on-Thames, Surrey; the third son of Rev. John Hampdon Gurney (1802-62) and Mary Grey, who were married in Scotland on 24^th October 1839.
Gurney suffered three great tragedies in his life, the first being the death of his mother Mary in 1857 when Edmund was 10 years old, then the death of his father on 8^th March 1862 (Reverend John Gurney was 59 years old), two weeks before Edmund’s 15^th birthday and finally, in 1875, on 23^rd December, Edmund’s three sisters – Emily Gurney, aged 33; Rosamond Gurney, aged 24 and Mary Gurney, aged 21, who were all drowned when their boat overturned during a trip on the River Nile while on a tour of Egypt. Perhaps a superstitious person would note the significance of the number 23, for Edmund was born on the 23^rd, his sisters drowned on 23^rd and Edmund would end his own life on the 23^rd, but I merely mention it.
Gurney was educated at a private school in Blackheath, Kent from 1861-64 before going on to a private tutor at the beginning of 1864 in Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex; he won a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge in the spring of 1866 and was in residence there by October, he was joint winner of the Porson Prize in 1870 for the best translation of Greek verse, was awarded B.A. 1871, and M.A. 1874; he became a Fellow in 1872 and he travelled on the continent in Europe from 1871-2; he played the piano and studied music which he was passionate about at Cambridge University from 1872-5 and realizing he would never be a great musician he then turned his attention to studying medicine at Cambridge University and at St. George’s Hospital, London from 1877-81 and finally at Lincoln’s Inn he studied Law in 1881. Following the early tragedies it seems as if Gurney is searching for a subject to excel in but ultimately he fails in music, fails in medicine and fails in Law; as an undergraduate he suffered from depression, one moment being enthusiastic and consumed with a passion for an activity to the point of obsessive behaviour and the next, the cycle of inertia and low mood would follow until broken once more.
On 5^th June 1877 Edmund married Kate Sara Sibley (1854-1929) and they took a house at Clarges Street, Mayfair; they had a daughter named Helen May Gurney, born on 20^th November 1881, while the Gurney’s were living at 26, Montpelier Square, Knightsbridge, London. Gurney played a prominent part in the SPR but in the summer of 1888 a tragedy was upon the horizon. There is some confusion as to the last SPR general meeting Gurney attended as Henry Sidgwick states that it took place on 1^st June 1888 and that Mrs. Sidgwick read her paper on premonitions there ( Henry Sidgwick: A Memoir by Arthur & Eleanor Sidgwick. London. Macmillan. p. 489) and Hall repeats the mistake (p. 71) but according to the Journal of the SPR (volume iii. 1887-88. p. 258) it took place on Thursday 31^st May 1888 at Westminster Town Hall, also by coincidence Henry Sidgwick’s 50^th birthday which may have caused the mistaken entry. Gurney visited Brighton on Wednesday 13^th June and perhaps stayed a few days (see later section The Haunted House in Brighton) and on Sunday 17^th June 1888, Gurney visited Lord Rayleigh, John William Strutt (1842-1919) the physicist and mathematician who was Vice President of the SPR, at his home in Terling Place, Essex; also there as a guest was Lady Frances Balfour (1858-1951), a suffragette. Two days later on Tuesday 19^th June 1888, Gurney met Professor Henry Sidgwick and his wife Eleanor. Sidgwick later wrote in his journal that ‘he seemed to be well and in good spirits.’ On Thursday 21^st June 1888 Gurney had dinner at the House of Commons with Cyril Flower (Lord Battersea) and the eternal bachelor, Arthur Balfour; Gurney returned home to 26, Montpelier Square where he supposedly found the letter from an ‘unknown sender’ from Brighton awaiting him; Gurney obviously knew the sender but kept it from his wife. The next day, Friday 22^nd June 1888 Gurney went to Brighton. (taking the letter with him) and stayed that night at the Royal Albion Hotel. The following day, Saturday 23^rd June 1888 at the hotel in Brighton, Gurney is found dead in his room.
On Monday 25^th June 1888, the inquest is held at the Town Hall, Brighton.
Lady Battersea [Constance Flower, wife of Cyril Flower, Lord Battersea] who had befriended the Gurney’s at Pontresina in 1878, had this to say on Gurney in her ‘Reminiscences’, that ‘being infected by the enthusiasm of his friends, Mr. Myers [who had been an intimate friend of Lady Battersea’s husband, Cyril Flower, whom he knew at Cambridge] and Mr. Sidgwick, he gave himself unreservedly to the problems of psychical research, that perplexing and elusive subject, and devoted his time, his pen, and alas! his strength, to that which seemed always evading his grasp. It was a sad ending to what had promised to be a fine career, for Edmund Gurney was one of the elect, both in mind and character; those who knew him well admired and loved him. His wife had to encounter many dark days, also hours of unavoidable loneliness, in spite of which her devotion to her husband never flagged.’ [Reminiscences. Constance Battersea. London. Macmillan and Co. Ltd. 1922. p. 206]
 
Not long after Gurney’s death, in fact, seventeen months later, the grieving widow, Kate Gurney, married the journalist and politician, Thomas Newcomen Archibald Grove, born 23^rd July 1854 (he died 14^th June 1920) at midday at St. Michael’s church, Chester Square, London on Thursday 14^th November 1889; by all accounts the ‘fashionable marriage’ was ‘a quiet one’ and the bride’s mother gave her away. At their home, 48, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, Kate and Thomas Grove, who edited The New Review and was later a Liberal candidate for West Ham, had a son named Edward Thomas Newcomen Grove, born 27^th October 1891. [Edward went up to Balliol College, Oxford and studied Modern History, August 1914 before entering the war, 2^nd Lt. September 1914 and temp. Lt. April 1915; Captain, Royal Bucks, Hussars, F.R.A.S. – Edward T. N. Grove, ‘author of “Soldier Men” (a Bodley Head book [published 1917]) who chooses to write as Yeo, is really Edward T. N. Grove (now a Major in the Egyptian Army), son of Mr. Archibald Grove, until lately M.P. He got a commission in September 1914…’ ‘The Graphic’. London. 21^st July 1917. p. 26]
Following Gurney’s death, a meeting of the SPR council was held at the Society rooms on 16^th July 1888 and Myers and Podmore were appointed joint Honorary Secretaries [Journal of the SPR. volume iii. 1887-88. p. 305] Podmore played a major part in the SPR, attending meetings, investigating cases and writing up the findings which were read at meetings; at the general meeting held at Westminster Town Hall, London, from 8.30 p.m. on Friday 29^th November 1889, he read the first part of his paper ‘Phantasms of the Dead’ whereby a discussion followed; the poet, W. B. Yeats was in attendance and Podmore concluded that ‘a large proportion of the hallucinations seen by sane and healthy persons resemble the human form’. [Journal of the SPR. volume iv. 1889-90. pp. 171-174] In a subsequent general meeting at the same location on Friday 31^st January 1890 Podmore read the second part of his paper and a similar discussion followed. [ibid. pp. 204-207]
On 11^th June 1891, Frank Podmore married Eleanore Oliver Bramwell who was born in Perth, Scotland on 30^th December 1861, daughter of James Paton Bramwell (1824-1890), M.D. Chief Consulting Surgeon of Perth Royal Infirmary, Scotland and Eleanor Oliver. There would be no children born to the marriage. During 1889 Frank had left his rooms in Dean’s Yard and was living at 12, Millbank Street, Westminster (his brother, Austin Podmore who is an associate of the SPR gave his address as 14, Dean’s Yard in Proceedings of the SPR, volume ii, 1883-4 and Proceedings of the SPR, volume v, 1885); following the marriage the Podmores’ are living at 32, Well Walk, Hampstead, London.
Podmore published his volume ‘Apparitions and Thought-Transference’ in 1892 and he diligently continued his work for the SPR, reading his paper on ‘Telepathic Dreams’ at the general meeting of Friday 10^th March 1893 at the Westminster Town Hall [Journal of the SPR. volume vi. 1893-94. p. 52] and on the ‘Recent Experiments in Thought-Transference’ at the same location on Friday 9^th March 1994 [ibid. pp. 227-228] and by the following year Podmore, along with Mr. George Albert Smith, are on the ‘Hypnotic Committee and it was agreed by ballot that Podmore, one of the eighteen members of council, would retire from council at the end of 1898 (Myers would retire at the end of 1897) [Journal of the SPR. volume vii. 1895-96. p. 147]

 

THE PERSUASIVE AND PECULIAR MISTER MYERS

 

Frederick William Henry Myers was born on 6^th February 1843 and I find there are several peculiarities in his life which leads me to believe there is something quite sinister about the persuasive Mister Myers, even psychopathic. Firstly, he is not above literary theft, or as his university friend, the historian, Mr. George Gordon  Coulton (1858-1947) calls it in his autobiography, ‘Fourscore Years’ (1943),  ‘Literary kleptomania’, Coulton explains why – ‘In 1861 the Camden Medal for Latin Verse was won by Henry Lee-Warner of St John’s. Next year, it went to F. W. H. Myers of Trinity, a very brilliant scholar who, when he was scarcely out of his school years, published a remarkable English poem on St Paul, and who became in later life one of the most prominent enthusiasts for Psychical Research. In 1863, the University Calendar records no winner, yet does not add the formula usual in such cases, “None awarded”. Behind this lies a very queer story. The medal for this year (1863) was in fact awarded to Myers; but presently it was discovered that many of the lines were “conveyed”, mainly from Oxford prize poems of the past’; Coulton continues to say that ‘out of 100 lines about 25 were taken from Oxford prize poems, of which two lines by R. W. Raper were acknowledged in a note…’ and so Myers had to give back the Camden Medal, but Coulton goes on to say that ‘the winner usually gives a breakfast to a few friends; and, as I had been at Cheltenham with Myers, he asked me. He duly read his poem to us; and, when he came to a certain couplet, he raised his eyes for a moment, and said, “I cribbed that from Raper”. One of the men called out: “Why, that’s the best of the lot!” Myers said nothing, and went on reading to the end. Naturally enough, the affair was hushed up as much as possible. But it got into the Cambridge weekly paper, and excited a rather heated correspondence.’ The author admits that ‘Myers had his queer side’ and adds that Henry Lee-Warner, the winner of the Camden Prize in 1861, ‘was my neighbour in Norfolk; when I once asked him [about Myers], he spoke with without undue bitterness, but added, “He was always a queer fellow. Once, when I came into my room, I found him reading my letters.”’ [Fourscore Years, an Autobiography. G. G. Coulton. London. Cambridge University Press. 1943. pp. 106-108.]
At University Myers moved in flamboyantly artistic circles and ‘few liked him, and some detested him. His closest friend during his early years at Cambridge was Arthur Sidgwick, a clever young classic in the year above him. Their relationship was of an emotional and aesthetic kind, and its intenseness may well have caused unfavourable comment, so adding to Myers’ unpopularity.’ [The Founders of Psychical Research. Alan Gauld. London. Routledge & K. Paul. 1968. p. 90]
Concerning Myers’ homosexual inclinations, the author Phyllis Grosskurth in her biography of John Addington Symonds, published in 1964, goes further in her assumptions; she describes how Myers and Symonds first met at Oxford in 1861 ‘when Myers had come from Cambridge to spend a weekend with Conington [John Conington, the Latin Professor at Oxford whom Symonds confided in over the Dr. Vaughan and the boy, Alfred Pretor affair at Harrow], and immediately took a dislike to the languid, arrogant young man [Myers]. “He is such a curious creature,” he told Charlotte [Symonds’s sister], “not at all to my mind. Besides being conceited, he affects some uncomfortable qualities of mind, such as an entire indifference… contempt for merely intellectual pursuits.”’ John Addington Symonds met Myers again in London two years later in 1863 and seems to have had a change of heart, gushing about him that ‘”he will be a considerable man: & a turbulent, even presumptuous & criminal youth may be ignored in silence when there is hope of so great a manhood”.’ [p. 147] Myers was a classical lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge which he loathed; he left in 1872 to become a school inspector and on many occasions he visited Symonds at Clifton School.
Grosskurth also tells us how Symonds became interested in the poetry of Walt Whitman after Myers first introduced him to it in 1865; Symonds visited Myers at Cambridge, when ‘Myers suddenly pulled down a volume from his shelves and began reading in his nasal voice: “Long, I thought that knowledge alone would content me.” This was a section in “Calamus” omitted from later editions of Leaves of Grass, and Myers read on…’ and after several more lines – ‘”I am indifferent to my own songs – I will go with him I love, / It is enough for us that we are together – We never separate again.”’ We are also told that Myers, ‘a close friend of Symonds’, ‘suffered the same sexual problems as Symonds in early adulthood’ [note p. 125] which is taken from a quote in a letter from Symonds to his friend and fellow ‘sufferer’, Henry Graham Dakyns, from Clifton, dated 22^nd August 1866 which says that he [Symonds] and Arthur Sidgwick and F. W. H. Myers were ‘three of not the least intellectually constituted members of our Universities assailed by the same disease.’ [p. 115]

 

THE STRANGE, THE ODD AND THE QUEER

 

Mr. Eliot Slater says in his introduction to Trevor Hall’s The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney that ‘Myers was, basically, a homosexual. Whatever he says, he was incapable of a passion based on normal sexuality. In his relations with women he substituted for it the shallow courtship of a philanderer, which would commit him to nothing but give him opportunities for high-flown poetic self-display.’ [pp. xxx-xxxi]
The Society for Psychical Research drew membership from educated people of all walks of life such as Benjamin Lomax (1833-1917) of 11, Park Crescent, Brighton, who was the curator of the Brighton Free Library, Museum and Art Gallery and published his volume on ‘Bells and Bell Ringers’ in 1879; Lomax was an Associate and Honorary member of the Society. But the Society seems to have had a great attraction to scientific gentlemen with homosexual tendencies and membership included the likes of those already mentioned – John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), Henry Sidgwick’s brother, Arthur Sidgwick (1840-1892) who was Assistant Master at Rugby from 1864-1879 and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford from 1892-1902, and Henry Graham Dakyns  (1838-1911) who was a Master at Clifton College, but also Oscar Browning (1837-1923), Master of Eton College from 1860-1875 who was an Honorary Associate; in fact, early meetings of the SPR were held in Browning’s rooms at King’s College, Cambridge, (see his obituary in Journal of the SPR, volume xxi. 1923. p. 168); the classical scholar, poet and politician, James Rennell Rodd (1858-1941) the 1^st Baron Rennell, of Haileybury and Balliol College, Oxford who was an acquaintance of Oscar Wilde’s until the scandal erupted and like many other sheep he left Wilde to the wolves; Rennell Rodd was on the Committee of Haunted Houses in the SPR in 1884 with Pease and Podmore; John Francis Stanley Russell (1865-1931), the 2^nd Earl Russell (known as Frank Russell) and brother of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Frank Russell was educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford and had met both Wilde and Whitman; another friend was the poet Lionel Johnson (1867-1902) with whom it is said Earl Russell had a homosexual relationship and was the reason he [Russell] was sent down from Balliol; he was also convicted of bigamy in 1901, see ‘Bertrand’s Brother: The Marriages, Morals and Misdemeanours of Frank, 2^nd Earl Russell’ by Ruth Derham (Amberley Publishing. 2021). Another member of the SPR who became its Vice President was the poet, the Hon. Roden Berkeley Wtiothesley Noel (1834-1894) of Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge; Roden Noel had a sexual relationship with John Addington Symonds and was perhaps his first lover; Noel had also had a physical relationship with fellow poet, Robert Williams Buchanon (1841-1901). Roden Noel later lived in St Aubyns, West Brighton. (for his obituary notice see Journal of the SPR, volume vi. 1894. pp. 262-3, also pp. 195-7).
In the case of Frederick Myers I believe his sexual inclination to have been bisexual for at university he surrounds himself with mostly homosexual men, such as Arthur Sidgwick, Cyril Flower and John Addington Symonds and later pursues heterosexual relationships with an almost sadistic tenacity. Myers’ passionate quest settled its uneasy fingers upon the body of Anne Eliza Marshall, wife of his cousin, Walter James Marshall (born 1833) of Hallsteads, on Lake Ullswater, Cumberland, which led to a three year affair in which she became pregnant [according to Hall, and was four and a half months pregnant at her death] and ultimately took her own life in 1876; born Anne Eliza Hill, a vicar’s daughter, in 1845, 21 year old Anne married Walter James Marshall [Myers’ mother was a member of the Marshall family] in 1866 and they had five children but the marriage was not a happy one and they later separated in early 1876, Anne living in a smaller house with the children in the grounds at Hallsteads; both suffered from ill-health and Walter was beset by moods of depression – Anne had two sisters die of insanity and feared the prospect herself. Frederick Myers visited Hallsteads and fell under the spell of Anne in January 1874 and by the summer of that year they had fallen in love. They were both similar in their views and attitudes, both had religious doubts and both had interests in the spirit world, Anne possibly had ‘mediumistic tendencies’ after several séances in which she was affected by the ‘spirit’; perhaps this is another reason Myers was drawn to her with his increasing obsession for the ‘afterlife’. Eventually, Walter succumbed to his depression and was certified insane in May 1876 and taken to Ticehurst asylum in Sussex. The strain upon Anne seems to have been great and gradually she also fell into a deep depression. Ten years after her marriage to Walter, and with five children to look after, she drowned herself, aged 31, in the cold waters of Lake Ullswater, after first attempting ‘to cut her throat with scissors’, in 1876. From the inquest held at Old Church, Ullswater, on Thursday 31^st August 1876, we find that Anne had ‘for a considerable length of time’ unfortunately ‘been labouring under great mental depression’; she had visited London on account of her health. Her father, Mr. Hill had stayed with his daughter from the beginning of May to the middle of July and she subsequently stayed with her mother and father in London. On Saturday 19^th August, father and daughter went to Derwentwater where she ‘made a proposal to her father concerning her husband, but it was regarded as quite an impossible one for her.’ Mr. Hill left the following Tuesday morning on 22^nd August and Anne told her father she had not slept during the night. On Monday 28^th August Anne returned from Derwentwater at 6.30 in the evening and at 9.30 she rang for the maid; she was not prepared for bed and it would be the last time she was seen. The following morning [Tuesday 29^th August] at 8.30, the maid entered the bedroom and found it empty but noticed blood in the basin and the footbath, and a ‘pair of scissors marked with blood were lying near’. A search ensued and her body was found in Ullswater Lake, twelve feet below the surface and it was concluded that she had first attempted to cut her throat, there were two wounds on her neck, and then thrown herself into the Lake. [Melancholly Death by Drowning in Ullswater. The Lakes Chronicle. Wednesday 9^th September 1876. p. 3; see also ‘Immortal Longings: F W H Myers and the Victorian Search for Life After Death. Trevor Hamilton. Imprint Academic. 2009. p. 5] Myers seems to treat the death quite casually and it fuels his poetic muse into flights of lyrical love but secretly he was obsessed about the death and passion he held for Anne and it disturbed him for the rest of his life.
That same spirit of kleptomania rears its head once more when his friend Edmund Gurney married Kate Sibley for we are informed by Hall in his book on Gurney [note p. 39] that ‘Myers admitted he was a sensualist in his privately-printed Fragments of Inner Life. Miss Helen Gurney [Edmund and Kate Gurney’s daughter, born 1881] has told me [Hall] in her letters, moreover, that Myers hotly pursued Kate Sibley before her marriage to Gurney, adding that Myers “by a series of lies tried to prevent my father from proposing to her – and her from accepting him if he did”.’ [Hall. p. 39] It seems that Myers sees no boundaries to his desire for sexual conquest, whether the object of his affection is the ill-fated wife of his cousin, or the intended wife of his friend. This charming and subtle persuasive influence of Myers, which when directed at Gurney, went beyond ordinary measures, seems to dominate Gurney; in Hall’s book (p. 37), he tells us in a note that ‘Miss Helen Gurney has told me in her letters that Myers even insisted upon joining Gurney and his bride on their honeymoon in 1877, on the grounds that Gurney had made an earlier promise to take Myers on holiday to Switzerland with him that year (presumably at Gurney’s expense), a promise which Myers insisted Gurney must implement. Miss Gurney wrote, “My mother did not resent this from my father – he was utterly unworldly and she could expect and allow for his idiosyncrasies. But she felt that Fred Myers knew quite enough of the world to refrain from going on the honeymoon. He went!”’ This was just ten months after the love of his life, his cousin’s wife, Anne Marshall took her own life in a most gruesome way.
I believe there is no doubt that the actual facts in the death of Edmund Gurney were concealed and that Frederick Myer’s colluded with his brother, Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers, who was summoned by the authorities after an undelivered letter addressed to him was found in Gurney’s pocket and that Dr. Myers arrived that day, in Brighton on Saturday 23^rd June 1888 and a story was soon concocted between the brothers as to the cause of Gurney’s death; the actual letter from an ‘unknown’ person from Brighton requesting Gurney to come to Brighton which Gurney is said to have received on the previous day, Friday, after he dined with Cyril Flower and Arthur Balfour at the House of Commons was not mentioned or indeed the whereabouts of that letter or what it contained was never discussed.
Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers was born 16^th April 1851 in Keswick and all his life suffered from Bright’s disease and epilepsy. He was educated at Cheltenham and Trinity College, Cambridge in 1870 where he got a 1^st in classics and a 2^nd in natural sciences; a member of the Cambridge Apostles, he was very active in sport, particularly cricket (Captain of his college XI) and tennis, in fact, he was a quarter finalist in the 1878 Wimbledon tennis championships and the following year made it to the third round. He studied medicine at St. George’s Hospital, London, qualifying in 1879 and was also a physician at the Belgrave Hospital for children. Dr. Myers became a member of the SPR and was particularly interested in hypnotism and the healing aspect of the research and he was involved with the Brighton youths; he was on the SPR council from 1888 until his death by suicide in 1894, five years after Gurney, when he was living at 2, Manchester Square, London; Hall marks the similarities between Gurney and Dr. Myers, who at the time of Gurney’s death was living at 9, Lower Berkeley Square, London, (p. 12) saying that ‘both men [Gurney and Dr. Myers] died from an overdose of narcotics. Both, before their deaths, had been involved in hypnotic experiments with G. A. Smith and the Brighton youths.’
At Gurney’s inquest, held at the Town Hall, Brighton on Monday 25^th June 1888, Gurney’s brother, reverend Alfred Gurney, the vicar of St. Barnabas, Pimlico, stated that his brother, Edmund used narcotics to abate his persistent neuralgia and insomnia – Dr. Myers, an ‘old friend of Gurney’s’ testified the same, ‘adding that he had often discussed with Gurney the use of chloroform as an analgesic or narcotic, but had no certain knowledge that he had ever tried it’. [Gauld. p. 177] Why was Mrs. Gurney not able to testify, either in person or by letter as to the veracity of this statement and Gurney’s medical condition? Cyril Flower, whom Gurney dined with on Thursday 21^st June, provided a letter for the inquest for Dr. Myers, saying that ‘I have rarely seen him [Gurney] in better health and spirits and his conversation was brilliant.’ [Hall. p. 15] It was obvious that a cause of death ‘by misadventure’ rather than suicide (which by the way, many, including William James, his invalid sister, Alice James and Henry Sidgwick suspected) was being aimed at, not simply to protect the recently widowed wife and fatherless child of the deceased but the whole reputation of the SPR.
I believe the author of ‘The Founders of Psychical Research’ (1968), Alan Gauld, to be somewhat naïve to think it quite incredulous that a man of God, the Reverend Alfred Gurney, would not be capable of giving false evidence for the sake of his brother’s reputation and that the wearing of the clerical collar makes one impervious to telling lies or makes one immune from committing unsavoury sins and acts of indecency, for which there are numerous cases; it may just be that Rev. Gurney condescended to Dr. Myers’ medical opinion.
Following Gurney’s death, Frederick Myers wrote a letter to Lady Battersea, Cyril Flower’s wife, which alludes to a deeper intimacy between him and Gurney; in the letter dated 4^th July 1888, he says that ‘we had been as intimate and as attached to each other as men can be;- every part of our respective natures found response by comprehension in the other. But I will not say more of that.’ [Gauld. p. 182] We must draw from that what we can, but I believe it is safe to say that Myers and Gurney had a deeper bond between them which may have been physical. Hall seems to overlook the obvious reason for Gurney’s suicide and it seems to me that Gurney was attracted to the handsome George A. Smith, on learning of his deception during the initial Brighton experiments with Blackburn, Gurney overlooks this and forgives Smith, even making him his personal secretary and over time they become very familiar with each other; the loss of Smith to his new bride must have hurt Gurney deeply and perhaps coupled with the facts that Smith had continued to deceive Gurney in the telepathic experiments was enough for Gurney to seek release from the turmoil of his life.
 
Frederick Myers died aged 57 of pneumonia in Rome on 17^th January 1901; like his brother, Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers, Frederick suffered from Bright’s disease; he may have escaped the curse, but the curse, if one believes in such things, claimed another victim in the form of Myers’ son, the author Leopold Hamilton Myers born in Cambridge on 6^th September 1881, educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge who committed suicide on 7^th April 1944 by an overdose of veronal.

 

THE POST OFFICE AND THE CLEVELAND STREET SCANDAL

 

H. Montgomery Hyde has written a full account of the Cleveland Street Scandal in his book of that name, published in 1976 (10) and in the first chapter he sets forth the beginnings of the lurid discovery, as Hyde tells it, the scandal ‘first came to light as the result of a theft of a sum of money from a room in the Receiver-General’s Department in the Central Telegraph Office, which was then situated in the building known as the General Post Office West in St. Martin’s-Le-Grand in the City of London.’ Hyde goes on to say that ‘suspicion fell upon a fifteen-year-old telegraph messenger-boy named Charles Thomas Swinscot, who had been seen leaving the room and to have more money in his possession than might be expected of a boy whose weekly earnings amounted to a few shillings.’ (p. 20) Swinscot was interviewed by a Police Constable attached to the Post Office named Luke Hanks on 4^th July 1889 in the presence of Mr. Phillips, a senior Post Office official. Swinscot denied the theft and eventually confesses to earning the money (14 shillings in his possession) ‘for doing some private work away from the office’ and then explains that it was ‘for a gentleman named Hammond’ at ’19 Cleveland Street.’ In fact, he goes on to say that it was for ‘going to bed with gentlemen at his [Charles Hammond’s] house.’ Swinscot incriminates a fellow worker, a clerk at the Secretaries Office named Henry Newlove, aged 18, who had persuaded Swinscot to ‘go with him to the lavatory in the basement, he said, after which he shut the door and “behaved indecently”.’ Following this Newlove had induced Swinscot to go to Cleveland Street where much money can be earned by ‘spooning’ with gentlemen. Swinscot informs on two other telegraph boys who had visited Cleveland Street and whom Newlove had seduced in the basement lavatory, George Alma Wright, aged 17, who said that ‘Newlove put his person into me’ (p. 22), and Charles Ernest Thickbroom, also 17, whom Wright had introduced to Newlove. Newlove was arrested the following day (5^th July) at his mother’s house in Camden Town and he told Chief Inspector Frederick Abberline, famed for the Ripper investigations, on their way to the Station that several men of high standing were involved, such as Lord Arthur Somerset, the Earl of Euston (Henry James Fitzroy) and Colonel Jervois of Winchester barracks.
‘The department of the Accountant General of the Post Office was housed in the same building at St. Martin’s-le-Grand where Podmore worked. In 1889, the year after Gurney’s death, London was shocked by the scandal of the male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street. The Earl of Euston and Lord Arthur Somerset were involved, the latter being forced to resign his offices in the Royal Household and flee to France. Five of the male prostitutes at the house in Cleveland Street, Swinscot, Wright, Thickbroom, Perkins and Barber, were telegraph boys. Henry Horace Newlove, who introduced the boys to the brothel and was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for assisting to keep a disorderly house, was a clerk in the Accountant General’s Department of the Post Office.’ [Hall. pp. 201-201]
The telegraph boys involved: Charles Thomas Swinscow, born 1873, George Alma Wright, born 1871, Charles Ernest Thickbroom (1872-1953), William Meech Perkins, born 1872 and clerk, Henry Horace Newlove, born 1870, were dismissed from the Post Office on Friday 6^th December 1889; George Barber, born 1873, was found at the premises of George Daniel Veck, born 1840, a friend of Charles Hammond’s (he having fled and escaped justice) who pretended to be a clergyman and who was dismissed from the Telegraph Office in 1880 for improper conduct with messenger boys – Veck also used the alias ‘George Barber’ and the boy of that name was found asleep in Veck’s bed; young Barber acted as Veck’s ‘Private Secretary’; upon Veck’s arrest a letter was found in his pocket from Algernon Allies, born 1869, who later admitted during police interview to being involved at Cleveland Street and receiving money from Lord Arthur Somerset. The trial concluded at the Old Bailey in September and Newlove (charged with keeping a brothel with Charles Hammond) and Veck received four months’ hard labour and nine months’ hard labour respectively. In short, with buggery in the basement and as we later find out, card playing in Podmore’s office, the General Post Office at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, was nothing less than a comfortable and exclusive gentleman’s club!

 

THE BRIGHTON BOYS

 

Gurney and Myers had been conducting experiments in Brighton (and London) which concerned the ‘telepathic transference of drawings and other material. The subjects were G. A. Smith, a young Brightonian, and Douglas Blackburn a local journalist [who appears to have mysteriously withdrawn from the experiments in April 1883]. The experiments were seemingly successful. Smith was a talented young man and was, inter alia, a very gifted hypnotist (he had been giving stage demonstrations of hypnosis and thought reading).’ [Gauld. p. 179] On 15^th November 1882, following correspondence with Blackburn, Myers and Gurney went to Brighton to see Smith and Blackburn at Smith’s residence, his mother’s boarding house in Grand Parade, Brighton to witness the ‘act’ (Myers and Gurney probably stayed at a local hotel) [Proceedings of the SPR. volume i. 1882. p. 78] Smith had booked St. James’s Hall, Grand Parade, Brighton in November 1882 for their demonstrations of thought reading. Gurney and Myers went again on Saturday 2^nd December 1882 and conducted experiments in rooms at the lodgings of the SPR leaders on Sunday 3^rd and Monday 4^th December. A general meeting of the SPR was held at Chandos Place, London on Saturday 9^th December 1882 in which Myers and Gurney in the presence of Henry Sidgwick gave a report on the Smith-Blackburn experiments. Further investigations were to follow when Smith and Blackburn were invited by the Committee on Mesmerism to attend a series of experiments conducted at the SPR in London. They met in Podmore’s rooms at 14, Dean’s Yard, London on 19^th January 1883 and experiments continued at that location on 20^th, 21^st, and 23^rd April 1883 (over 70 experiments were made January-April) [see Podmore’s ‘Telepathic Hallucinations’. 1909. p. 51]. Hall, with his usual talent for sniffing out a mystery and sensing intrigue, tells us (p. 185) that in the ‘First Report of the Committee on Mesmerism’ which was published on 24^th April 1883, it states that ‘Mr. Wolferstan (11) had been brought into the mesmeric state by Miss Smith, sister of the Mr. G. A. Smith above mentioned, in the presence of Dr. Myers and Mr. Podmore’ [Proceedings. volume i. 1882-83. p. 221]; Hall deduces that Miss Smith, is Alice Smith, who was present at the Dean’s Yard experiments during January and April but curiously is not mentioned again by the SPR in their reports or proceedings; in fact, there is some controversy as to who was actually present at these experiments and why records were not recorded more accurately. The controversy continued in the pages of the Westminster Gazette in the latter half of 1907 and the beginning of 1908 when Dr. Sir Horatio Bryan Donkin F.R.C.P. (1845-1927) raised the question as to why outside critics were invited to the Dean’s Yard experiments of January and April 1882 and omitted from the Proceedings (12); the letter initiated a response from the psychiatrist and neurologist, Sir James Crichton-Browne F.R.S. (1840-1938) in the 29^th January 1908 edition after Donkin mentioned him as being present, along with Dr. Alexander Hughes Bennett (1848-1901). Crichton-Browne named the following, along with himself, as also being present at the experiments with Henry Sidgwick, Frederick Myers and Edmund Gurney (and of course Smith and Blackburn and probably Miss Smith): Dr. George Wyld (1821-1906) who was deeply interested in spiritualism and theosophy; Dr. William Henry Stone F.R.C.P. (1830-1891) who had taken the rooms at Dean’s Yard on behalf of the SPR; Dr. George John Romanes F.R.S. (1848-1894) and Dr. Francis Galton F.R.S. (1822-1911). In reference to the remark about a woman being present [Miss Smith] and Crichton-Browne mistaking her for Blackburn’s wife Podmore made a brief reply in the Westminster Gazette of Monday 3^rd February 1908 (p. 3) that Blackburn ‘was not married, so that his wife could not, as stated by Sir James, have been present at the experiments. – Yours, Frank Podmore, 20, Hanover-Square, London, W. January 31^st’ which does not deny the presence of a woman at the experiments, merely that she was not Blackburn’s wife.
I might add that I disagree with Hall’s ‘Alice Smith hypothesis’, interesting as it is, found in his volume on Gurney, that she was the mysterious author of the letter requesting Gurney to attend at Brighton  on Friday 22^nd June 1888 as pure conjecture and is actually misleading.
Douglas Blackburn, the Editor of the Brightonian who became an associate and honorary member of the SPR and whose address was 24, Duke Street, Brighton, gave a glimpse as to the technique he and Smith used during their ‘thought-reading’ in volume I of the Proceedings of the SPR (p. 63) in which an extract from a  letter by Douglas, originally published in the magazine Light, is reproduced, which says ‘the way Mr. Smith conducts his experiments is this: He places himself en rapport with myself by taking my hands; and a strong concentration of will and mental vision on my part has enabled him to read my thoughts with an accuracy that approaches the miraculous. Not only can he, with slight hesitation, read numbers, words, and even whole sentences which I alone have seen, but the sympathy between us has been developed to such a degree that he rarely fails to experience the taste of any liquid or solid I choose to imagine. He has named, described, or discovered small articles he has never seen when they have been concealed by me in the most unusual places, and on two occasions he has successfully described portions of a scene which I either imagined or actually saw.’
Following these experiments Gurney employed Smith as his private secretary in 1885 and his abilities in hypnotism was used in subsequent experiments in Brighton. Douglas Blackburn later, in 1908 and 1911, confessed that he and Smith had used a system of codes to deceive Gurney and Myers, which Smith denied [see John Bull, December 1908 and January 1909; the Daily News, 1^st September 1911 and the Journal of the SPR. volume xv. 1911-12. ‘Confessions of a Telepathist’ with Smith’s replies. pp. 115-132] Hall believed that Smith not only deceived Gurney and Myers in the early experiments but also in the later Brighton experiments with the young male subjects. Gauld quotes a letter written by Myers to his wife and dated 6^th April 1891, almost three years after Gurney’s death which hints at some mystery – ‘I have had a long talk about Brighton at Hillside [the home of the Sidgwicks]. Mrs. Sidgwick will go very soon, meantime nothing is to be said to anyone about suspicious circumstances. Most important that nothing should leak out – you won’t tell Arthur [presumably Frederick’s brother, Dr. Arthur Thomas Myers] or anyone, I am sure.’ [Gauld. p. 181] Is this concerning the death of Edmund Gurney or the alleged deception of Smith and the boys at Brighton, or both?
Hall seems to underestimate the ‘Brighton Boys’ (such as Fred Wells and boys named Kent, Parsons and Hull, and two cousins, A. and N. Nye) and their importance and dismisses any suggestion that these boys, some of which were messenger boys from Brighton’s General Post Office, were up to anything more than taking part in experiments concerning thought-transference and hypnotism but these ‘street boys’ were quite intelligent and often manipulative (as can be seen in the Cleveland Street case). One of the boys whom Hall mentions and is a favourite messenger boy of Gurney named ‘Tigar’, a clerk in the Brighton Telegraph Office; through my research I can reveal the identity of this ‘Brighton Boy’ to be Edward Nelson Tigar, born in Sidcup, Kent in 1872, the son of George Nelson Tigar, born in Hull, Yorkshire in 1812 (later of Osbuldwick, and dying in Brighton in 1887 aged 75) and Sarah Sharp (1845-1881) whom George married in August 1868. Their first son, George Champney Tigar, was born in Sidcup in 1870 and later emigrated to Australia; he married Mary Ellen Bradbury (1882-1960) on 1^st November 1899 in Warwick, Queensland, Australia (and had four children) and George Champney Tigar died in Brisbane, Australia on 27^th November 1952, aged 81; but the ‘Tigar’ that concerns us is Edward Nelson Tigar – he is boarding at 39, Red Cross Street in Brighton in the census of 1891 [RG12, piece/folio 810/103, page 15], he is 19 years old (‘born 1872, Kent’) but most importantly his occupation is ‘Telegraphist’; he is boarding with the Lamkin family, some of whom are employed by the Brighton General Post Office – Charles Walter Lamkin, aged 22, born 1868 who is ‘single’ and a ‘Letter Carrier’ (he possibly died aged 35 in Lewisham in 1904); Arthur E. Lamkin, aged 19, born 1872, ‘single’ and a ‘Telephone Operator’ (possibly dying aged 51 in Steyning in 1923) and Alfred Lamkin, who is 17, born 1874 and is a ‘Telegraph Messenger’ (dying in Brighton in 1945 aged 71). It seems ‘Tigar’ did not have many more years to live for his obituary appeared in the Montgomery County Times of Saturday 8^th December 1894 (p. 5) saying that he had died aged 22 on Friday 30^th November while staying with his cousin, Captain John Alfred Tigar (1849-1929), [himself an interesting person – joined 24^th Regiment in Sheffield in 1867; took part in the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879 and was part of the Prince Imperial party bringing back the remains of the French heir to the throne, Louis Napoleon who died 1^st June 1879 aged 22; John Tigar is Hon. Capt. and Quartermaster of 4^th Batt. South Wales Borderers (Brecon Barracks) at the time of his cousin, Edward’s death, and dies a Hon. Major aged 80 in 1929 at 39, Chester Terrace, Regents Park, London] at 4, Clive Place, Welshpool; the article goes on to say that ‘the deceased, only 22, son of the late Mr. George N. Tigar, Osbaldwick, Yorkshire’, who had ‘been in the best of health until about 6 months ago when he was attacked by that dire disease – consumption. During last three months he had resided with Capt. Tigar where he received every care and attention. Had he lived Mr. Tigar would have proceeded to South Africa where a Government Appointment awaited him.’ The funeral took place at Christ Church, Welshpool on Tuesday 4^th December 1894, the cortege leaving Captain Tigar’s residence in Clive Place at noon; the memorial and burial was officiated by Rev. F. H. Hawkins.
Another ‘Brighton Boy’ Hall mentions is Fred Wells who first worked with the Society for Psychical Research on 2^nd January 1883; Fred is ’20 years old’ (in 1883) and the ‘son of a baker’ and looking through the census records for 1881 he is not too difficult to find – Frederick [James] Wells, an 18 year old ‘single, baker’ is living with his family at Trafalgar Street in Brighton. His father is John Wells, 55, a ‘baker’ born 1826 at Isfield, Sussex and his mother is Ann Wells, 50, born 1831 in Firle, Sussex. Also at the address is Frederick’s younger brother, Charles Wells who is 14, born 1867 in Brighton who is also a baker, and Frederick’s 81 year old grandmother [Ann Wells’s widowed mother] Lucy Colman, born 1800 in Alfriston, Sussex. [RG11, piece/folio 1087/76, p. 3] Ten years later in 1891, Frederick’s widowed mother is head of the household and his 24 year old brother, Charles [Wallis] Wells is the manager of the bakery, with his wife, Annie who is 26, born 1865 in Berkshire and their new-born daughter not yet a year old, Louisa L. Wells. 91 year old Lucy Colman is still there as a ‘widowed baker’s assistant’ and a young 17 year old baker’s assistant named Joseph Sellwood is employed there. As for Frederick, he is the head of his family in Hove where he is a ‘pastry cook & confectioner’ in Wordsworth Street; he is living with his 27 year old wife, Ellen E. Wells, born in Sussex in 1864 and their two daughters: 4 year old Edith E. Wells (born 1887) and 2 year old Lillian M. Wells, (born 1889); with them is a 17 year old general domestic servant named Amy M. Wells, born in Blackheath, Surrey in 1874. [RG12, piece/folio 820/30, p. 14] In 1901 Frederick J. Wells has been busy and he is a ‘master baker’ living with his family, wife Ellen and daughters Edith and Lilian, at Prospect Place in Keston, Kent. Ten years later again in 1911 sees the Wells family still in Keston and 48 year old Frederick, ‘pastry cook & confectioner’ is living with wife Ellen, daughter Lilian, aged 22 and 19 year old son Leslie Wells (born 1892 in Hove) who are all ‘assistants in the business’; and there is a young daughter named Dora Wells who is 14, born 1897 at Hove and ‘at school’ and a 1 year old son named Gordon Wells, born 1910 in Keston. Also noteworthy is the fact that on 14^th July 1913, Frederick James Wells of Keston was ‘summoned for cruelty to a horse by working it whilst in an unfit state at Bromely’ [Eltham & District Times. Friday 25^th July 1913. p. 3]
Hall gives us another name (pp. 151-2), the mysterious ‘Sidney Beard’ who was ‘living in Bayswater’ and began working for the SPR on the same day as Wells, 2^nd January 1883 and with Wells and George Albert Smith, was known as ‘the three sensitives’. There is very little mystery to Beard, in fact, he is Sidney Hartnoll Beard (1862-1938) who would have been 19 in January 1883; Beard, a vegetarian spiritualist, became a member of the SPR in 1882 but did not remain long or continue experiments with Wells and Smith and he later founded the Order of the Golden Age which dealt with similar matters as the SPR along with vegetarianism and animal rights. He died in Putney aged 76 on 20^th October 1938.
Another name given by Hall and thrown into the ring [Hall. p. 154], is a Brighton boy named ‘Conway’ who is a ‘young cabinet maker’ who assists in experiments with Gurney and G. A. Smith beginning on 10^th September 1883. I believe I have found this lesser known ‘intelligent young cabinet maker’ [Phantasms of the Living. Volume I. p. 62] Brighton boy who at the time of the experiments would have been only 14 years old and an apprentice upholsterer and ‘cabinet maker’; his name is Herbert Edward Conway, born in Brighton in 1869 (Christened at St, Peter’s Church, Brighton on 29^th August 1869) and his parents were Charles Conway and Mary Conway, nee Poundsberry. In the census of 1881 [RG11, piece/folio 1089/54, p. 16] the Conway’s are living in Sydney Street, Brighton – Mary Conway, a 51 year old (born Brighton 1830) widow and ‘dressmaker’ is the head of the household, which includes her children all born in Brighton: Elizabeth, 26, a single ‘elementary teacher’; Emily H., 23, a single dressmaker; Walter F., 23, a single apprentice jeweller; Harry L. [Leonard] a single apprentice upholsterer; Louie A., 14, who works as a ‘domestic’ and Herbert E., 11 who is a ‘scholar’. In the 1891 census [RG12, piece/folio 812/65, p. 3] the Conway’s are living in Gloucester Street, Brighton; mother Mary is there, aged 61, as the head of the household, along with Elizabeth, who extraordinarily has only aged 2 years since the last census and is now 28 but still a single ‘elementary teacher’; Walter F., 28, single ‘jeweller working’ and Herbert [named Albert in census] E. 21, single and an ‘upholsterer and cabinet maker’. Herbert Edward Conway married Louisa Emily M. Parker in Brighton in 1898 [in the 1911 census they are living in Hove: RG14, schedule 246, piece/folio 489, p. 1]. Herbert Edward Conway died in 1945 in Worthing aged 76. It is also possible, considering the extremely young age of Herbert during 1883 (14 years old) that the boy in question was his older brother, Harry Leonard Conway, born in 1865 (Christened at St. Peter’s Church, Brighton on 12^th March 1865) who in the 1881 census was an ‘apprentice upholsterer’ and during September 1883 would have been 18 years old which seems more probable; Harry Conway died aged 31 in Steyning on 13^th June 1898.

 

THE ‘LAD MURPHY’

 

‘the lad Murphy, a telegraph messenger, and a young fellow who was a sort of learner, or something of that kind at the Brighton telegraph office.’ [Confessions of a Famous Medium. Story of the Great Scientific Hoax. John Bull. Saturday 9^th January 1909. p. 17]
 
Also through my research I have been able to find the mysterious ‘lad Murphy’ which Hall mentions on p. 201 of The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney. The 1881 census again provides the answer as there is a 14 year old, Edward Murphy, born in King’s Cross, London, in 1867, living with his family at Rock Court, Brighton, and his occupation is ‘telegraph messenger’. His father is Patrick Murphy, a 50 year old ‘plasterer’ born in Mayo, Ireland in 1831 and his mother is 50 year old Mary Ann Murphy, born in Chelsea, London in 1831; he has an older brother named Henry Murphy who is 21 year old ‘single’, carpenter, born in Marylebone, London in 1860 and a sister named Eliza Murphy, who is 19 and also born in Marylebone in 1862, working as a general domestic. [RG11, piece/folio 1078/54, p. 9]
The Brighton Post Office Headquarters was located in Ship Street which is where Tigar most probably was employed; there are numerous accounts of criminal behaviour occurring at General Post Offices,  such as at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, where a 26 year old clerk in the Telegraph Department of the General Post Office named Thomas William Ellis, of Cranmer Road, Brixton, was charged on Monday 11^th September 1871 and convicted of Indecent Assault, having ‘acted in an improper manner towards Mrs. Mary Ann Jacobs’ of Lewisham. [Birmingham Mail. Tuesday 12^th September 1871. p. 3] specifically at Brighton we can find a robbery by William Sharp, a 25 year old sorting clerk who ‘had been up before the Magistrate three times’ and was charged with stealing a letter containing £50 in bank notes, during August 1877 [Southern Weekly News. Saturday 27^th October 1871. p. 6], and another robbery a few year earlier in April 1874 in which Albert Stewart Howe, a private secretary to Mr. Whiting, the Brighton General Post Master, was charged with theft [Hastings & St. Leonard’s Observer. Saturday 4^th April 1874. p. 6] and cases are quite frequent. The Post Office Telegraph boys in their smart uniforms could be seen as a bountiful harvest to the criminally minded, rich for exploiting and unscrupulous boys could always earn more money accompanying gentlemen; Robert Henry Cliburn, born 1873, who went by several aliases such as Harris, Collins, Robertson, Stephenson and Carew, was the ‘well-dressed young man’ and former ‘Telegraph Messenger’ in the West End Post Office who attempted to blackmail Oscar Wilde with the letters which were found in Lord Alfred Douglas’s (who himself was involved with a Telegraph Boy at Oxford) pocket and it is said that the Earl of Euston who was involved in the Cleveland Street scandal was another of his victims. In fact, this sort of crime was quite common and messenger boys could in some cases be easily cultivated and persuaded into illicit behaviour from which it is difficult to escape so it is not surprising to see, unless one is Mr. Trevor H. Hall, that seducing Telegraph Boys became one of the most delightful and quintessentially English pastimes of the leisured classes! (13) however, the pursuit of such pleasures were considered a criminal offence and reporting such cases in the newspapers these ‘crimes’ were often referred to as ‘unnatural’ and ‘abominable’ and one such case appeared in 1901 under the heading ‘an abominable offence’ in which a 28 year old tailor named Daniel Kelly was convicted of committing an ‘unnatural crime’ with a 15 year old boy named Oliver John Young in Brighton on 8^th February 1901 [Sutton Journal. Thursday 28^th February 1901. p. 3] but the fear of apprehension by the Law was only one obstacle to avoid for there was also the threat of blackmail.

 

TWO BRIGHTON CASES OF BLACKMAIL

 

One such case of blackmail involved two Frenchmen and a Brighton gentleman, named William Thomas Childe Pardoe (14) and it all began on the Bank Holiday Monday 7^th August 1893 when Pardoe, of 13 Palmeira Mansions, Hove, was taking a late evening stroll along the sea wall or ‘Marine Promenade’. While Pardoe, a ‘gentleman of independent means and delicate health’ was walking he noticed a ‘good-looking lad’ in considerable distress, the lad, a 17 year old French boy named Celestan Joly who could not speak English was sobbing because he had lost his cousin who had his train ticket back to London; Celestan, of 7, Caroline Street, Bedford Square, London, said he was on an excursion from London and had no means of obtaining lodgings or getting back to London. Pardoe kindly took the boy home (according to various newspaper articles he was not there more than 20 minutes), lent him 10 shillings and ‘befriended him in other ways’ before sending him away to get lodgings. The next day, Tuesday 8^th August, young Celestan returns with Paul Joly, a 25 year old horse dealer and Paul with threatening behaviour accuses Mr. Pardoe of an ‘abominable offence’ with Celestan, whom he referred to as his nephew, and extracts from Pardoe, under the threat of exposure, a cheque for £500. One week later Paul Joly returned alone and a further cheque for £150 was demanded which Pardoe was forced to sign; the distressed gentleman later contacted his solicitor and the cheque was stopped and both Frenchmen were arrested. The trial took place in Brighton on Friday 1^st September and went to the Sussex Assizes in Lewes on Tuesday 28^th November 1893 where Paul Joly was sentenced to 20 years and Celestan to 5; ‘at a later stage of the inquiry Mr. Pardoe fainted, and had to be carried out of court under medical direction.’
Another Brighton case involves Thomas Augustus Goodman, a ‘well-known solicitor in Brighton’ and a ‘clerk to Hove Magistrate’ who was being blackmailed by 62 year old Timothy Horgan for committing an ‘abominable crime’; Horgan, who occupied rooms in the same house as Goodman, extorted under threats of violence a cheque for £500 and for further payments of £250 and £800 at Brighton on 18^th December 1901; Goodman ‘emphatically denied the accusations’ and Horgan was found guilty and sentenced to 10 years imprisonment by Mr. Justice Grantham [Daily News (London). Friday 24^th January 1902. p. 3]. It is perhaps worth looking a little deeper into this case and so I turned to the Tunbridge Wells Journal of Thursday 20^th February 1902 (p. 8) which states that Goodman, a solicitor ‘on the rolls since 1872; clerk to the Hove Justice 27 years’ who had ‘offices in North Street’ and ‘occupied rooms in 8, Queen’s Square for 30 years’ and in the ‘summer lived in Keymer’, entertained on Wednesday 18^th December 1901 a young clerk named William Thomas Graham who had worked 16 years at Brighton County Court, (the son of a carver and gilder whose mother kept a laundry) who lived at 33 Ditchling Road and had known Goodman ‘all his life’ (15); on this evening Graham dined with Goodman in his rooms from 5-6 p.m. when suddenly, following dinner, 62 year old Timothy Horgan, a commission agent who occupied an upper room at the same address, rushed in and shouted ‘“what’s this boy doing here?” and called prosecutor [Goodman] abominable names and made abominable accusations.’ The young clerk was upset by this and left. The ‘prisoner [Horgan] then produced a piece of paper, and said if prosecutor [Goodman] could afford to pay £650 to boys in Boulogne he could give prisoner £3000 to shut his mouth.’ Horgan goes on to say he had certain letters of Goodman’s and could ruin him. Goodman and Horgan walked to the formers office in North Street where Horgan demanded £1000 and threatened violence against Goodman; the latter could not afford it so Goodman gave Horgan a banker’s cheque for £500 and requested his letters back but Horgan said he would keep them until the cheque clears. Goodman later realised his mistake and called Scotland Yard. Two days later on Friday 20^th December Horgan returned to Goodman at his North Street office with two documents, memorandums for payments of £250 and £800 in return for the letters which Goodman refused to sign. The next time Goodman saw Horgan was on Wednesday 15^th January 1902 when Horgan was arrested; upon his arrest Horgan ‘said to Chief Constable Mr. W. B. Gentle: “I used to live at the same place as him, and one day I went into his room and caught him in the act; that he [Horgan] told him [Goodman] he would lock him up, but that he [Goodman] pleaded so hard and said if the prisoner would not say anything he would promise never to do such a thing again. He would give him a cheque for £500.”’ The young clerk Mr. Graham said he had ‘never dined with Goodman before 18^th December 1901’ and Goodman ‘denied that Graham on a previous occasion was locked in a bedroom with him’ which Horgan had also accused Goodman of. ‘Goodman saw Graham on the following Friday (20^th December 1901) and the witness [Graham] ‘would have paid anything to get rid of the scandal.’ Horgan had his suspicions about Goodman after he found letters addressed to the latter which confirmed them, one was ‘a letter from a boy named Hellis, who used to live at Keymer, and who wrote that he missed the nights they had spent together.’ (16) Strangely, Goodman, who had been a bachelor all his life, perhaps urged by friends, takes himself a bride several months later in the form of Miss Maria Funnell born in Brighton in 1866, daughter of James Thomas Funnell (1835-1872) and Sarah Kirkham who were married in Brighton in 1863; Maria is the niece of Mr. William Henry Kirkham (1841-1910), an auctioneer, estate agent and valuer of Brighton; Goodman and Miss Funnell were married at St. Clement Danes Church, the Strand on 13^th October 1902. Goodman, of 9, North Street, Brighton was to die a few years later at Cuckfield, Sussex on 9^th June 1907 aged 61. But why have I gone into such detail on Goodman? Because Hall mentions him (but fails to relate this sinister part of his life) in connection to Douglas Blackburn who was working as an editor of the Brightonian newspaper, briefly, in April 1883 after Blackburn withdrew from the Dean’s Yard experiments he was still working with the Brightonian; there had been a libel case brought against the paper’s owner, Mr. R. J. Railton by Mr. Henry Munster, a retired barrister of Brighton and costs of about £500 were awarded to Munster. ‘Railton seems to have sought for some means of evading this liability and finally committed a criminal offence in order to do so. When Munster ultimately tried to levy execution at Railton’s office on 20^th August, 1882, he discovered that on the previous day Railton had transferred by means of a bill of sale his business and goods to a friend, Mr. R. C. Cox, a Brighton chemist, thus deliberately leaving himself without any assets to meet the debt. Munster claimed that the bill of sale was fraudulent and that Railton and Cox were guilty of conspiracy to defraud him of his taxed costs in the libel case, which was unquestionably true. The matter was complex, however, and it was not until April 1833 that the courts agreed that Cox should be included in the charge, whilst the case itself was not heard until the spring of 1884.
This long delay rose in part because Railton and Cox had sought the advice of a solicitor named Goodman in regard to the legal aspects of the documents concerned in the fraud. Goodman naturally denied having advised his clients to commit a criminal offence, but his evidence was of value to the prosecution as it demonstrated independently that the proposed conspiracy had been discussed. Goodman appeared as a witness for the prosecution under subpoena, after prolonged legal arguments as to whether a solicitor could give evidence in regard to confidential professional advice offered to his clients.
Blackburn was called, with Goodman, as a principal witness by the Public Prosecutor.’ (pp. 125-126) 25 year old Blackburn was cross-examined by none other than Mr. Edward Clarke, Q.C., M.P., who was to later defend Oscar Wilde and Blackburn gave a great performance, outwitting Clarke and refraining from falling into his courtroom clutches – ‘it is noteworthy that Clarke admitted defeat and grimly congratulated Blackburn on his performance in the witness box.’ (Hall. p. 127) (17)

 

THE HAUNTED HOUSE IN BRIGHTON

 

Hall fails to mention, or he was unaware of the facts, which is probably the case, that Edmund Gurney had a very simple reason for being in Brighton at the time of his death and that was to investigate claims of a haunted house there. In fact, Gurney went to Brighton on Wednesday 13^th June 1888, just ten days before his death, to interview the chief witness known as ‘Mrs. G’ at the haunted location – 18, Prestonville Road, Brighton. He probably stayed there for a few days because we know him to be at the home of the Vice President of the SPR the following Sunday 17^th June in Terling Place, Essex, no doubt, discussing his findings. By coincidence, Wednesday 13^th June was the day George Albert Smith married Laura Eugenia Bayley (1864-1938) at the Ebenezer Chapel in Ramsgate (Smith’s address at the time was a lodging house at 54, Beauchamp Place, London, not far from Gurney’s home at 26, Montpelier Square; at the time of Gurney’s death the couple were honeymooning in the Isle of Wight) (18) 
A brief history of the house will be suffice – on 28^th March 1879, a 42 year old woman had committed suicide and was found hanging in a bedroom; towards the end of October 1882 the house was occupied by two sisters, Miss L. Morris and Miss E. M. Morris who lived there until December 1886 when the house was empty for almost a year. Podmore interviewed Miss L. Morris on 9^th July 1888 and ‘she explained to me that she and her Aunt (dead) were the regular occupants of the house from October, 1882, to December 1886. Two sisters came to stay occasionally and slept, when they came, in the little “off” room on a lower level than the other bedrooms.’ [Proceedings SPR. vi. p. 258] She goes on to explain some of the activity at the house. The house was once again empty from December 1886 to November 1887. At the end of November 1887, ‘Mrs. G’ a widow, her two daughters aged about 9 and 10, and their maidservant, Anne H. aged 21, moved into the property in Prestonville Road, which is only ’10 minutes walk from the railway station’; ‘Mrs. G’ came to Brighton six months before moving into the property with her husband, an officer in the army who died in Brighton due to wounds incurred during the ‘Mutiny’; ‘Mrs. G’ wanted to move to a quieter and less expensive place but they only stayed five months due to the paranormal incidents that occurred there; they left in April 1888. The house was empty in May of that year and investigated by three gentlemen – Mr. W. O. D. a Barrister-at-Law, Rev. G. O. and Mr. C. a solicitor, on two occasions, 23^rd May 1888 and 28^th May 1888; on the second occasion the Reverend and two other gentlemen performed an exorcism at the house. As stated, Gurney met with ‘Mrs. G’ on 13^th June to interview her as she had kept a detailed diary of events there. This note by Gurney appears in the Proceedings (p. 264) which says – ‘I had a long talk with Mrs. G on June 13, 1888. She went over the whole history of her and her children’s experience in the house. She struck me as an excellent witness. I have never received an account in which the words and manner of telling were less suggestive of exaggeration or superstition. There is no doubt that she was simply turned out of a house which otherwise exactly suited her, at very serious expense and inconvenience.’
Podmore confirms the suicide which occurred at the house (he does not disclose the address or the location) [18, Prestonville Road, Brighton] and quotes a newspaper article dated [Saturday] 5^th April 1879 (again, not disclosing the woman’s name, except her initials or the location) – ‘Singular Case of Suicide – The coroner held an inquest on Saturday at the _________ Inn, on the body of Mrs. M. F., aged 42 years, who committed suicide by hanging herself on the previous day. Deceased, a lodging-house keeper in ______ road, had more than once threatened to destroy herself, but no importance was attached to what she said. On Friday, however, she sent a letter to a friend saying that she would never be seen alive again in this world; but this, like her previous assertions, was regarded as an empty threat, and it was not until Mr. B… lodging at her house, missed her, and mentioned the fact to a relative, that any notice was taken of the letter. The house was then searched, and deceased was discovered hanging by a skipping-rope to a peg behind the door of the top back bedroom, quite dead. The jury returned a verdict, “suicide whilst in a state of unsound mind”.’ [Proceedings. vi. pp. 268-269]
Searching the newspaper archive I am able to fill in the blanks: The woman in question was named Mary Ann Farmer and she committed suicide on Friday 28^th March 1879; the inquest took place the following day, Saturday 29^th March at the Shakespeare’s Head Inn, Chatham Place by the coroner, Mr. A. Freeman Cell. [Worcestershire Chronicle. Saturday 5^th April 1879. p. 3, and Eastbourne Gazette. Wednesday 2^nd April 1879. p. 8]
After Gurney’s death, the house was occupied on behalf of the SPR by George Albert Smith and his new young bride, Laura, who took over the property ‘financed by the SPR’ on 17^th August 1888 and stayed for over thirteen months, until 27^th September 1889; they even had their first child there, a son named Harold Norman Smith born 6^th April 1889 [Hastings and St. Leonard’s Observer. Saturday 6^th April 1889. p. 8]

 

‘MR. PODMORE’S YOUNG MEN’

 

Podmore, despite being married and working for the Post Office, is still giving most of his time to psychic research and investigations, attending SPR meetings and presenting his papers on various subjects, such as his paper on ‘Poltergeists’ read at the general meeting at Westminster Town Hall on Friday 24^th April 1896 (4 p.m.) which caused much in the way of correspondence and a reply from Podmore [Journal of the SPR. volume vii. 1895-96. pp. 246-248, p. 306 and pp. 323-324]. At a general meeting at Westminster Town Hall on Friday 11^th March 1898 (8.30 p.m.) Podmore led an open discussion on ‘The Trance Phenomena Manifested through Mrs. Piper’ and at a following meeting at the same location on Friday 4^th November 1898 (8.30 p.m.) he continued the theme with his paper on ‘A Predecessor of Mrs. Piper’ [Journal of the SPR. volume viii. 1897-98. pp. 214-222 and pp. 318-319 respectively].
We can also see that Frank Podmore was held in high esteem in his position as senior clerk in the Secretary General’s Department and in the quarterly magazine of the Post Office – ‘St. Martin’s-le-Grand’ he is often referred to as ‘my friend Mr. Podmore’ or ‘our colleague, Mr. Podmore’ as can be seen from these examples below:
 
‘from the Weekly Sun of the 5^th of February, it would seem that our clever colleague and occasional contributor, Mr. Frank Podmore, has been interviewed on the subject of Ghosts.’ [St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the Post Office Magazine. Volume III. April 1893. ST. Martin’s Letter Bag – ‘Mr. Podmore’s Phantasm’. pp. 199-200]
‘Our colleague, Mr. Frank Podmore, has recently published an important work entitled “Apparitions and Thought Transference” in which he gives a general view of the results of the work of the “Psychical Research” Society and kindred bodies. The book is shorter and less discursive than the larger work “Phantasms of the Living”, published some years ago, in the production of which he bore a part, and at the same time it embodies more recent evidence. Mr. Podmore offers a theory in explanation of the various classes of occult mental phenomena. His hypothesis is “that communication is possible between mind and mind otherwise than through the known channels of the senses.” [which is termed ‘telepathy’] the article goes on to say that ‘Mr. Podmore, we notice, attributes no magical power to the crystal, while admitting the reality of such visions, he reduces it to a mere focus on which the percipient concentrates his (or more often her) attention.’ – and a general summing up offers a hint at the serious nature of Podmore’s research, saying that ‘all that science can do is to examine the conditions that precede and succeed any given phenomena, as well as the elements of which it is composed.’ [St. Martin’s-le-Grand, the Post Office Magazine. Volume V. January 1895. ‘The “New” Ghost’. pp. 88-90]
In the Journal of the SPR, volume ix, 1899-1900 Podmore is under much discussion on the subject of poltergeists for we find Mr. Andrew Lang writing in the correspondence section on ‘Mr. Podmore, Poltergeists, and Kindred Spirits’ (pp. 30-32) and also in the correspondence ‘Mr. Podmore and his Critics’ (p. 72); Mr. Alfred R. Wallace writes on ‘Clairvoyance and Poltergeists’ (pp. 56-57) and Podmore publishes his piece ‘On Poltergeists’ (pp. 91-94); Podmore is now (in 1900), on the ‘Committee of Experiments’ and at the General Meeting given at the Westminster Town Hall on 26^th January 1900 (4 p.m.) Podmore reads his paper on ‘Witchcraft and Poltergeists’ (pp. 204-207).
 
Following the death of Myers in Rome on 17^th January 1901, Podmore read his memorial address on his life and work at the general meeting held at Westminster Town Hall on Friday 8^th March 1901 (8.30 p.m.) [Journal of the SPR. volume x. 1901-1902. pp. 56-58]; also in the same journal we find the following on the ‘Proposed Experiments in Thought Transference’ which says that the ‘Committee have failed to repeat the success attained in the series of experiments conducted at Brighton in 1889-92 by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick and Mr. G. A. Smith (see Proceedings, vol. vi, p. 128 and vol. viii, p. 536). The failure ‘throws doubt on the validity of the Brighton experiments’; there was ‘difficulty in obtaining suitable subjects’ who were mostly ‘unintelligent or overworked class’ – good for ‘simple hypnotic experiments’ but failures where the experiments demanded ‘concentration of mind, and at least some amount of intelligent interest, was due to fatigue or stupidity. Most of them were irregular in their attendance…’ it goes on to say that ‘all were easily bored’ (p. 149).
There is an interesting article in the Journal of 1905-06 (volume xii) concerning the Brighton Haunting (see also pp. 67-76 and Smith’s reply from his ‘Laboratory, Roman Crescent, Southwick, Brighton’ address on 19^th December 1905) and a general condemning of Podmore’s behaviour during investigations, the story unfolds thus on page 204 – ‘Conduct of Investigators’ which states that ‘in Light [the magazine] of January 5^th, 1906, appeared a letter headed “A Caution to Sensitives”, as follows: Sir, - will you allow me, through your columns, to give a warning to all sensitives not to sit at the Psychical Research Society’s rooms at Hanover-Square, at any rate while the present council hold office?’ the letter goes on to say that a female sensitive gave a reading and complained of ‘a person present who was smoking a cigar’ which in the presence of a lady is considered a ‘downright outrage’; this letter was from ‘W. Usborne Moore, Rear Admiral, 8, Western Parade, Southsea. The Rear Admiral offers to give the name of the offending cigar smoker to the Vice President A following reply to the letter which appeared in Light of 27^th January 1906, says that the objective of the offender was to ‘embarrass the sensitive and spoil the exhibition of her powers’. Admiral Moore’s letter to Sir William Crookes, on the 16^th January, says that ‘unless there were two people of the name of Podmore, who both belong to the Post Office, and are members of the Psychical Research Society, the person who insulted Mrs. ____ [i.e. the sensitive] by smoking before and after she entered the room was Frank Podmore, member of council’ – the ‘culprit’ it seemed was certainly that ‘bogey man of spiritualists, Frank Podmore.’ A picture of Podmore is drawn by this claim of an arrogant investigator, buried in scepticism who is far from using precise scientific methods for the scrutiny of his investigations and experiments.
In 1906 Frank Podmore and Mr. Edward Thomas, later the well-known poet, published their serialised work on ‘The Natural and Supernatural’, the first chapter appearing in the February 1906 edition of the Grand Magazine: ‘in this magazine Frank Podmore & Mr. Edward Thomas, two eminent authorities on the subject, explain in precise terms how anybody may raise a ghost.’ But some catastrophe the following year of 1907 changes all that – by 1907, 51 year old Frank Podmore was earning a handsome wage as senior clerk in the Secretary General’s Department of the Post Office at St. Martin’s-le-Grand, but all that was to change; during that year, Podmore either left or more likely was forced to leave his employment at the Post Office after 28 years working for them, without a pension; he is no longer living with his wife Eleanore and he moves from London – he had been living at 6, Holly Place, Hampstead until around March 1907 before residing at his place of employment, the Secretary’s Office, GPO, London; he then leaves London and lives with his brother, Reverend Claude Podmore at the Rectory in Broughton, Northamptonshire.
The distinguished editor of the Everyman Library, Ernest Rhys, a friend and neighbour of Frank and Eleanore Podmore, says in his fascinating volume of reminiscences, ‘Everyman Remembers’, published in 1931, that a great and ‘mysterious’ change occurred in the life of the Podmores ‘that seemed to date from about the time of their leaving Well Walk for another house. [presumably 6, Holly Place, Hampstead] One Sunday afternoon I called at the new house, when there was to be an informal “at home”. Frank Podmore was not there, and when I asked for him his wife said with a curious laugh, “He’s gone to the Post Office to play cards!”
It sounded mad, but it was less inexplicable than it seemed, for Frank Podmore had, as a P.O. official, a well-appointed room at St, Martin’s-le-Grand which was used, so he told his wife, as a card club; he was an inveterate card player.’ (p. 205) Rhys goes on to say that according to Eleanore, ‘Frank rarely came home before midnight, and she saw less and less of him, and she was very lonely.’ (p. 205) Perhaps a similar loneliness that Mrs. Gurney had to endure.
Neglected by her husband and lonely, it isn’t surprising to find that Eleanore begins behaving strangely and one by one, begins severing the ties with all her old friends. Rhys says that a ‘full year passed, during which she had been away on a long visit to her people in the north of Scotland.’ On another occasion Rhys mentions that while he and his wife were at home at their house in Hermitage Lane, Hampstead, which was being decorated by workmen painting, Frank Podmore called at the house around lunch time, nearly one o’clock. While Rhys’s wife rested upstairs, he went down and ‘there was Frank Podmore in a dripping wet mackintosh, hat in hand, seated on a whitewashed plank with the air of a man under sentence.’ (p. 206) It appears that Frank was looking for work, hearing that Rhys would be giving up the editing of the Camelot series of books, Frank was eager for the position – ‘”But your Post Office berth?... you’re not old enough to be retired yet.”
“I have left the Post Office!”’ Frank did not give any further explanation and stood up, put on his hat, removed it to bow and said ‘Good bye’ and was gone. (p. 207)
Then Rhys goes on to reveal that ‘Alas! he had been suddenly dismissed from the Post Office because of his sadistic propensities, which accounted for the card parties and his wife’s uncanny metamorphosis.’ (p. 207) By ‘sadistic propensities’, Rhys is probably referring to Frank’s homosexuality, which at the time was a crime, and also hinting at the neglectful treatment of his wife which sadly drove her into a melancholic state of loneliness. Rhys never saw Frank again after the visit in Hampstead but he did see Eleanore Podmore one more time and makes it clear that he spoke to her, ‘about three years after his death [around 1913], crossing the Hampstead fields towards her old haunts. That was our leave-taking. She was a broken woman, she died in the following year.’ (p. 207) In fact, Eleanore Podmore died 9^th March 1923 so it is possible Rhys was mistaken about the year of the encounter but we can excuse Rhys a minor error and similarly we can excuse Eleanore the loss of almost a decade in age years from the census of 1911 where she states her age as 41 (in 1901 she chose to be 38) and we can see she is a widow living in Chelsea whose occupation is a ‘decorative artist’. We are informed by Rhys that a friend of his named George Braham, a Jewish composer who had mixed in bohemian circles commented that Frank ‘looked like a sheep, who’d have thought him a pervert?’ (p. 207)
Frank Podmore left the Post Office with very little ceremony and it is obvious that he was asked to leave with as little fuss as possible and without disgrace in consideration of his long-standing employment with the G.P.O. In contrast, during the same time, we can see how Sir John Ardron, C.B. (1843-1919), a Leicestershire-born man who rose through the Post Office ranks to become Senior Assistant Secretary to the Postmaster General at London’s St. Martin’s-Le-Grand was treated upon his retirement; Ardron retired after 43 years with the Post Office on Monday 31^st December 1906 and the January newspapers of 1907 hailed Ardron, who was especially connected with the telegraph branch and ‘took a special interest in the telegraph messengers’, and glorified his accomplishments (19). Podmore would have known Ardron and of course, the Postmaster General, who at the time was 1^st Earl Buxton, Mr. Sydney Charles Buxton, M.P. (1853-1934) who was in that position from 1905-1910 and would have been instrumental in deciding Podmore’s fate as Senior Clerk; by a strange coincidence, or perhaps that old ‘curse of the Phantasms of the Living’, Buxton’s son, Charles Sydney Buxton, born 1884, a man who loved the ‘beauty and the poetry of nature’ and was following in the traditional Buxton Liberal footsteps of politics, died a year after Podmore in 1911, in the same month, August, the 31^st to be precise, aged just 27; he died of peritonitis at Newtimber, near Brighton (20).
 
As for the mysterious George Albert Smith, Dr. Eric J. Dingwall visited the 90 year old Smith in 1954 at his home, 18, Chanctonbury Road, Hove, Sussex and Smith made the curious statement in reference to the Brighton boys being ‘Mr Podmore’s young men’ [ Hall. p. 173] Just what was the relationship between Smith and Podmore? Hall quotes from a letter written in 1888 and held in the Trinity College, Cambridge Library (pp. 168-7) from Dr. Arthur Myers to Henry Sidgwick in which he writes that Smith ‘thinks he will often want to be with Podmore and wants to do as much as he can to work up hypnotic subjects in London as well as Brighton.’ The letter ends – ‘I have not asked Podmore to come, thinking it may be better without him.’
Smith died on 17^th May 1959 at Brighton General Hospital, aged 95.

 

THE SPR AND PODMORE’S RESIGNATION

 

At a private meeting of the members and associates of the SPR held at 20, Hanover Square, London on Monday 14^th December 1908 at 4 p.m. with Mrs. Eleanor Sidgwick as President in the chair, Podmore read his somewhat controversial paper on ‘Cross-Correspondences’ [Journal of the SPR. volume xiv. pp. 7-10]. It was to be the last meeting that Podmore would attend for he was not at the council meeting the following year on Tuesday 30^th March 1909 which was held at 20, Hanover Square at 3 p.m. [ibid. p. 83] and a ‘letter was read from Mr. Frank Podmore resigning his seat on the council’ [ibid. p. 84]; Podmore’s piece which criticised the Committee’s methods of investigation, ‘A Report on Eusapia Palladino’ [ibid. pp. 172-176] appeared in the Journal and at a subsequent general meeting at 20, Hanover Square on Monday 31^st January 1910 at 5 p.m. Podmore was to read his paper ‘Seeing without Eyes’ but as he was not in attendance the paper was read by Miss Alice Johnson; but we still find Podmore active on the Committee of Reference and Publication and the Library Committee. In the same volume xiv of the Journal of the SPR in October 1910, appears the obituary of Podmore (and William James) on p. 358 and at the meeting of members and associates held at Morley Hall, George Street, Hanover Square, London on Tuesday 8^th November 1910 at 4 p.m. a paper in memorial of Frank Podmore was read by Mrs. Sidgwick (and on William James by Mr. W. McDougall).

 

THE LAST DAYS OF FRANK PODMORE

 

Frank Podmore was a keen golfer, something Hall fails to mention in his book on Gurney, which may have shed some light on Frank’s reason for holidaying at Malvern Wells as the cottage he occupies is opposite the Malvern Wells Golf Links. The Midland Mail of Saturday 27^th August 1910 (p. 2) gives a full account of Podmore’s movements leading up to his disappearance, stating that he arrived at Malvern Wells on Wednesday 10^th August for a short holiday and had booked a room at 2, Ivy Cottage, the Wyche, staying with the landlord, Mr. Henry Cross and his wife, a place Podmore had also stayed the previous year. ‘He had played golf every day, and had managed to go to Buxton on Wednesday of last week, having already engaged rooms there.’ The article goes on to say that on Sunday 14^th August, Podmore began writing a letter to his mother, Georgina Elizabeth Podmore of Broughton, Northamptonshire, whom he was very close to, which he did not finish, presumably intending to do so the following day as it was usually the case that his mother wrote to him every week and he could reply to the letter. During Sunday he ‘went for a walk with a casual acquaintance, but the couple had not proceeded far’ as a ‘heavy thunderstorm, Sunday evening, curtailed their jaunt.’ Podmore and the ‘casual acquaintance’ both ‘returned to Ivy Cottage for supper.’ About 10.30 p.m. Podmore was told in response to his inquiry of the weather that the rain had stopped and Podmore said that ‘”I want a breath of fresh air before going to bed” adding that “I’ll just take a short stroll.” Podmore went out alone and the storm recurred and seemed more violent than before; when Frank Podmore did not return to the cottage, the police were informed and search parties, including the Boy Scouts, were sent out to look for him. The police had no description of the ‘casual friend’ who had supper with Podmore at the cottage. When news of his disappearance reached Broughton Rectory, Frank’s brother, Rev. Claude and his sister, Edith Jane Podmore, went to Malvern to ‘superintend the search’. The article goes on to give some biographical details of Podmore, saying that he was at ‘Pembroke [College, Oxford], scholarship in Classics and 1^st in Science’ and that he ‘came to Broughton five years ago’, [actually three, in 1907] and that ‘for a time lived at the Rectory with his brother’ before his widowed mother, Georgina Podmore and his unmarried sister, Edith Jane Podmore, ‘came to reside at Broughton, in the house opposite the school, he lived with them from about three years ago.’ So it would seem that Frank spent very little time at the Rectory with his brother Claude and his expanding family as we can see from the following year in the census of 1911, the Rectory must have seemed quite crowded as it had Reverend Claude Podmore (41), his wife, Ella Violet Podmore (41), sons Reginald Thompson (9), and John Charles (7), and daughters Violet Kathleen (5) and new born, Elfrida Mary (born 1910); along with family members were their servants: Clarissa Louise Podmore, 35, born Kirkby, Nottinghamshire, who is the Governess, Rosa Georgina Sale, 21 from Broughton who is the housemaid and Naomie Ethel Gross, 16 from Broughton, who is the cook. Going back to the article, it states that Frank Podmore’s ‘eccentric habits made him well known in Broughton’ and that his political views were ‘Socialist’ and that he had been ‘interested in the last general election.’ He was also ‘fond of walking out alone’ and took a ‘stroll every morning no matter the weather.’ After mentioning his work employment as a Higher Division Clerk at the Post Office it gives the reason for his leaving as he ‘found combining task of his duties and authorship too arduous, resigned from P.O. wrote several books’ including his biography of Robert Owen in 1906 ‘whom he worshipped as a hero’ and was ‘connected to “Daily Chronicle” as reviewer.’
The search for Frank Podmore continued for several days and his body was eventually found on Friday 19^th August at about 11 a.m. by Mr. John Harvey who had gone for a walk; Harvey was a pupil of Mr. Edmunds at Wood Farm, Malvern, and he noticed the body ‘floating in “New Pool”’ adjoining the Malvern Golf Links where Podmore had played golf daily since his arrival. Mr. Edmunds summoned help and retrieved the body from the water – ‘it was fully dressed, and bore indications of having been in the water for several days, but there were no signs of external violence.’
New Pool where Podmore was found drowned was the scene of many tragedies and Podmore was recorded as the eighth death occurring there. I have found some evidence for this – in May 1895 a two year old child named George Henry Lockyer, son of George Henry Lockyer, bricklayer of Upper Howsel, was found drowned in New Pool [Worcestershire Chronicle. Saturday 18^th May 1895. p. 8]; on 9^th April 1903, a 21 year old newly married woman named Eva Mary Washington of Upper Colwall was discovered drowned in New Pool [Worcestershire Chronicle. Saturday 18^th April 1903. p. 7]; and after Podmore’s death, in July 1912, 42 year old John William Slack, a tradesman of Barnard’s Green who had served in the Horse Guards, was found dead in the pool [Gloucestershire Echo. Tuesday 9^th July 1912. p. 4] and on Thursday 1^st December 1927, 48 year old Mrs. Emily Catherine Wilesmith, of Malvern Link, was another soul to succumb to New Pool [Birmingham Daily Gazette. Friday 2^nd December 1927. p. 4].

 

THE INQUEST

 
That evening, on Friday 14^th August, the inquest was held at Malvern Wells, by Mr. Foster, the coroner for South Worcestershire. The first witness is Mr. George Podmore, of Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire, who is the deceased’s brother who identified the body as that of Mr. Frank Podmore.
The next witness to be interviewed is the landlord of Ivy Cottage, Mr. Henry Cross, who gives a fuller account of the occurrences during Sunday 14^th August, saying that at 6.30 p.m. Frank Podmore went out for a walk and said to Mrs. Cross that he would return for supper at 8 p.m. which he did, but with him was a young man he had met during his ramble and both sat down to supper. After supper Podmore and his young friend left together and Podmore returned to the cottage thirty minutes later alone. It was raining heavily and Podmore had got wet so he took off his coat and boots and handed them to Mr. Cross. When Mrs. Cross went to bed and said ‘Good night” to Podmore, she noticed that he was writing a letter (she looked at the letter the next morning, Monday 15^th August when Podmore failed to return the previous night and confirmed the letter was to his mother, Georgina Podmore). Later that night, Podmore asked Mr. Cross if the rain had stopped and the latter said it had and so Mr. Podmore went out again for a short walk before he retired to bed. And now we learn something of the identity of the young man Podmore had supper with (something else Hall fails to mention) for Police Sergeant Hayes states that ‘on Thursday [18^th August], a young man named Taylor, from Worcester called at the Police Station’ and said that he had ‘taken supper with Podmore on Sunday and left about 9 p.m.’
Upon the body of Frank Podmore were found several letters of a personal nature and at Ivy Cottage was discovered a manuscript of a new book Podmore (a ‘sceptic’ with ‘strong democratic tendencies, active in the founding of The Fabians’) was working on. The piece ends saying that Podmore had a ‘sane and sincere devotion of the purely scientific side of the study’ [of psychical research].
The article gives no indication (and neither does Hall) as to Frank’s ability to swim or not.
Research has shown that the landlord of Ivy Cottage where Podmore spent his final hours was Mr. Henry Cross, born in Malvern in 1855 who was a ‘cab proprietor’ [census 1901 & 1911] at Lower Wyche, Great Malvern. Henry married Fanny Felicia Smith (born Malvern 1856) on 10^th January 1878 at St. Mary’s Church in Great Malvern. They had the following children: Annie Elizabeth Cross, born 1883; William Henry Cross, born 1890 and George Edward Cross, born 1896, the latter’s occupation in 1911 being ‘auctioneer’s office boy’. Their daughter, Annie Elizabeth married George Ernest Smith, a builder’s clerk (born Malvern, 1884) in Malvern in 1909 and they had a daughter named Eunice Mary Smith, born in 1910; George and Annie lived next door to Annie’s parents, Henry and Fanny at Ivy Cottage, who no doubt took in paying guests to supplement their income. Trevor Hall provides more information, saying that after Podmore began writing his letter to his mother, ‘Mr. Cross went to bed shortly afterwards, and a light was left burning on the landing. Between 12.30 a.m. and 1.00 a.m. Mr. Cross and his wife were awakened by a thunderstorm and noticed that the landing light had not been extinguished. On investigation it was found that Podmore had gone out for a third time that night, locking the door behind him. He never returned, and the following day he was reported to the police as missing. Mr. Cross’s son-in-law, Mr. George Smith, who lived next door, gave evidence that he had seen Podmore leaving the house about 10.30 p.m., and that he had said “Good-night” to him.’ [Hall. p. 204] Hall also goes on to mention that the ‘casual guest’ whom he does not name, ‘parted from his host about 9.00 p.m., before cycling back to Worcester’ (pp. 204-205 [Malvern Gazette, 26^th August 1910]), strangely, the young man, named Taylor, was not asked to give evidence at the inquest and neither was Podmore’s brother, Rev. Claude Podmore; further, he mentions that Mr. Cross had said in evidence that ‘he believed that Podmore had arranged for an unnamed male friend to stay with him, but that this unknown person did not arrive.’ (Hall. p. 204) [Hall’s sources were: The Times, 20^th August 1910; the News of the World, 21^st August 1910 and the Malvern Gazette, 19^th and 26^th August 1910]. Hall also says that when Podmore’s body was removed from the water his gold watch which was in his pocket (robbery can be ruled out) had stopped at 11.23 and ‘it may not be lacking in significance that he left the cottage at 10.30 p.m., that his watch stopped at 11.23 and that his body was found no more that half a mile from his lodgings.’ [Hall. p. 206]

 

THE FUNERAL

 

The funeral of Frank Podmore took place at Malvern Wells Cemetery on the afternoon of Saturday 20^th August, the day following his discover in New Pool and the inquest. ‘The officiating clergy were the Rev. S. H. Wenham and the Rev. Herbert Wilkinson (a friend of the deceased), vicar of Crapthorne, Pershore, and late of Broughton Dassett, Northamptonshire. (21)
The mourners were Mr. George Podmore and Mr. Austin Podmore (brothers), Mr. [George] Conrad Podmore (nephew), Mr. H. Atkinson (Buxton), Mr. St. George Stock (Birmingham), Mr. A. Bailey and Miss Bailey (Malvern), and Mr. and Mrs. Cross (Malvern). Many other residents in the district showed their sympathy with the deceased’s relatives in their tragic bereavement by attending at the graveside.
A beautiful wreath made by deceased’s mother, who is 83 years of age, was laid on the coffin, and other tributes were:- “In Loving Memory from Edith”; “In Loving Remembrance from St. Margaret’s, Malvern”; “Dear Uncle Frank, from Conrad, Bertie, Enid, and Freda, Charing Hall, Grange-over-Sands”; “In Loving Memory from his devoted mother and sister, Broughton, Kettering”; “In Loving Memory from Claude and Ella, Broughton Rectory”; “From Reggie, Jack, and Violet, Broughton Rectory”; “From George and Mattie, Charney Hall, Grange-over-Sands”; “In Loving Memory from A. Podmore”; “In Affectionate Remembrance of Mr. Frank Podmore, treasurer of the Church Institute, Broughton, from the members”.’ Podmore’s wife, Eleanore did not attend the funeral nor did she send a wreath; also absent were representatives from the General Post Office and the Society for Psychical Research.

 

CONCLUSION

 

There can be no definitive conclusion in the circumstances surrounding the deaths of two of the leading investigators of the SPR, Gurney and Podmore, but by evaluating the evidence and attempting to sort fact from fiction, as any good SPR investigator aught to, one can make a judgement on a purely personal level to arrive at a subjective opinion to satisfy oneself. In the case of Blackburn’s statement to the press in 1908 (and later in 1911) on trickery and the veracity of the Brighton experiments, I believe there is some evidence for it being an initial, yet minor factor in Podmore’s suicide yet like Gurney, there must have been an approaching catastrophe in which he saw no other way out but to escape life and the impending scandal, which to my mind can only concern his sexual conduct. Without firm evidence, we must ‘read between the lines’ and trust our instinct as we construct a hypothesis. I would not be surprised to learn, in fact, I would think it quite likely, that Frank Podmore was a regular client of the messenger boy service as messenger boys selling their bodies for sex was quite a common transaction and when forced with the question of money, more than one could earn at one’s regular place of employment, over morals, money often won the argument. Of course it is highly likely that Podmore fell victim to blackmail as so many had; Hall goes into great detail as to Podmore’s earnings and retiring without a pension from the Post Office and what happened to his finances; it would be a simple explanation to assume that his fortune was lost to a person or persons unknown in the form of blackmail with the threat of exposure, but there is no definitive evidence for this.
It is quite possible that Podmore had an altercation with the young man named Taylor from Worcester, whom the Cambridge Independent Press of Friday 26^th August 1910 (p. 7) names as Mr. Robert Edmund Noel Taylor, a ‘visitor from Worcester whom [Podmore] invited indoors to have supper’; the article goes on to say that ‘the walking-stick found near the pool belonged to Mr. Podmore’ and on his person was found ‘a pair of spectacles, six keys, some letters, and about £4’; at the cottage the unfinished manuscript’ for his new book was found ‘in his handbag.’ This suggests that Podmore’s death was very sudden and not pre-meditated and probably after his meeting with the casual acquaintance named Taylor who stated that Podmore was of a cheerful mood but was there some element of deception here? Had Podmore offended the young man by making overtures of a sexual nature towards him and Taylor saying he would report it to the police or would be silenced by financial gain? This is all theory of course, yet strangely I have been unable to discover any information concerning the young man named Taylor from Worcester and it is unfortunate and perhaps a coincidence that Robert Edmund Noel Taylor, if that indeed is his name, suspiciously has the initials R.E.N.T.; therefore, I can only conclude that there was deception in the death of Frank Podmore, co-author of ‘Phantasms of the Living’ (2 volumes, 1886), author of ‘Apparitions and Thought-Transference’ (1892), ‘Studied in Psychical Research’ (1897), ‘Modern Spiritualism’ (1902), ‘Mesmerism and Christian Science: A Short History of Mental Healing’ (1909), ‘Robert Owen: A Biography’ (2 volumes, 1906), ‘The Naturalisation of the Supernatural’ (1908), ‘Telepathic Hallucinations: The New View of Ghosts’ (1909) and ‘The Newer Spiritualism’ (1910), (as had been the case, I suggest, in the death of Edmund Gurney) and that the cause of the deception was that his ‘shadowy’ yet respected reputation, and that of the Society for Psychical Research, whom I might add once more, was not represented at the funeral, should not be ruined. Despite the lack of plausible evidence it is my opinion that death occurred from suicide due to the fear of a sexual scandal and the exposure of historic misconduct which may or may not have concerned the reputation of the Society for Psychical Research and perhaps other notable figures involved.

 

 

NOTES:

 

1. The Strange Case of Edmund Gurney. Trevor H. Hall. London. Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd. 1964. [all references, 2^nd edition, 1980]
2. Reverend Thompson Podmore, born Hastings, Sussex on 16^th August 1823, the 2^nd son of Robert Podmore, a gentleman of Hastings, Sussex. Thompson was educated at Merchant Taylor’s School before going up to St. John’s College, Oxford, matriculating on 27^th June 1842, aged 18. B.A. 1846, M.A. 1850. He married Georgina Elizabeth Barton in Kensington, London on 12^th April 1851 and became a Master of Elstree Hill School, Hertfordshire from 1861-69 and Headmaster of Eastbourne College from 1869- 1885; he was Rector of Aston-le-Walls, Northamptonshire, from 1886. He died in 1895, his body being found dead in the snow on the road leading to Byfield Station near to home on Wednesday 9^th January.
3. Dr. Robert Podmore, M.R.C.S. who was living at 7, Linden Gardens, Chiswick, married Henrietta Catherine Amor on 26^th November 1897 at Stepney Parish Church.
4. George Podmore was educated at Keble College, Oxford, matriculating on 14^th October 1872 aged 19, B.A. 1877 and M.A. 1880; he became a schoolmaster (and an amateur meteorologist, regularly writing weather reports for the church magazine; he was also churchwarden and Treasurer of St Paul’s church) at Grange-over-Sands, Lancashire and Headmaster of Charney Hall Preparatory School. George, of Eden Mount, Grange-over-Sands, married Matilda Heale, known as ‘Mattie’, daughter of Edmund Heale of St. James Place, London, on 10^th August 1884 at St. James, Piccadilly. They had the following children: (a) George Conrad Podmore (1883-1937): George Conrad Podmore M.A. was born on 10^th July 1883 and was educated at Charterhouse School, Godalming, leaving in 1902 with an exhibitioner scholarship to Trinity College, Oxford in 1903; he served as 2^nd Lieutenant with the Royal Garrison Artillery (Special Reserve) during the First World War and on 14^th April 1920, married Barbara Geraldine Wolton (born in Ipswich 15^th October 1894, daughter of William Roberts Wolton, Director of ‘Fisons Ltd.’ and Georgina Fanny Clowes), a schoolteacher, graduating from Girton College, Cambridge in 1917. They had three children: Derek George Podmore, born Ulverston, Lancashire, 1922; Guy R. Podmore, born Ulverston, 1925 and Daphne J. Podmore, born Ulverston, 1928 (and educated at St. Andrew’s University, Fife). The first son, Derek George Podmore, educated at Charterhouse School and Magdalene College, Cambridge, who was also a keen cricketer like his father, was 2^nd Lieutenant in King’s Royal Rifle Corps, 2^nd Battalion, (service number: 265723); he died aged 22 on 27^th March 1945 and is buried at the Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, Kleve, Kreis, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany. George Conrad became Headmaster (like his father) of Charney Hall Boy’s Preparatory School, Grange-over-Sands; he died on Thursday 21^st January 1937, aged 53 and was cremated two days later at Blackpool Crematorium. (b) Eric Podmore (1886-1898) (c) Hubert Podmore (1887-1917) known as ‘Bertie’, he was educated at Rugby School (where he was known as ‘Podders’ and where he became a Master before the War); first class scholarship, head of Collin’s House, member of cricket XXII and first holder of the Lees Knowles Leaving Exhibition at Rugby, he entered Trinity College, Oxford on an open Classical Exhibition in December 1905, B.A. 1910. [in January 1912 he was initiated into Freemasonry] He was a cadet at Oxford University, Senior Division and Officer’s Training Corps from 31^st March 1911, promoted to Lieutenant 13^th July 1913; Commission temporary 2^nd Lieutenant 22^nd Sept 1914, Officer in Northants Regiment (6^th Northamptonshire’s) Sept 1914; promoted temporary Lieutenant Oct 1914; promoted temporary Captain 22^nd Nov 1914 (Northants 6^th Battalion). France July 1915 as Captain [August 1915-May 1916: Fricourt, Albert, Somme], won D.S.O. 1916 for gallantry in night attack by the enemy (13^th April 1916); temporary Major, Northants Reg. Oct 1916 [effective 15^th July 1916]; wounded at Trones Wood, 3^rd Ypres, 10^th August 1917, returned to France Dec 1917 as acting Lieutenant Colonel, 12^th Battalion, Middlesex Regiment. Accidentally killed, aged 30, on 31^st Dec 1917 during an ammunition explosion; he is buried at Haringhe (Bandaghem) Military Cemetery, Belgium. (d) Enid Muriel Podmore (1889-1975), she married Sir William Palin Elderton, PhD., K.B.E., C.B.E., author and Chairman of the British Insurance Association, on 15^th January 1920 at Grange-over-Dands; they had a son named Hubert Podmore Elderton (in honour of his Uncle ‘Bertie’), born Amersham in 1921, educated at Merchant Taylor’s School and died in South Africa in 1995 and was buried in Durban. Enid Muriel, Lady Elderton, died in Chiltern in 1975 [her husband, Sir William died 6^th April 1962 aged 85] (e) Edgar Podmore (1890-1901) and (f) Freda Podmore, born 22^nd May 1895; Freda remained unmarried and died in Northumberland in 1982.
5. Austin Podmore was educated at Haileybury School before working as a bank clerk and he was a prolific writer on public school rugby, football and cricket; a keen cricketer himself, like his brother, George, he edited the ‘public school’s’ section of Wisden’s Cricketer’s Almanack; in the 1930’s he organised ‘vacation games’. He was also a well-known presence on the amateur stage, giving performances and dramatic recitals and was particularly known for his ‘waxwork figures’ act; he was a member of The Shelley Society, established in 1886 and also a member of the ‘Irresponsibles Dramatic Club’; some of his dramatic roles included: a dramatic performance on Friday 21^st March 1884 on board ‘Exmouth’ training ship with the Irresponsibles, performing a Byron comedy in 3 acts called ‘Uncle’ (Austin played Paul Beaumont) and after the interval a one-act farce, ‘A Regular Fix’ (Austin playing a porter); on Saturday 21^st June 1884 Austin played ‘Soft Sorderley’ in the play ‘Not Such a Fool as He Looks’ at London’s St. George’s Hall; on Tuesday 16^th November 1886 he was performing with The Shelley Society at St. James’ Hall, London, (with full orchestra and chorus) in a performance of ‘Hellas’ [music composed by Dr. W. C. Selle] and Austin recited over 400 lines committed to memory; Saturday 21^st May 1887 Austin was in a performance of ‘The Hunchback’ at the Town Hall, Eastbourne; on Tuesday 10^th January 1888 Austin played Charles Paragon in a performance of ‘Perfection, or The Lady Munster’ at the King’s Head Assembly Rooms in Horsham; in June 1889 he performed in ‘Mrs. Jarley’s Waxworks’ [arranged by H. H. Clarke and assisted by Austin: in April 1886 and December 1887 he played Mrs. Jarley with the London Amateurs]; he was also in a comic drama, ‘The Jacobite’ during April 1890 and on Wednesday 7^th May 1890 he took part in a Grand Concert and Dramatic Recital at the Ridgeway Lawn Tennis Club; during April 1891 he played ‘Solomon Probity’ in the two-act drama ‘The Chimney Corner’ and also gave a dramatic recital of the ghost scene in Hamlet called ‘Shakespeare On Board’ and in December 1894 he gave a recital of ‘Phil Blood’s Leap’ at Upper Clapton Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club. He died in London on 17^th October 1937, aged 76.
6. Reverend Claude Podmore, born 30^th April 1868 was educated at Keble College, Oxford, matriculating on 19^th October 1886 aged 18, B.A. 1890; he was ordained deacon in 1895 and priest in 1896 at Rochester. Curate of Holy Trinity Church, Lambeth 1895-97, Christ Church, Streatham 1897-1900; Rector of Broughton, near Kettering, Northamptonshire from 1900-1936. He married in 1900 at Holy Trinity Church, Lambeth, London and had the following children: (a) Reginald Thompson Podmore (1902-1941), Reginald, born in Broughton, was educated at Haileybury School and Keble College, Oxford, B.A. 1923 and studied at Ely Theological College in 1926; he was ordained deacon in 1927 in Knaresborough and priest the following year by the Bishop of Ripon [he was also an Oxford Group Scoutmaster for 26^th Oxford Scouts]; curate of All Saint’s, Leeds 1927-31. Reginald, Father Podmore, of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, became a Royal Army Chaplain, 4^th Class (service number: 111748): he joined the Royal Army Chaplains Department (RAChD) on 8^th January 1940 and was posted to Eastern Command and then the Southern Command on 30^th January 1940, attached to the 3^rd Corps, Aldershot Command; with BEF in April 1940, attached to £rd Corps Ammunition Park. He was reported as ‘missing’ believed POW on casualty list 247: Killed in Action on 22^nd May 1940 (casualty list 500) and is the first padre to die on active service during the 2^nd World War. He is buried in Divion, France. (b) John Charles Podmore, born 1903, (c) Violet Kathleen Podmore (1905-1996) and (d) Elfrida Mary Podmore, born 1910 [Elfrida married Theodore Frederick Arthur Bach in 1932 and later divorced to marry a schoolmaster named Alban Hay Cooke in 1947]. Claude died on 10^th March 1948, aged 79.
7. see various newspaper articles: ‘The Bewitched House at Worksop’. Sheffield Independent. Tuesday 6^th March 1883. p. 2; ‘Mysterious Affair at Worksop’. Nottingham Journal. Wednesday 7^th March 1883. p. 6; ‘More Truth about Ghosts’ the Globe. Thursday 8^th March 1883. p. 1;. ‘A Ghost at Worksop’. Derbyshire Times. Saturday 10^th March 1883. p. 3; ‘Ghost Trickery in Worksop’. Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Saturday 10^th March 1883. p. 11; ‘A Ghost Story’. The People. Sunday 11^th March 1883. p. 2.
8. The full account of the case can be found in the Journal of the SPR. volume i. 1884-85. Report on the Worksop Disturbances. Frank Podmore. pp. 199-212, [see also: Proceedings of the SPR. volume xii. 1896-97. pp. 45-58; Journal of the SPR. volume vii. 1895-96. pp. 246-8; Journal of the SPR. volume ix. 1899-1900. ‘Witchcraft and Poltergeists’. pp. 204-07; Proceedings of the SPR. volume xvii. 1901-1902. ‘The Poltergeist, Historically Considered’. Andrew Lang. pp. 305-26 (also pp. 327-333); ‘Poltergeists: An Introduction and Examination’. ed. Sacheverell Sitwell. London. Faber. 1940. pp. 387-404].
9. ‘No such amount of matter has ever been compiled, with such unremitting care as to the quality of the evidence brought forward, or with such caution as to the conclusions drawn from it.’ [The Society for Psychical Research, its Rise and Progress & A Sketch of its Work. Edward T. Bennett. London. R. Brimley Johnson. 1903. p. 10]
10. The Cleveland Street Scandal. H. Montgomery Hyde. New York. Coward, McCann & Geoghagen, Inc. 1976. pp. 20-22.
11. Harold Littleton Wolferstan (1859-1920) in the report was ‘of Tavistock’ and ‘a friend of one of us’; he was born in 1859 in Plympton St. Mary, Devon, the son of the mine proprietor, James Littleton Wolferstan (1794-1864) and in 1881 he is living in Kensington, London working as a bank clerk and later (1891) a solicitor. He married Fanny Anna H Bridgeman in Plymouth in 1891 (Fanny died in 1942 aged 77) and they had several children. Harold died in Plymouth on Thursday 20^th May 1920 aged 60 and his funeral was two days later.
12. see Hall. pp. 109-117, and The Westminster Gazette of Tuesday 26^th November 1907, p. 3; Friday 29^th November 1907, p. 3; Monday 2^nd December 1907, p. 3; Wednesday 18^th December 1907, p. 3 ‘Occultism and Common Sense’ and Wednesday 29^th January 1908, p. 3 ‘Occultism and Telepathic Experiments’.
13. see ‘Postal Pleasures: Sex, Scandal, and Victorian Letters’. Katie Louise Thomas. New York. Oxford University Press. 2012., ‘Sodom on the Thames: Sex, Love, and Scandal in Wilde Times’. Morris B. Kaplan. New York. Cornell University Press. 2005., ‘Feasting with Panthers: A New Consideration of some Late Victorian Writers’. Rupert Croft-Cooke. London. W. H. Allen. 1967., ‘LGBT Brighton and Hove’. Janet Cameron. Amberley Publishing. 2009, and ‘The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde’. Neil McKenna. London. Century. 2003.
14. William Thomas Childe Pardoe, born 28^th March 1839 in London, the son of Dr. George Pardoe of 6, Carlisle Parade, Hastings, Sussex (and later Cavendish Square, London); William matriculated at Trinity College, Cambridge on 27^th January 1859 from a private school in Sussex. In 1851 the family are living at Warborne House, Bloomsbury, London and ten years later, William’s mother Agnes Pardoe (1818-1880), a widowed ‘fund holder’ is head of the household at Carlisle Parade, Hastings. On 10^th December 1878, William’s brother, Lieutenant Harry Windsor Pardoe, of the Light Cavalry, born 31^st December 1843 in London, died at Kamptee in India. Following his mother’s death on 19^th January 1880, William and his 38 year old single sister, Gertrude Pardoe (1843-1885) are living at 8, First Avenue, Hove. Around 1885 William moved to 13, Palmeira Mansions, Hove. He died in Steyning on 16^th April 1913 aged 74.
15. William Thomas Graham was born in Brighton in 1869 and Christened there at St. Peter’s Church on 3^rd October 1869; his parents were Harry Graham and Mary Jane Love (born Brighton 1835) who were married in Steyning in 1861; [the Grahams first child, Harry, born in Brighton in 1861 possibly died the same year]; in the 1881 census William is 11 years old and the family are living in Shaftsbury Road, Preston, Sussex; his father Harry, born Brighton in 1835 [he died in Brighton in 1886 aged 50] gave his occupation as ‘painter Railway’ and William’s siblings are: Harry (born Brighton 1865) who is 16 and a ‘clerk at county court’; Alice Jane (born Brighton 1862) who is 18 and single and Frank Herbert (born Brighton 1872) who is 9. Ten years later the family are still living in Shaftsbury Road and William is 21 and a ‘county court clerk’, his mother, 53 year old Mary Jane (born in Brighton in 1836) is now a widow (her husband Harry died aged 50 in Brighton in 1886) and working as a laundress; 19 year old Frank is married and working as an ‘accounts clerk’ and Alice who is 28 is also married. In 1901 William Thomas Graham, a 31 year old single man working as a ‘county court clerk’ is living with his 65 year old widowed mother at Brunswick Place (now known as 33 Ditchling Road) Brighton and in 1911 he is 39 and still single, his occupation is ‘cashier county court’ and he is living in unfurnished lodgings in Brighton. He died in Brighton in 1939 aged 69.
16. If we turn to the census reports we see that in 1881, 8, Queen’s Square, Brighton was occupied by William Hellis, a 52 year old builder and his 49 year old wife Eliza and boarding with them is 32 year old Goodman, a ‘single, solicitor’. In the 1891 census we find William Henry Hellis, 64 (born Odiham, Hampshire 1827) a ‘retired builder’; wife Eliza Mary Hellis, 62 (born London 1829) and lodging with them is Thomas Goodman, 44 (born London 1847 [more precisely Middlesex 1846]) a ‘single solicitor’. William Henry Hellis was Christened in Odiham, Hampshire on 6^th May 1827; his parents were: Henry Hellis, born 1779 and Mary Steer who were married in Odiham on 1^st June 1822. William had two sisters both born in Odiham: Marriane (Christened 13^th April 1823) and Martha Jane (Christened 10^th July 1825). William married Eliza Mary Smith in Lewes in 1859 and in 1901 they are living at Baldwin’s in Keymer, Sussex; Eliza died there on 6^th May 1904 aged 75 and William died there two years later on 6^th October aged 79.
17. see also: ‘Munster v Railton’. Daily Telegraph & Courier (London). Saturday 18^th February 1882. p. 2; ‘The Munster Libel Case’. Derby Daily Telegraph. Friday 23^rd June 1882. p. 4; the Brighton Gazette. Thursday 25^th May 1882. p. 8 and Southern Weekly News. Saturday 20^th January 1883. p. 6.
18. For an account of the haunting of the Brighton house see the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. volume vi, 1889-90: Phantasms of the Dead from another point of view, by Frank Podmore. 29^th November 1889 edition. pp. 229-313, particularly pp. 309-313 for details of Smith’s occupancy.
19. Sheffield Daily Telegraph. Monday 31^st December 1906. p. 10; see also the Post Office magazine, St. Martin’s-Le-Grand. Volume xvii. (numbers 65-68),1907. pp. 201-203 for his retirement announcement.
20. see ‘Charles Sydney Buxton: A Memoir’. H. Sanderson Furniss. London. The Ballantyne Press. 1914, commissioned by his father.
21. Rev. Herbert Wilkinson (1852-1927) of King’s College, London; son of Frederic Eachus Wilkinson (died 1894 aged 74), ordained at Worcester Cathedral in 1880, curate of Tysoe 1880-1883, vicar of Burton Dassett in 1883; he married Elizabeth Gorle, daughter of James Gorle, in June 1891 (she died in 1931 aged 84) and Rev. Wilkinson died in June 1927.