August 31, 1888 --- The Whitechapel Murder
Police say the wounds are the work of a madman. On 8 September, not far from Buck's Row, another streetwalker, Annie Chapman, was found with "wounds of a nature too shocking to be described," according to The Times. Her womb had been cut out, the entrails tied around her neck. On 30 September, two more victims were found; Catherine Eddowes and Elizabeth Stride; both eviscerated, obviously "the work of the same fiendish hands."
At London's Central News Agency, a letter from "Jack" arrived: "Double event this time. Number One squealed a bit; couldn't finish straight off." Panic gripped all London and the police were subjected to unprecedented abuse. Rumor was king; several "suspects" barely avoided the mob's noose. There was a lull. Then, on the morning of the Lord Mayor's Day, 9 November, the body of Mary Kelly was found, butchered in her bed in a grimy boarding house. Mary was - apparently - the last victim. The killings suddenly stopped. No one was ever charged.
Exhaustive research and lively controversy continues to this day. Was "Jack" possibly Montague Druitt, a young London lawyer who threw himself into the Thames in early December? The most scandalous theory - broadcast on the BBC, no less - involves the Royal Family. Supposedly, the Duke of Clarence, eldest son of the Prince of Wales, married a Catholic shopgirl in the East End who bore his child. The story goes that Mary Kelly, "Jack's" last victim, either witnessed the wedding or midwifed the birth and made the fatal mistake of blackmail. The other women were either slain to provide "cover" or because they had contact with Kelly. The actual murders, goes the theory, were the work of Sir William Gull, a prominent Mayfair obstetrician. It must be pointed out that the doctor was then in his 70's and recovering from a slight stroke. The plot reached all the way to Downing Street. Prime Minister Salisbury allegedly called off the police.
If you're not buying into that, and most do not, the best website on the subject, http://www.casebook.org/, provides a list of all 31 possible "Rippers."
October 28, 1848 --- The Sea Serpent
The drawings are based upon the descriptions provided to the Admiralty by the ship's commander, Capt. Peter M'Quhae R.N. Some 300 miles off the African coast, the gallant officer had observed a beast of "extraordinary dimensions.... its head appeared to be four feet out of the water, and there was about sixty feet of its body in a straight line on the surface." Capt. M'Quhae hails the artist for “most faithfully" recapturing what it was he saw from the quarterdeck.
The sketches prompt an immediate sensation and a vigorous debate. The letters columns in both the popular and scientific journals are soon filled with corroborative testimonials. Soon, however, the great paleontologist Richard Owen, who had coined the word "dinosaur," wrote to The Times to assert that the creature was nothing more than a large sea lion, stranded by the melting of an Antarctic ice-flow. While he graciously conceded that such a beast could be "readily mistakable" for a sea-serpent, he concluded airily, "A larger body of evidence from eye witnesses might be got together in proof of ghosts than of the Sea-Serpent."
The good Capt. M'Quhae, his honor and eyesight impugned, joined the epistolary fray; he insisted the beast had been "coolly and dispassionately contemplated" by several veteran seaman who know a seal when they see one.
Punch has the last word with an item headed MISSING: THE GREAT SEA-SERPENT. Anyone espying same is urged to contact their office for the monster "had been going lately to great lengths [and] friends fear that he may have come to an untimely end."
The Daedalus sighting spawned numerous copycat claims of serpents and "sea snakes." In 1861, the Victorian naturalist Philip Henry Gosse concluded that "immense unrecognized creatures of elongate form roam the ocean."
December 9, 1873 --- Outrage at a Seance
On this evening, with Florence safely locked in her cabinet, the spectral form of “Katie” manifested herself in the dark room. Suddenly, in violation of all the rules, Herr Volckman leapt from his seat to tackle the “spirit.” There was a wild struggle, Volckman was subdued, and Katie collapsed to the floor. The room was cleared and when the lights came back on, Katie was gone, and Florence was there, appearing unwell. Volckman’s treachery was inexcusable but he announced that it was no ghost he felt in his arms. Florence/Katie’s reputation was badly shaken by what one occult paper called a “Gross Outrage at a Spirit Circle.”
Enter William Crookes. He was 41, married, and a self-taught chemist who had discovered thallium and was a fellow of the Royal Academy of Science. After his brother was lost at sea, Crookes turned his interest to the spirit world. Given his credentials, Crookes was soon established as the “investigator.” He agreed to determine, once and for all, if Florence and Katie were one and the same person. To better isolate his subject, he took Florence home with to his laboratory on Mornington Road. She remained there six months.
Through the magic of his newly invented "spirit lamp," containing phosphorised oil, Crookes claimed he was able measure and photograph both Florence and a co-operative “Katie.” He declared that Florence and her pirate friend were indeed separate beings, different in height, complexion and hair color. The Spiritualist, the leading publication for true-believers, hailed the news, saying Crookes had “placed beyond all question” the authenticity of Florence’s powers.
By far, however, the Crookes report was met with bemusement in the secular world, and vicious hostility from the scientific. Adding to the public’s general merriment and the scientific derision was Crookes detailed accounts of his “physical” contact with "Katie." He recalled one moment: Feeling, however, that if I had not a spirit, I had at all events a lady close to me, I asked her permission to clasp her in my arms … Permission was graciously given and I accordingly did – well, what any gentleman would do under the circumstances.
While a modern researcher might well call Crookes methodology “highly eroticised but unfailingly respectable,” his contemporaries were less forgiving. Enemies suggested that the scientist had been seduced by his attractive houseguest, while his wife was confined to bed expecting the couple’s tenth child. So many rumors circulated that Crookes finally issued a statement: “My good and true wife knows everything about this and quite approves of my conduct.”
Florence Cook's powers soon faded. Crookes and his wife lived to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. He was knighted in 1897. In 1907, there were word of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry; but he never got it. He never retracted any of his spiritualist writings. He died in 1919 having worked well into his 70’s, developing fertilizers, new sewage disposal schemes and inventing the “Crookes lens” for eyeglasses. All of this, surely, more in the physical, than the psychical, realm.
Photograph at phantasmpsiresearch.com
