(1876.) We have just had a couple of professional “mediums” in the police courts, and it is to be heartily hoped that all their colleagues of any notoriety will soon be submitted to the same searching test, and duly rewarded according to their merits. At Huddersfield the Rev. Francis Ward Monck, formerly a minister at Bristol, was cleverly caught out by Mr. Lodge, a woollen merchant and amateur conjurer, who at the close of a private seance offered to do all the “Doctor” had done, and insisted on seeing his “paraphernalia.” The Doctor protested with profuse virtuous indignation, but his detecter was firm. At length this reverend medium took refuge in his own bedroom and locked himself in, and while the profane sceptics were besieging the door he managed to escape from the window by the help of a sheet. In his sore haste he left behind him some of the “paraphernalia,” whose existence he had so indignantly denied, including “spirit hands” and prepared musical boxes. He took out a warrant against Mr. Lodge for the recovery of these precious articles, and was met by a counter-warrant issued by the chief constable under the Vagrant Act, for using subtle craft means and devices to deceive and impose on certain of her Majesty’s subjects; he being charged with thus defrauding one person of ￡20, while Mr. Heppleston, a general dealer, in whose house the exposure took place, had paid him ￡4 for two séances, the prisoner assuring him that the manifestations were genuine, and were produced by spiritual agency. The prisoner’s solicitor said that the Vagrant Act did not apply to a gentleman in the position of Dr. Monck, who kept his carriage and yacht at Bristol. We may admit that the application of the Vagrant Act is an awkward and round-about mode of dealing with such cases, and the sooner Parliament in its great wisdom provides a more direct and effectual remedy, the better; nor could a stronger argument for its provisions be adduced than the fact, if fact it be, that this reverend medium by the illicit production of spirits very much below proof, has been getting money enough to keep a carriage and yacht. When the Huddersfield magistrates remanded him for a week at the request of the chief constable, offering to accept bail, himself in ￡250, and two sureties in ￡100 each, the bail was not forthcoming; and the prisoner made a high-minded and pathetic appeal to the bench, “asking them not to make him suffer the indignity of incarceration in the police-cells; he said he had forsaken everything to follow this calling, believing in his inmost soul that it was right.” So far as I can see, a convicted burglar or manufacturer of counterfeit coin, might with as good reason make just such an appeal; pleading pathetically that he had forsaken everything to follow this calling, affirming nobly that he believed in his inmost soul that it was right; while as to the jemmy and the skeleton keys, or the moulds and the battery, which had been seized in his possession, they were manifestly for purely scientific experimental investigations—exactly as were the spirit-hands affixed to wires and the musical boxes of the Rev. “Doctor” Monck.
The London case of “Doctor” Slade, is too well known to require being detailed here. As his fee was a sovereign, well-off people having much time to kill with any excitement, and empty heads to fill with any nonsense (much the same sort of silly people as those for whom some West-end High Church is the half-way house to the Pro-Cathedral), must have been his most numerous visitors. Thus Society with a capital S took great interest in him, and our penny daily press, always ready to pander to Society, and to the snobbery of its readers who are not in Society but ever on their knees worshipping it—our penny daily press furnished full reports of the proceedings. Mr. Flowers, the magistrate at Bow Street Police Court gave a written judgment on the case, sentencing the “Doctor” to three months’ imprisonment with hard labor in the House of Correction; which sentence to the credit of our common sense, sadly discredited by much that came out on the trial, was received with some applause, and Mr. Lewis the prosecuting solicitor was cheered by a large crowd on leaving the court. Of course, there being money to back the “medium,” notice of appeal was given, and bail accepted—the defendant in ￡200, and two sureties of ￡100 each.
In the course of the defence there was read from the Spiritualist an account of a sitting with Slade by Mr. Serjeant Cox, who, as Mr. Flowers observed, would, if an appeal were raised, be one of the judges of that appeal. The said account, after relating various wonders, concludes thus: “I offer no opinion on the causes of the phenomena, for I have formed none. If they be genuine, it is impossible to exaggerate their interest and importance. If they be an imposture it is equally important that the trick should be exposed in the only way in which trickery can be explained—by doing the same thing, and showing how it is done.” Now this, at any rate, seems to show judicial fairness if not judicial sagacity; and is beyond blame, as having been written before the learned Serjeant (unless warned by the spirits) could have had any expectation of being called upon to deliver a legal judgment on the matter. But after Mr. Flowers had passed sentence, and the appeal had been raised, this same Serjeant Cox, having become a prospective judge of the case, opened the third sess............