(W. Whately Smith)

The reliability of witnesses is a crucial question in the study of psychical phenomena and has for long been a bone of contention between spiritualists and their critics. If honesty, care, and intelligence alone sufficed to make a man’s testimony reliable the whole range of spiritualistic phenomena, including spirit photography, might long ago have been taken as proved beyond all possibility of doubt. But this is very far from being the case, and although it is never pleasant to express flat disbelief of the accuracy of people’s statements, the Psalmist’s dictum that “all men are liars” should be graven on the heart of every psychical researcher, especially in the case of those who attempt to investigate “physical” phenomena.[11]I do not propose to repeat the obvious platitudes about the ease with which conjurers can deceive their audiences, but I should like to emphasise the fact that such differences as exist between the circumstances in which conjurers and mediums work are uniformly in favour of the latter as regards the minor manipulations necessary for the production of photographic phenomena. (One is not, of course, concerned with elaborate “stage effects,” but rather with small matters like the substitution of one plate for another or the distraction of the sitter’s attention while the required extra is impressed upon the plate.) The conjurer’s audience knows that it is a trick; the medium’s does not. Even the most hardened sceptic will probably have a lingering doubt in his mind as to whether there may not possibly be “something in it” after all. This is all to the medium’s advantage, and it must be remembered that not only does he work for much of his time under lighting conditions which are peculiarly favourable to fraudulent manipulation, but also that the great majority of his sitters start with a considerable prepossession to the effect that they are encountering something inexplicable.

But these observations must, I suppose, have occurred to all who have considered such matters at all impartially, and however relevant they may be they will never by themselves prevail against what we call “the evidence of our senses.” No amount of general considerations of this kind will deter the credulous from accepting the prima facie indications of a “successful” sÉance. The only hope of preserving the public from the depredations of these swindlers is to show that the “evidence of the senses” is not worth twopence unless backed by special knowledge of the relevant technique.

One would think that anyone who reads Mr. Patrick’s admirable account of fraudulent methods and of his experiments in their application will feel chary of claiming that he has wholly eliminated the possibility of fraud from any photographic sÉance which he has attended. But there may be some who will still say: “No doubt these fraudulent methods can be and have been employed, no doubt many people would allow a medium to substitute plates under their very noses, or to touch them. But when I went to such-and-such a medium I am certain that the plates were never out of my possession, that he never had a chance of touching them....” and so forth.

Of course, some of the methods described by Mr. Patrick do not involve touching the plates at all. It would not be at all impossible for an artist in such work to allow a sitter to use his own plates, camera, slides, dishes, and chemicals in his own studio and dark-room, to load, unload, and develop the plates himself without their ever being touched by the “medium” and yet to produce a perfectly good extra.

But I will let that pass and confine myself to the question of whether the kind of positive statement outlined above is really worth anything at all. This question was answered once and for all in the emphatic negative by the classical experiments of the late Mr. S. J. Davey in “Slate-writing,” which are fully described in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vols. iv. and viii.

These experiments are not nearly so widely known as they deserve to be, but it is not too much to say that no one who has not read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested them is competent so much as to begin to talk about the genuineness of spirit photography; unless, of course, he happens to have acquired a knowledge of trick methods and the scope of deception by other means—such as Mr. Patrick adopted in his experimental work!

Very briefly, the story was as follows: Mr. Davey was an amateur conjurer of some skill who set himself to imitate by trickery the performances of Slade, Eglington, and other exponents of “slate-writing” phenomena. In this he succeeded to admiration—so much so that certain spiritualists characteristically insisted that he must be a very powerful “medium”! He scrupulously denied himself the advantage of claiming his results as supernormal, but in spite of this found no difficulty in imposing on his sitters. The latter were encouraged to take every possible precaution against trickery and were instructed to write the most careful reports of what occurred.

A number of reports were thus obtained from men and women of unquestionable intelligence and acumen which, if they had been even approximately accurate, would have established the supernormality of Mr. Davey’s phenomena beyond any peradventure. But comparison of their reports with the known and recorded procedure which actually took place showed the most astonishing discrepancies. Omissions and distortions of the first importance were abundant and the experiments proved to the hilt that, for phenomena of this kind, the reports of untrained witnesses are, in general, not worth the paper they are written on.

I wish that space permitted me to quote, in parallel columns, some of these Davey reports and some of those given by witnesses of photographic sÉances so that my readers could see how very similar the circumstances are.

But I must content myself with pointing out that whereas in the one case everything turned on whether the “medium” had any chance of substituting or tampering with slates, so in the other it is a matter of whether there has been any chance of substituting or tampering with plates. The reports of intelligent witnesses proved worthless in the one case, and it seems reasonable to suppose that they are no more valuable in the other.

So, to anyone who thinks that in the mouth of two or three witnesses the genuineness of spirit photographs shall be established, I would say, “Go home and invest a few shillings in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vols. iv. and viii.—it will be more profitable than the same amount laid out in photographic sÉances—and when you have carefully read their account of the Davey experiments in conjunction with Mr. Patrick’s paper, see whether your confidence in spirit photographs is as strong as ever!”

I have drawn attention to these experiments of Mr. Davey elsewhere and I am sorry to be obliged to insist on their importance again. But until people learn that the reports of uninstructed observers—however acute in other respects—are utterly unreliable, the fraudulent medium will flourish and the unsuspecting public will be robbed and deceived.