ALEISTER CROWLEY
AND THE
STOCKHOLM REVELATION
BY
BARRY VAN-ASTEN
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
The significance of
the years 1896-1898 in Aleister Crowley’s life often get overlooked for the
more sensational aspects of his magical career, yet they are important years
that help shape and develop the young romantic poet in search of himself and
his spirituality. Important factors during the years 1896-98 can be seen as
pivotal in setting Crowley upon the path he chose to tread for there is so much
nonsense written about Crowley being wicked when in fact he was nothing of the
sort, he did not commit murder or rape or abuse children, things which of
course are really wicked and should be punished; in fact, the only breaking of
the law he seems to commit is the act of passive sodomy in homosexual
encounters during a time when it was repressed by hypocrites; thankfully the
expression of physical love towards one’s own sex is no longer a criminal
offence and in observing the past from our own point in time we can see how
foolish and damaging the legal classification was. I should say it is to his
great strength of character, mind and will that he did not become a deranged
murderer under the oppressive, soul-destroying Christian atmosphere of the Plymouth
Brethren to which his family belonged and it would have been a decidedly weak,
dim-witted and characterless individual who did not revolt against such extreme
and dangerous beliefs. Crowley
was an enlightened individual who questioned everything in a time of dogged
acceptance and it seems to me he would fit in rather nicely with the morality
and behaviour of the present climate.
Since the death of his
father, Edward Crowley on 5th March 1887 the young ‘Alick’ seems to
have become obsessed with the pursuit and committing of sins as his mother
increased her sense of bigoted religious mania – ‘for a year or two after my
father’s death my mother did not seem to settle down; and during the holidays
we either stayed with Bishop or wandered in hotels and hydros. I think she was
afraid of bringing me up in London;
but when my uncle moved to Streatham she compromised by taking a house in Polworth Road. I
hated it, because there were bigger houses in the neighbourhood.’ (1)
‘Bishop’ is Crowley’s
uncle, Tom Bond Bishop, a ‘ruthless, petty tyrant’ and Emily’s brother who
lived at Thistle Grove (later Drayton
Gardens) in South Kensington. The house is a detestable place of
hypocritical Christian morality morning, noon and night, and filled with pious
pretence of the worst sort by the Bishop family members – Grandmother Elizabeth
Bishop nee Cole (1808-1896), (she and her son John came to live with Aleister
and his mother Emily later in Streatham), Aunt Ada, a teacher whom Crowley
doesn’t seem to mind; John Bishop (1821-1900) and Annie Bishop (1824-1890),
siblings from Grandma Bishop’s first marriage and prevalent among this wreckage
is Tom Bond Bishop himself. Uncle Tom moved to ‘Glenorme’, a house in Polworth
Road, Streatham and Emily also found a house there at number 7, Polworth Road
(I have found here there in 1891 on the electoral roll); the young Crowley
furnished a ‘laboratory’ here and made experiments, mixing chemicals like some
apprentice alchemist and it was here of course that he experimented on removing
the nine lives that a cat is supposed to possess by various methods of its
destruction; and it is undoubtedly here that the young Crowley enjoyed one of
his sweetest sins of all and made his ‘magical affirmation’ with the new
parlour maid on his mother’s bed one memorable Sunday!
On Thursday 18th June 1896 Crowley’s Aunt Ada Jane
Bishop died in Wandsworth, she was fifty-four years old and Crowley’s mother’s favourite sister. Her
death notice appeared in The Standard (Saturday 20th June 1896. London. p. 1) which states her death
occurring at ‘Glenorme, Polworth Road, Streatham’, the house where she lived
with her brother Tom Bond Bishop (1839-1920). She was buried on Tuesday 23rd June 1896
in Lambeth. Aleister attended the funeral and says that his mother ‘refused to
enter the church during the service and waited outside in the rain, only
rejoining the procession when the corpse repassed those accursed portals on its
way to the cemetery. She stood by the grave while the parson read the service.
It was apparently the architectural diabolism to which she most objected.’ (2)
Crowley writes the poem ‘In Memoriam A. J. B.’ to his Aunt and the poem
contains deep Christian sentiments and Crowley still has his faith in Christ –
‘as when the conqueror Christ burst forth of prison, / and triumph woke the
thunder of the spheres, / so brake the soul, as newly re-arisen / beyond the
years.’ (3) He goes on to invoke the ‘world immutable of sleep’ where
‘we see our loved one, and vain eyes desire / in vain to weep’ before tailing-off
in familiar Christian symbolism –
‘Woeful our gaze, if
on lone Earth descendent,
To view the absence of
yon flame afar –
Yet in the Heavens,
anew, divine, resplendent,
Behold a star!
One light the less,
that steady flamed and even
Amid the dusk of
Earth’s uncertain shore;
One light the less,
but in Jehova’s Heaven
One star the more!’
Not long after the
passing of Aunt Ada death again visits the Bishops to collect Crowley’s
maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Bishop nee Cole (born 1809), who died on 4th
August 1896 in Wandsworth; she is buried three days later on the 7th
August in Lambeth. I believe this double tragedy occurring so close together
instilled in Aleister, who still clung to Christian doctrines, the seeds of
doubt which would germinate a year later through the various momentous steps
upon the path to reality, such as in the following June 1897 when he realises
in Berlin that he is not manifested upon the earth to play chess and perhaps
some other ‘destiny’ is assigned to him and his illness of October 1897 when he
experiences the Vision of Universal Sorrow; and again in December of that year
when he visits his friend Professor Lamb and a tremendous outpouring occurs
which in turn culminates days later in Amsterdam with the conflict of the spirit
where the weakness of Christian belief ends and a new ‘law of the strong’ is
born in the form of some idealised romantic Satan, the Satan of Milton, the
bisexual Baphomet.
Since entering Trinity
College, Cambridge on 1st October 1895 for the Michaelmas term, Crowley
has felt a sense of freedom which has been gathering apace since his father’s
death in 1887; the old constraints and restrictions of the Plymouth Brethren
have been cast to the wayside and a Herculean sense of self importance has
grown in strength as he goes in search of sensual experiences, cleansing
himself of the ‘mire of Christianity by deliberate acts of sin and worldliness’
as he says in his Confessions (p. 123)
After the Easter term
ended on Wednesday 24th June 1896 Crowley travelled to the Bernese
Oberland; on the 14th July 1896 he is climbing the Monch in
Switzerland, the first guideless traverse of the mountain [see Crowley’s poem
‘A Descent of the Moench’ in Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic. 1898. The
Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I] He returns to Cambridge for the
Michaelmas term which began on Thursday 1st October 1896 and ended
on Saturday 19th December 1896; Crowley, who turned twenty-one on
the 12th October, travelled to Stockholm and he stayed at the Grand
Hotel. It is in Stockholm
that he says that he was ‘awakened to the knowledge that I possessed a magical
means of becoming conscious of and satisfying a part of my nature which had up
to that moment concealed itself from me. It was an experience of horror and pain,
combined with a certain ghostly terror, yet at the same time it was the key to
the purest and holiest spiritual ecstasy that exists.’ (4) John Symonds
is incorrect in his ‘The Great Beast’ (chapter II: Father and Son) in assuming
that Crowley’s ‘awakening’ is literally his waking from sleep in his hotel room
in Stockholm to some significant spiritual realisation, such blatant nonsense
gets repeated until it is taken as fact and so the truth, which oftentimes is
in plain view, is all but ignored for the more ‘convenient’, lazy and wrongly
accepted viewpoint. Crowley informs us himself what occurred, all be it in
Crowley’s own indefatigable manner, in chapter twenty-one of his ‘Not the Life
and Adventures of Sir Roger Bloxam’ written between 1916-17 – in the winter of
1896 Crowley is in Stockholm, he doesn’t know anyone (except the British
Minister and his wife) and he is feeling a little lonely; on Tuesday 29th
December, he had been ice-skating for some three hours and felt tired, cold and
hungry and quite frankly a little bored of skating. He attempts a skating
manoeuvre, quite badly and falls down on the ice. A man steps forward amongst
the skaters to his rescue and Crowley
is glad to hear the English tongue. The man introduces himself as James L.
Dickson – Crowley assumes he is Scottish due to his middle name, which ‘stood
for something Scottish, Laurie, or Leslie, or Levy, I think’ he suggests, but
James Dickson is a married man, a family man and Crowley with some sense of
honour probably knows the name but does not want to bring shame upon him, for
there was a definite attraction between the young Crowley, who was ‘comely and
graceful, lissome’ and ‘playful as a kitten’ and the older man, James; and ‘the
new friends talked of England, home and beauty’. Dickson dined with Crowley
that night and the following night, Wednesday 30th December, Crowley
dined with Dickson, and the next day, New Year’s Eve, Dickson dined with
Crowley once more and on the stroke of midnight when the old year dies away to
become the new, Dickson seduced Crowley who was more than happy to fall into a
new, strong sinful experience. Crowley tells us in the next chapter of ‘Roger
Bloxam’ that he was a ‘trifle sore at the rudeness of the Scotsman [Dickson]
for it was Crowley’s, the ‘sensitive maiden’s’ first time with a man; Dickson,
he continues, had no ‘savoir faire’ and ‘he was restless, he fidgeted, he said
nothing wise, or witty, or even graceful; and he withdrew finally with
abruptness’. Crowley
says in his Confessions (p.124) that it was an ‘isolated experience, not
repeated until exactly twelve months later, to the minute.’ Crowley writes about the experience in his
poem, ‘At Stockholm’ which he probably wrote soon after in January 1897 and was
published in his ‘White Stains’ in 1898:
At Stockholm
We could not speak,
although the sudden glow
Of passion mantling to
the crimson cheek
Of either, told our
tale of love, although
We could not speak.
What need of language,
barren and false and bleak,
While our white arms
could link each other so,
And found red lips
their partner’s mutely seek?
What time for
language, when our kisses flow
Eloquent, warm, as
words are cold and weak? –
Or now – Ah!
sweetheart, even were it so
We could not speak.
Tobias Churton in his
‘Aleister Crowley: The Biography’ published in 2011 gives Dickson’s full name
in chapter three on page 29 as James Lachlan Dickson (also see his note 7 on
page 432 which gives Dickson’s profession as
‘Cotton Spinner’s Agent’, attributed to William Breeze). Along with ‘At
Stockholm’, a romanticised poetic version of the encounter which may have
actually meant little to Dickson in Crowley’s ‘White Stains’ is another curious
poem written as a tribute to the first man to become sexually intimate with
Crowley at this time:
To J.L.D. *
At last, so long
desired, so long delayed,
The step is taken, and
the threshold past;
I am within the palace
I have prayed
At last.
Like scudding winds,
when skies are overcast,
Came the soft breath
of Love, that might not fade.
O Love, whose magic
whispers bind me fast,
O Love, who hast the
kiss of Love betrayed,
Hide my poor blush
beneath thy pinions vast,
Since thou hast come,
nor left me more a maid,
At last.
If James Lachlan
Dickson is indeed the man concerned, and there is no reason to believe he
isn’t, he has the ‘Scottish-sounding’ middle name and his work would have given
him the opportunity of travel; but what can be found of this James Lachlan
Dickson? well, he was born on 1st January 1855 at Portsea Island in
Hampshire [the night of his seduction of the 21 year old Crowley was the eve of
his 42nd birthday], the son of David Dickson, a draper who employed
three men, born in 1820 in Scotland (he died on 1st February 1865 in
Portsea) and Isabella Ann McMillan, born 1820, who were married in Medway, Kent
in 1848 (5). James L Dickson was employed as an agent for a cotton
spinners and manufacturers and he married Birmingham
born, Mary Ann Cattell (1863-1923) on Thursday 16th February 1888 in Camberwell. The
wedding took place at St Paul’s Church, Herne Hill in Camberwell and Miss Annie
Cattell is the neice of Mr. William Bennett, the respected proprietor of the
Half Moon in Dulwich. The bride’s father gave her away and of the four
bridesmaids, two were James Dickson’s sisters, Charlotte and Maria; his brother
David was best man (6). In 1891 they are living in Portland Place, Beckenham,
Kent and ten
years later they are in Lambeth. James and Mary had the following children:
James Thomas Dickson, born 1889, William Arthur Dickson, born 1890, Sidney
Edgar Dickson, born 1893 and Constance Irene Dickson, born 1897.
The ‘so long desired,
so long delayed’ sexual encounter with James L. Dickson is not the first
account of a man attempting to seduce Crowley for he tells us in his
Confessions that the ‘brother of the Dean of Westminster (he subsequently
became a missionary and died at Lokoja) had been taught that if he couldn’t be
good he should be careful. While he was actually in charge of me his conduct
was irreproachable, but after giving me up he invited me over to his mother’s
house at Maze Hill [Greenwich] to spend the night, and did his best to live up
to the reputation of his cloth. I did not allow him to succeed, not because I
could see no sin in it, but because I thought it was a trap to betray me to my
family. Just before he left for Africa he invited me again, prayed with me,
confessed to his offence, excusing himself on the ground that his elder brother
Jack, also a missionary, had led him astray, and asked my pardon.’ (7)
He is a little more explicit in his ‘The World’s Tragedy’ (1910) under the
chapter ‘Adolescence’ and delights in his intention to send a copy of the
volume to the ‘Very Reverend Armitage Robinson Esq., M.A.D.D., Dean of
Westminster (8) for though I suppose he knows how his missionary brother
Jack seduced to sodomy his missionary brother Fred, he may still be ignorant of
how that brother Fred (one of my tutors) attempted to seduce me in his own
mother’s house at Maze Hill. This came a little later; and I knew exactly what
he was doing, as it happened. I let him go as far as he did, with the
deliberate intention of making sure on that point.’ This occurred in the early
1890’s when Crowley
was in his teens and at the hands of various tutors chosen by his Uncle, Tom
Bond Bishop; it shows his early inclinations towards bisexuality and his
acceptance of his feminine side. ‘Jack’ is the Reverend John Alfred Robinson
M.A. (1859-1891) (9) and ‘Fred’, Crowley’s
tutor, is Dr. Frederick Augustine Robinson (1870-1906) (10), both became
missionaries in Africa. Frederick, of Guy’s Hospital, went to Likoma
Island Mission, South Africa in 1891 when Aleister was around sixteen years
old.
Before the Lent term
began on Friday 8th January 1897 Crowley was in Copenhagen, and he
wrote the poem ‘Astray in her paths’; it is only days since he left the arms of
James L Dickson, whose ‘gaze is still on me’, in Stockholm and the poem reaches
new heights of passion, mingled with a spiritual inner light, far beyond
ordinary mortal conceptions – ‘because we love, / are not of earth, but, as the
immortals, stand / with eyes immutable; our souls are fed / on a strange new
nepenthe from the cup / of the vast firmament. Nor do we dream, / nor think we
aught of the transient world, / but are absorbed in our own deity’. The poem continues until he reaches some great
understanding:
‘But now I turn to
thee, whose eyes
Blaze on me with such
look as flesh and blood
May never see and
live; for so it burns
Into the innest being
of the spirit
And stains its vital
essence with a brand
Of fire that shall not
change; and shuddering I
Gaze back, spirit to
spirit, with the like
Insatiable desire,
that never quenched,
Nor lessened by
sublime satiety,
But rather crescent,
hotter with the flame
Of its own burning,
that consumes it not,
Because it is the pure
white flame of God.
I shudder, holding
thee to me; thy gaze
Is still on me; a
thousand years have passed,
And yet a thousand
thousand; years they are
As men count years,
and yet we stand and gaze
With touching hands
and lips immutable
As mortals stand a
moment;…
The universe is One:
One Soul, One Spirit,
One Flame, One
infinite God, One infinite Love. (11)
Following the end of
the Easter term on Thursday 24th June 1897 Crowley went to St
Petersburg to learn Russian for the Diplomatic Service which he had chosen as
his career and on his return he broke his journey at Berlin to attend a chess
conference and upon entering, Crowley, who was a prolific chess player, was
‘seized with what may justly be described as a mystical experience. I seemed to
be looking on at the tournament from outside myself. I saw the masters – one,
shabby, snuffy and blear-eyed; another, in badly fitting would-be respectable
shoddy; a third, a mere parody of humanity, and so on for the rest. These were
the people to whose ranks I was seeking admission. “There, but for the grace of
God, goes Aleister Crowley,” I exclaimed to myself with disgust, and there and
then I registered a vow never to play another serious game of chess. I
perceived with praetor-natural lucidity that I had not alighted on this planet
with the object of playing chess.’ (12)
In October during the
Michaelmas term of 1897 Crowley
fell ill and he was ‘forced to meditate upon the fact of mortality’ consumed by
the ‘futility of all human endeavour’. What is the purpose of life and the
continuity of the individual spirit? A successful career does not automatically
impose greatness upon a person and eternal respect and devotion – ‘I did not go
into a definite trance in this meditation; but a spiritual consciousness was
born in me corresponding to that which characterizes the Vision of the
Universal Sorrow.’ He goes on to say that he was ‘not content to be
annihilated. Spiritual facts were the only things worth while. Brain and body
were valueless except as instruments of the soul.’ (13) He had been
restricted by the demands of Christianity in his youth and since entering
Trinity the freedom became meaningless without substance – ‘I had never given
myself wholly to chess, mountaineering or even to poetry. Now, for the first
time, I felt myself prepared to expend my resources of every kind to attain my
purpose.’ (14)
Late in the October term
of 1897 he also became acquainted with Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt who was
to become his lover.
On Tuesday 7th December 1897
Crowley called
at the house of his friend Dr. Charles George Lamb (1867-1941), the Cambridge lecturer and
engineer who entered the university in 1891. It must have been a strange and
extraordinary meeting that wild, windy night in December and Crowley must have been in great distress at
his spiritual dilemma which had increased since his Vision of Universal Sorrow
in October and in need of a friendly ear and advice from someone he respected
and trusted. He writes rather perplexingly as an introductory to his poem ‘Aceldama, a Place to Bury Strangers’ of 1898, that it ‘was
a windy night, that memorable seventh night of December, when this philosophy
was born in me. How the grave old Professor wondered at my ravings! I had
called at his house, for he was a valued friend of mine, and I felt strange
thoughts and emotions shake within me. Ah! how I raved! I called to him to
trample me, he would not. We passed together into the stormy night. I was on
horseback, how I galloped round him in my phrenzy, till he became the prey of a
real physical fear! How I shrieked out I know not what strange words! And the
poor good old man tried all he could to calm me; he thought I was mad! The
fool! I was in the death struggle with self: God and Satan fought for my soul those
three long hours. God conquered – now I have only one doubt left – which of the
twain was God? Howbeit, I aspire!’ (15) What transpired that night had a
lasting effect upon Crowley
and it would be interesting to know more about the part Charles Lamb played in
his momentous conversion from Christianity to the occult!
After the Michaelmas
term ended on Sunday 19th December 1897 Crowley travelled to
Amsterdam, and he purchases a small, red notebook in which he writes eight
sonnets and several rondells and songs in pencil; The sonnets are: ‘Love me or
leave me’, ‘Your love is light’, ‘To pass through the pale streets’, ‘I, who am
dying for thy kiss’, ‘He, who seduced me first’, ‘A sailor’s kiss is branded’,
‘Did you speak truly?’ and ‘The old, dark evening’. The sonnet ‘He, who seduced
me first’ undoubtedly refers to James L Dickson whom Crowley encountered almost a year ago to the
day –
He who seduced me
first I could not forget.
I hardly loved him but
desired to taste
A new strong sin. My
sorrow does not fret
That sore. But thou,
whose sudden arms embraced
My shrinking body, and
who brought a blush
Into my cheeks, and
turned my veins to fire,
Thou, who didst whelm
me with the eager rush
Of the enormous floods
of thy desire,
Thine are the kisses
that devour me yet,
Thine the high heaven
whose loss is death to me,
Thine all the barbed
arrows of regret,
Thine on whose arms I
yearn to be
In my deep heart thy
name is writ alone,
Men shall decipher –
when they split the stone.
From the rondells and songs (six in total) is
a strange poem, ‘The Red Lips of the Octopus’:
The red lips of the
octopus
Are more than myriad
stars of night.
The great beast
writhes in fiercer form than thirsty stallions amorous
I would they clung to
me and stung. I would they quenched me with delight.
The red lips of the
octopus.
They reek with poison
of the sea
Scarlet and hot and
languorous
My skin drinks in
their slaver warm, my sweats his wrapt embrace excite
The heavy sea rolls
languishly o’er the ensanguined kiss of us.
We strain and strive,
we die for love. We linger in the lusty fight
We agonize; our club
becomes more cruel and more murderous.
My passion splashes
out at last. Ah! with what ecstasy I bite
The red lips of the
octopus.
On Thursday 23rd
December 1897, while Crowley is in Amsterdam, he is on the threshold of one of
the greatest spiritual conflicts of his life, for he has been walking the
streets all day and watching the sun pass overhead and ‘fade away / to other
streets, and other passengers, / see him take pleasure where the heathen
pray,’; he is tired and weary and his mind is in torment. The day has been long
and there is frost sparkling along the streets as he wound his way towards the
docks; from the darkness of his inner sorrow he holds his silver crucifix in his
fingers and contemplates ‘the wound / stabbed in the flanks of my dear silver
Christ.’ Christ is alone and Crowley
is also alone – he puts the crucifix to his mouth and kisses the ‘silver lips’
as if in farewell. He puts the crucifix away and his ‘feet must go / some
journey of despair.’ He has come through the dark night of his soul which
probably began at the home of Professor Lamb and found that which he had known
all along and he must walk and ‘know never more the day and night apart, / know
not where frost has laid his iron hand / save only that it fastens on my heart;
/ save only that it grips with icy fire / these veins no fire of hell could
satiate; / save only that it quenches this desire. / Let me pass out beyond the
city gate.’ (16) Two days later on Saturday 25th December 1897, still
in Amsterdam, he
writes the poem The Nativity (also contained in the Amsterdam notebook under the title ‘Xmas’).
In the poem we find the Virgin Mary at Bethlehem,
in labour, where ‘each spasm is a holocaust’, and thrice she has ‘cursed the
name of God’ and thrice she has ‘prayed that she may die’ until ‘she is
delivered of the Christ’. (17)
While in Amsterdam
Crowley had been writing furiously to his new friend with whom he fell deeply
in love – Herbert Charles Jerome Pollitt, and on Crowley’s return to England,
he met Pollitt at the Queen’s Hotel in Birmingham on Friday 31st
December 1897, exactly a year to the day on which he had spent the night in the
arms of James Lachlan Dickson – the seduction repeated itself almost to the
minute when Pollitt and Crowley
became lovers and Jerome seduced him at the beginning of the New Year.
Back at Cambridge for
the Lent term in January, Crowley moves from his rooms at 35 Sidney Street to
14 Trinity Street and he and Jerome are almost inseparable, Crowley taking on
the role it seems as the dutiful wife; the relationship, which was one of the
most profound in Crowley’s life, lasts just six months when Crowley terminated
the friendship at the Bear Hotel in Maidenhead where the poet had gone seeking
solace to write his poem ‘Jezebel’. Pollitt followed him there and no doubt
some scene played out and so Crowley
called an end to the greatest and noblest friendship he had ever encountered.
The pursuit of
spiritual attainments still drove Crowley
onwards and in November 1898 it took him to the Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn and Abramelin and a new chapter in the life of Aleister Crowley, which
would ultimately lead to the fulfilment of his destiny as the prophet of the
new Aeon of Thelema.
Love is the Law, Love under Will
NOTES:
*Cabbalists among you
may care to note that the initials J.L.D. – Yod, Lamed, Daleth: The Hermit,
Virgo, Hand, the Secret Seed, 10 – Justice, Libra, Ox-Goad, 30 – Empress,
Venus, Door, 4 = 10+30+4 = 44 Blood, the multiplication of 11, the number of
Magick, by 4.
- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. John
Symonds and Kenneth Grant. 1969. p. 59.
- ibid. p. 58.
- In Memoriam A. J. B. Songs of the Spirit. 1898.
The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley,
volume I.
- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. p.
123-124.
- David and Isabella Dickson had the
following children: Isabella Ann Dickson (1850-1902), James Lachlan
Dickson (1st
January 1855- 16th
August 1927), Sarah Dickson, born 1853, David Robert Dickson
(1857-1927), Charlotte Agnes Dickson, born 1859 and Margaret L Dickson,
born 1863. Interestingly, there is an article in The South Eastern Gazette
on Tuesday 15thy November 1853 (p. 5) under ‘Coroner’s Inquest’ which
states that on Tuesday
8th November 1853, there is an Inquest at the
Running Horse Inn, Sandling, before J N Dadlow Esq. coroner, concerning
the death of a 17 year old woman named Emma Collins whose body was found
in Spratt’s Mill pond, Boxley, on Monday 7th November. She was
found by Richard Waterman who with assistance retrieved the body. Isabella
Ann Dickson, the wife of David Dickson, draper of Maidstone, said the
deceased was in her service for six months and last saw her alive at 10.45
Sunday night in the kitchen; Emma was due back at 8 but didn’t get back
till 10 and Isabella told her to go to bed (she slept in the kitchen due
to Isabella having friends staying at the house). Miss Collins was a
disruly girl and Isabella threatened to tell her father of her behaviour
and the girl replied that she would not be a trouble to anyone much
longer. She had been depressed due to a failed romance and two letters
were found in her pocket from a soldier in the Hussars named Langford.
- The South London
Press. Saturday 25th
February 1888. p. 6.
- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. p.
72.
- Reverend Joseph Armitage Robinson
(1858-1933), Dean of Westminster
(1902-1911).
- Reverend John Alfred Robinson (1859-1891),
born Keynsham, Somerset.
Educated at Rossall
School and Christ’s
Church, Cambridge,
matriculating 1877. B.A. 1881. M.A. 1884. Became a missionary, Hausa
Mission. Died 25th
June 1891 at Lakoja,
Nigeria,
aged 32.
- Dr. Frederick Augustine Robinson
(1870-1906) – born 14th
June 1870 in Liverpool,
Christened 11th
September 1870 at St.
Augustine’s, Everton, Lancashire, where his father, Reverend George
Robinson (1819-1881) was vicar. Entered Christ’s Church, Cambridge, 18th April 1893; Guy’s Hospital,
M.R.C.S. (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons, London), L.R.C.P. (Licentiate of the
Royal College of Physicians, London)
1892. Medical Missionary, Universities’ Mission to Central
Africa, at Lake
Nyassa. Medical
Officer M.D.S.F., Labrador. District
Surgeon at Nqutu, Zululand. Married Dr.
Lillian Agnes Rogers Jenkins, L.R.C.P. Edinburgh, and late Indian Medical
Officer (born in Tenby, South Wales, the
only daughter of Rev. J. Rogers Jenkins) at St. Augustine’s in Durban, Natal 10th May 1898. Served in the
suppression of the Natal Rebellion, 1906. Died on 1st October 1906 at Natal aged 36. Frederick’s father,
George, married Henrietta Cecilia Forbes (1826-1919) in 1854 and they had
thirteen children, eight boys, six of which entered the priesthood, and
five girls. Frederick was also assistant surgeon at the Leicester Royal
Infirmary and on Thursday 16th February 1893 he attended the
Leicester Town Hall trial of Richard James Glynn, 45 on a case of
‘unlawful wounding’ of Jim Smith on 4th February, whose knife
wound Frederick had examined; Glynn was pronounced not guilty and
discharged. [The Leicester Chronicle and
Leicestershire Mercury. Saturday
18th February 1893. p. 6]
- Mysteries: Lyrical and Dramatic. 1898. The
Collected Works of Aleister Crowley,
volume I.
- The Confessions of Aleister Crowley. p.
140.
- ibid. p. 124-125.
- ibid. p. 125.
- Aceldama. 1898. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume I.
- The Goad. Songs of the Spirit. 1898. The
Collected Works of Aleister Crowley,
volume I.
- Oracles. 1905. The Collected Works of Aleister Crowley, volume II.
