Hope of Crewe–a Brief History

As the Rev. Charles Tweedale wrote in his chapter ‘Hope of Crewe’¹ so do I —In his birth certificate, which lies before me as I write, his full Christian name is given as William. He was born at Moor Side, Worsley, near Swinton, in the Manchester district, on December 10th, 1864.

He was the son of Thomas and Jane Hope and his father is described as a carpenter.

Felicia Scatcherd wrote this account of his early life, in Conan Doyle’s The Case for Spirit Photography:

His first memory [of seeing spirit] is of having scarlet fever when he was four years old. During the fever he used to see all sorts of faces peering at him through the doorway and became so frightened that he screamed for his father to come and send them away. Now that he knows about clairvoyance, he thinks otherwise of those visions. He lost his mother when he was nine and remembers little about her. When asked did he grieve much for his mother's death, he replied that he was brought up in a religious family, his father being a local preacher. … Mr. Hope was well cared for by his mother as long as he had her, and afterwards by his stepmother. She was a good woman: and I had an aunt of a religious frame of mind who also kept an eye on me."

By the time William was sixteen the family was living on Chorley Road, Worsley and his father, now remarried, is described as a joiner /draper; while William was now an Apprentice Plumber.

As to how his life developed thereafter there are varying accounts and this report gives us some clue.

Rev. Tweedale writes:

Growing up to manhood he obtained employment in Liverpool, and remained there until the works closed down. Then he opened a drapery business near Blackpool, but trade was not to be his forte, and returning to the Manchester district he was employed in a dye works near Pendleton.

In 1886 he married Mary Atherton. They had two children, Jane and Harold, born in the Swinton-Pendleton area in the next three years. Was it in these years, before moving to Cheshire, his interest in photography blossomed? Rev. Tweedale tells us that Hope’s youngest son, Arthur, told him:

at this time amateur photography coming to the fore, he was keenly interested, and he made a camera out of an old box and began to study the art.

In the 1880s glass ‘Dry’ plates had only just come in and one report² suggests it may even have been a tin-type plate he used for the first experiments. In fact the following article implies it was a normal glass plate which needed developing and printing.

In 1914 Glasgow Association of Spiritualists invited Mr. W.J. West the photographic expert to attend a series of séances to be given by Wm. Hope of Crewe. This was the first visit and as they said they did not wish to be hoaxed. An account in The Two Worlds in 1937 of an address he gave to the Leeds S.P.R , Mr West says:

"Interrogating him in my Glasgow office, he said to me:

"The first spirit photograph that I took came about in this way. I should say it was about thirty years ago, I was employed in a bleach works, near Manchester. I had become a bit interested in photography, in an amateur way, and one day in the dinner hour I put a workmate of mine against a wall to have his photograph taken. When I began to develop the plate, I thought the whole thing was spoiled. There was what looked like a blur on the plate, but in making a print I saw it was no blur at all, but a woman’s face.

How it came there I did not know but thinking the plate must somehow or other have been exposed before, I handed the photograph to my workmate. His face went as white as a sheet. ‘That face!’ he gasped ‘It’s the face of my dead sister!’

I was as much staggered as he was. I had never seen his sister and did not even know she was dead. The whole thing was a mystery to me until one of the men at the works came along. He had been interested in Spiritualism and told me it was a ‘spirit-photograph’. Eventually—though a Salvationist—I became deeply interested in Spiritualism and began to develop my gifts as a psychic photographer, with the result that I have been able to take hundreds of such photographs of the departed. How the spirit comes to be photographed is about as much a mystery to me as it is to you."

If this interview was in 1914 then we must assume that these first spirit photographs must have been in the late 1880s while he was still in Lancashire.³

By 1891 the Hope family were living in Wharton Bridge Works, Cheshire, where he is described in the Census return as a painter. From this entry it looks as though he took what work he could. The family grew again with another daughter, Annie, born in 1892.

Ten years later, having returned for a short time to Swinton in Lancashire, where their third daughter, Florence, was born, they were back in Cheshire, in Winsford. Jane, the eldest daughter had left home and was working as a servant in Winsford. On the Census for 1901 he is now registered as ‘John’, a ‘Photographer on his own account’ working from home. All other family members are as previously entered and tie in with later entries too. So why the change of name?

It must have been better than working at the saltworks or a dye factory and he saw an opportunity⁴. Did spirit images appear on some of the photos?

There is no record of that happening but William, or as he was generally known, ‘Billy,’ found that, although a Salvationist, he needed to know more about Spiritualism and in 1905, about a year after they had moved to Crewe, he visited the Spiritualist Church in Crewe. It happened that on that evening a visiting medium told a woman in the audience that she had a potential for mediumship and after the meeting he approached the woman and her husband, who had been playing the organ, and told them of his photographs. They agreed to form a circle for the development of this gift, and with three other sitters their adventure began.

He lived at 50, Oakley Street for the rest of his life. Their family was not without sorrow as their daughter, Jane, died in 1908 and their son Harold died just two years later in 1910 aged 22. However, there was another addition to the family in the form of Arthur born in 1909.

The Buxtons who lived a few doors down the street later moved a few streets away to a larger house at 144 Market Street where the sittings for psychic photographs were later held.

In an interview for Light in 1921 it is revealed that:

"Mr. Hope has laboured in his little workshop at Crewe making picture frames, and at the same time supervising a drapery business⁵. This is his sole means of earning a livelihood, for he emphatically denies that he has ever accepted fees for his services as a psychic photographer."

In the census returns for 1911 and 1921 he returns to being William but still describes himself as a photographer – adding in 1921 in a small way which is then crossed out by the Recorder to read on own account.

One of only two references to him being a photographer was made by William Walker in a letter to Dr A. Wallace in a letter in Light, August 30th 1913 – "The fact of the medium being a photographer does not shut my eyes nor yet prevent me exercising vigilance at the séance." (The other reference is on page 56.)

In some of the accounts in the following chapters, the style of Hope’s handwriting comes up when sceptics have challenged the veracity of the copperplate writing received in psychographs. It has been suggested that he could have faked them. Before 1911 the census forms were completed by an official but subsequently the main occupant had to complete and sign. Here on the census form is an example of his writing and also his signature .

Extract from the Census for 1921 (Crewe, 50 Oakley Street)

Signature from the Census for 1921

That is the historical side of the background to our story but what of William Hope himself? How did others see him over the years?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in 1922:

"Hope is a man who gives the impression of being between fifty and sixty years of age, with the manner and appearance of an intelligent working-man. His forehead is high and indicates a good, if untrained, brain beneath it. The general effect of his face is aquiline with large, well-opened, honest blue eyes, and a moustache which is shading from yellow to grey. His voice is pleasant, with a North Country accent which becomes very pronounced when he is excited. His hands with their worn nails and square-ended fingers are those of the worker, and the least adapted to sleight-of-hand tricks of any that I have seen.

He gives an impression of honesty and frankness, which increases as one comes to know him more closely, who seemed to me from manner and appearance to be less likely to be in a conspiracy [together with Mrs Buxton] to deceive the public.

Hope is not in a strict sense a professional medium. I have never met anyone who seemed to me less venal than he. He charges the ridiculous sum of 4s. 6d. per dozen for prints from the negatives obtained. This sum is calculated upon the average time expended at the rate of his own trade earnings."

Ernest Oaten said of him:

"Mr. Hope was a man of no education, but he had an alert and quick mind. Conjurors and researchers have gone to the most absurd lengths to lay definite traps for him, but his quick mindedness and psychic sensitiveness generally made it easy for him to see through them.

I knew him personally and spent many hours with him in other pursuits and conversations than that of Spirit photography and will always cherish the memory of a simple, kindly, erratic man, slovenly in his photographic work, variable in his temperament, but a man who could be a true friend."

James McKenzie, wrote in 1922;

I can only say that I have never found Mr. Hope, during the few years I have known him, show the least inclination to act otherwise than as a most honest and straightforward man. I have, during the past two years, had very close relations with him at the College, and have always found him straight. No complaint of fraud has been made during this time, and many have been greatly cheered and comforted by remarkable results obtained through his mediumship.

Bernard Munns, the artist, having worked with him in 1919 wrote:

My experience of him was that he knew very little of the technical side of photography and that duplicity was absent from his character. (see Ch 11.)

James Norbury, Editor of the Lyceum Banner⁶ writing in 1933 says:

I do not know quite what I expected when I arrived at Crewe but I certainly did not expect a funny little man, in a dirty old cap, with a face wreathed in smiles, and a welcome in every word, to open the door to me at 144, Market St. With Billy Hope one glimpsed a faith so sublime, a surety in the guiding hand of God so certain, that one’s own halting acceptance gained new re-assurance, a vitality that was stronger than anything one could build into one’s philosophy of life from reading tomes or burning the midnight oil for years.

James Coates, the photographer wrote in 1921:

Take Mr. William Hope, possibly now the greatest living psychic photographer. I know him to be positive, lacking in tact, careless to a degree, and not always too thoughtful about those little niceties of care, give and take, in his relation to others or his patrons as he might be. But I have no doubt whatever of the genuineness of his mediumship. A man of integrity, with a character of unusual Christian sweetness. His simplicity, nay, even inefficiency in matters photographic, was only equalled by his sincerity and impulsive warmheartedness.

Mr G.H. Lethem J.P. Editor of Light wrote in the London Magazine:

All those who knew Mr Hope know that he is no magician,but just a simple, earnest, God-fearing man.⁷

Mr. James Douglas, Editor of the Sunday Express, wrote of Hope, with whom he had experimented:

He is uneducated. He is homely. He is humorous. He is simple. He is religious. He seems quite artless and sincere. Altogether he is an amazing character. ⁸.

Lady Glenconner said in Light 1919:

"I have known Mr Hope for close on three years, and I have pleasure in introducing him to you as my friend, and a man of integrity and the utmost honesty of purpose.

See more of these ‘Observations’ on Billy Hope in Chapter 24.

From here on I shall call him William, for that is how the writers of the time addressed him.

1. ‘News from the Other Side’ p219

2. ‘Photographing the Spirit World’, by Cyril Permutt.

3. See also Light p.222; April 2nd 1921

4. As my great-grandfather did. He moved his family to the North-East around Newcastle and set up a ‘Photographic Studio’ to provide opportunities for the residents of the area to have their images immortalised.

5. supervising a drapery business possibly refers to Annie’s occupation as a Dressmaker (1911) and Florence in the 1921 census as a Machinist on own account –and in particular – Pinafores

6. The Lyceum Banner is the journal of the educational sector of the Spiritualist Movement founded back in 1890.

7. Light, 1920 (p133) (Quotation from Warrick Experiments in Psychics)

8. Daily Express, 9th Dec., 1921. (Quotation from Warrick Experiments in Psychics)

People you will meet along the Way

Having spent more than three years working through 100 year old journals, magazines, and books to me these people are as familiar as old friends, but their backgrounds and status may be unknown to you. To give you some perspective of their ‘standing’ in the accounts that follow I introduce them here. They are presented, as near as possible, in order of appearance, as are the characters in a play.

Felicia Scatcherd (1862 -1927) a member of the S.P.R., a researcher a Journalist and a Spiritualist. She helped W. T. Stead found Julia's Bureau. She was associated with the study of psychic photography from the very early days of the century with some study being undertaken in France. She worked with William Hope from 1909, becoming a good friend and champion and careful scrutineer until her passing in 1927.

Rev. Charles. L. Tweedale, Vicar of Weston Church. He was educated at Durham University, England. Having worked in slums, and suburbia he later moved to the country parish of Weston, near Otley, in Yorkshire. A talented and versatile man, he was an astronomer, a musician, a maker of violins and an inventor. He published books on astronomy and discovered a comet. His wife was a good clairvoyant and trance medium and they had their own home circle with their daughter.

In the early 1920s, he founded the Society of Communion for spiritualist members of the Church of England. The society insisted on the acceptance of the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and existed mainly to encourage psychic study among Anglicans. He was a close friend of psychic photographer William Hope, whom he defended against hostile criticism. He published the following books on Spiritualism: Man's Survival After Death (1909, 1920, 1925, 1931); Present Day Spirit Phenomena and the Churches (1917); The Vindication of William Hope (1933); News From the Next World (1940). He died June 29, 1944.

Mr. W. J. West, the managing director of Kodak’s manufacturing arm in Scotland, an expert photographer and interested in Spiritualism. He was invited to be present at sittings with the Crewe Circle in their first excursion to Glasgow in 1914 and he interviewed Hope as to his beginnings in his office (see Chapter 1). Later he often sat with Mrs Perriman in Direct Voice séances.

Mr. William Walker (1849-1915) An ex-Railway employee, he was a man of many activities and interests, a bee-keeper, geologist, botanist and a love of painting in both water colours and oils. He had a keen inquisitive mind. His connection with Spiritualism commenced in the early 1880s. In 1884 he left the Church of England and commenced sitting at home with a few friends. The outcome of this circle was the Cromford and High Peak Society. The meetings were held in his house. He became a well-developed trance speaker, always in demand among Societies in Derbyshire and the neighbouring counties. A former President of Buxton Photographic Society) and lecturer on Psychic Photography, illustrated with Lantern slides, many taken by Wm. Hope when Walker was present. He first sat with the circle in 1910, and became a close friend of Hope and the Circle until his passing in 1915.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859 – 1930) physician, author, spiritualist, lecturer. Member of the S.P.R. from 1890s. He had memorable conclusive sittings with the circle and sprang to their defence in 1922 with The Case for Spirit Photography. He travelled widely promoting spiritualism and wrote – The New Revelation, The Vital Message and The History of Spiritualism on the subject as well as his better known Sherlock Holmes stories.

Mr. James Coates: A highly regarded photographic expert, investigator and author of Photographing the Invisible (1911). Host to sittings at Rothesay on the circle’s first visit to Scotland in 1914. A member of the S.S.S.P, he sat privately a number of times with the Crewe circle with excellent results.

Mr Ernest Oaten (1875 – 52), A good medium, he edited the journal The Two Worlds (1919-1945). He became president of the International Federation of Spiritualists and the Spiritualists’ National Union (1915-20, 22-23). In his role as chairman of the Parliamentary Committee of the Spiritualists National Union, he pressed for reform of the Witchcraft and Vagrancy Acts. He worked closely with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, fighting for the rights of spiritualist mediums.

In 1934, Oaten made history by becoming the first person to speak about Spiritualism and mediumship on a live radio broadcast of the BBC. He was convinced that the spirit world exists around us like the atmosphere. He said that death is similar to a railroad terminal where we change trains to move on to the next world. Hence, let me say categorically and emphatically – I know that there is a life beyond this, for I have talked with the people who live in it.

Oaten published Some Problems Concerning the Next State of Life in 1915, The Relation of Modern Spiritualism to Christianity in 1924 and That Reminds Me in 1938.

Ven. Archdeacon Thomas Colley Rector of Stockton (Warks) (1839-1912) Some called him eccentric – he was certainly ‘colourful’. The title Archdeacon came from his time in Natal. For more detail see Chapter 5. He worked extensively with the Crewe Circle in the early years, producing many psychographs as well as photographs. He introduced Felicia Scatcherd and Professor Henslow to the Crewe Circle (see Chapters 4-6).

Rev. Prof. George Henslow. The Rev. Professor George Henslow was another eminent scholar who took an interest in Hope’s work through his friendship with Archdeacon Colley, and his book "Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism", published in 1919, has been a treasure chest of records on the early work of the circle. After achieving an M.A. degree at Cambridge he went into the church. He later became the Headmaster of two Grammar schools, Lecturer in Botany at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and Queen’s College. He then returned to the Curacies of churches in London while pursuing his interest in Botany. He became Honorary Professor of the Royal Horticultural Society and he was a prolific author and speaker on botanical subjects. Around 1904 he moved to Leamington and later to Bournemouth where he died on 30 December 1925.

Mr. Alfred Kitson A well-known and well-loved figure in Spiritualist Lyceum Circles (the Educational arm of the Movement). Growing up in a mining family in West Yorkshire, he was ‘down the pit’ by the age of nine with just two afternoons a week allowance to attend a local school. (1864). He then educated himself and grew to lead Spiritualist Lyceums and write pieces for the early Lyceum Manuals, guided many times, by his hero Andrew Jackson Davis, the American seer.

Mr. Stanley De Brath (1854-1937) A frequent contributor to the journal Psychic Science, published by the British College of Psychic Science, from 1922 and to Light. He was a psychical researcher, author, and translator. He trained as a civil engineer and spent 20 years in government service in India before becoming headmaster of a preparatory school in England. In 1890 he attended a séance by Cecil Husk and thereafter became intensely interested in psychical research and Spiritualism. His own contributions centred upon his writing, editing, and translating work. His early books include Psychic Philosophy (under the pseudonym C. Desertis, 1909), The Mysteries of Life (1915), and The Science of Peace (1916). In 1918 he began spending time in Paris, collaborating with the French researcher Gustave Geley at the Institut Métapsychique International. He was responsible for the English translation of Geley's From the Unconscious to the Conscious (1920). He died December 20, 1937, at Kew, London.

Sir William Barrett, (1844-1925) One of the distinguished early psychical researchers, a principal founder in 1882 of the Society for Psychical Research in England. Born in Jamaica, educated at Old Trafford Grammar School, Manchester, England. He became a science master, physics lecturer, and, from 1873 to 1910, professor of physics at the Royal College of Science, Dublin, Ireland. A fellow of the Royal Society, the Philosophical Society, and the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Royal Irish Academy. He was a highly respected scientist, responsible for important developments in the fields of metal alloys and vision.

James Hewat McKenzie and his wife, Barbara were founders of the British College of Psychic Studies in 1920. Mr McKenzie was a British parapsychologist. He studied and investigated it for many years and presented a series of lectures in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow in 1915. The following year he published Spirit Intercourse: Its Theory and Practice and the pamphlet If a Soldier Dies, which received very wide circulation.

McKenzie toured America in 1917 and again in 1920, searching for good mediums. In 1920, he founded the British College of Psychic Science, funding it himself. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle commented, the Psychic College, an institution founded by the self-sacrificing work of Mr. and Mrs. Hewat McKenzie, has amply shown that a stern regard for truth and for the necessary evidential requirements are not incompatible with a human treatment of mediums, and a generally sympathetic attitude towards the Spiritualistic point of view.

Psychic Science, the college quarterly magazine, began in 1922. That same year McKenzie and his wife visited Germany, Poland, and Austria, investigating mediums and psychics along the way. He was especially interested in physical mediumship. They had regular sittings in their special ‘quiet room’ for meditation. Barbara was the medium, and as she sat she became aware of various new influences operating on her receptive mind, which seemed distinct from her ordinary thoughts of which she had full control. Various personalities 'spoke' through her, giving evidence regarding matters of which she had no knowledge, but, illustrating the influence of the mind, they would very often answer questions on which her husband had been pondering, arising out of his intensive reading.¹

On his death in 1929, his wife took over the presidency of the college. She was then succeeded in 1930 by Mrs. Champion de Crespigny. The Crewe Circle were held in such esteem that they were part of the fabric from the first months of its being.

Mr. William Jeffrey a prosperous Glasgow merchant, a man of singularly keen and incisive intellect, and one of the finest amateur conjurors in this country, and possibly a former chairman of the Magic Circle in Scotland. Mr. Jeffrey went into the movement with the idea that in the course of a month or two he could show the whole thing to be a fraud. But within the course of a month or two he came to a very different conclusion, with the result that he is one of the most trenchant, powerful and unflinching advocates of the spiritualistic cause, (Dr. Ellis Powell, chair, Queens Hall April ’21 the Third Arthur Conan Doyle lecture). He was present at the first visit of the Crewe Circle to Glasgow. He became a member of the S.S.S.P. and a good friend of the Circle. In 1920 George Lethem said of him in Light, June 1920: he is as keen a conjuror as ever, but he is ready to tell all and sundry that the Crewe Circle spirit photography is beyond a conjuror’s art. (See photos of opening veil drapery in Chpt 10.)

Estelle Stead. (1880-1966) Daughter and co-worker of W.T. Stead. After his passing on the ‘Titanic’ she continued his work at Julia’s Bureau and worked with Pardoe Woodman to receive writings from her father producing The Blue Island and other writings tranmitted by her father. She supported the work of Mrs. Deane in the cenotaph pictures which caused so much controversy in the early 1920 but was backed by information from her father in the Spirit World. (see Appendix 11)

Mr. Wm. Cowell Pugh Born in Shrewsbury in 1870, he sought work in various towns till he arrived in Middlesbrough in 1894. He soon became an active member of the Lyceum there. He met his wife at the Lyceum and later became Secretary of the Lyceum District council while he was a Postmaster by day and host to the Crewe Mediums on their visits there. His wife was a powerful medium herself. He passed in January 1925.

Mr. Henry Blackwell A Vice-President of the S.S.S.P. – he had wide experience of spirit photography from the early days of Mr Boursnell. with whom he had many sittings. He sat with Mr. Hope and Mrs. Deane, also with mediums for photography in Canada and the United States, and had a collection of some two thousand Extras obtained at his own sittings, including deceased relatives, the faces of a great number of well-known statesmen, writers, politicians; also fairies, flowers, etc. He was a convinced spiritualist and his long-continued practical experiments confirmed him in his conviction. He regarded the photographic extras as the work of the departed in the spirit world; and his experience with mediums, photographic and other, was so vast that his interpretation of the phenomena he witnessed must carry much weight. He defended Hope in the Oliver Lodge controversy in 1909.

Mr. A.W. Orr. Director of The Two Worlds Publishing Company a well-known figure in the early Spiritualist movement; he was instrumental in setting up the Britten Memorial Trust shortly after the death of Emma Hardinge Britten in 1899 with co-workers Mr. J. Burchell, Mr. J. J. Morse, Mr. S. Butterworth, Mr. S. S. Chiswell, and Mr. J. Venables. Mr. A. W. Orr was Hon. Sec, a position he held for over twenty years. He had many experiences of good genuine psychic photographs with the Crewe Circle for himself, and friends he introduced. Orr died on August 31st 1937.

Mr. W.G. Mitchell. A Vice-President of the S.S.S.P., and President of the Darlington Photographic Society. President of the Darlington Spiritualist Society. He was a photographer and investigator of considerable previous experience.

Mr. Baguley, President of Crewe Spiritualist Society who defended Hope over the Oliver Lodge psychograph dispute in 1909. He knew the members of the circle well as they attended his Society’s meetings in Crewe.

Lady Glenconner She had many experiments at Crewe. Most notable for receiving photo of McKenzie’s son but not her own and identifying their unrecognised extra. She did eventually get one of her son in 1919 at her home, with Mr Colledge and Mr Munn also there to verify there was no fraud.

Mr. Colledge, professional photographer living in Innerleithin, Scotland, used a stereoscopic camera alongside William Hope in sittings at Glen in 1919. (see Chapter 12)

Mr. Bernard Munns, professional artist commissioned to paint a portrait of the Glenconners’ son; witness to the Colledge-Hope sittings in 1919. (see Chapter 12)

Mr. Harry Price (1881 – 1948) a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing of fraudulent spiritualist mediums. Although Price claimed his people were from Shropshire, he was actually born in London in Red Lion Square, in Holborn. Price later became an expert amateur conjurer, joined the Magic Circle in 1922 and maintained a lifelong interest in stage magic and conjuring. His expertise in sleight-of-hand and magic tricks stood him in good stead for what would become his all-consuming passion, the investigation of paranormal phenomena. He became a member of the S.P.R. in 1922 but formed an organisation in 1925 called the National Laboratory of Psychical Research as a rival to the S.P.R.. In a letter to Psychic News Leslie Price² reports that Dr Trevor Hall (Search for Harry Price) wrote in a letter to him ... his first publicity in psychical research in the 1920s came from his exposure of Hope, the spirit photographer of the Crewe Circle.

Mr. James Seymour, a conjuror linked to the Magic Circle, colluded with Price in a Test sitting on Hope in February 1922 at the suggestion of Eric Dingwall, research officer of the S.P.R.

Mr. Eric Dingwall, (1890-1986), psychical investigator, anthropologist, author and librarian, was born in Sri Lanka. He studied at Cambridge. He spent a year in America working for the American Society for Psychical Research before joining the Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R.) in 1920, becoming its Research Officer two years later. He was noted for a robustly critical approach that often brought him into conflict with colleagues. He was a leading member of the Magic Circle.

Mr. Fred Barlow. A paranormal photographer from Birmingham, described by James Coates as the energetic secretary of the S.S.S.P. (The Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures) and said to be one of the leading authorities on Supernormal Photography. He was Honorary Secretary of the Birmingham and Midland Society for Psychical Research (S.P.R.). He wrote the Preface and Chapter 8 of Arthur Conan Doyle's book The Case for Spirit Photography.

He states in 1921 I got results, using cameras of my own: plates loaded in dark slides, exposed and developed entirely by myself. Mr. Hope not even being in the dark room either for loading or development. I have obtained supernormal results with Mr. Hope in my own home under the most stringent conditions. In fact, in something like a score of experiments conducted during the last few years Mr. Hope has simply had no opportunity whatever of tricking, even if he had wanted to do so.

After years of vigorously testing and defending William Hope, in 1932 he did a volte-face, and with Major Rampling-Rose accused Hope of producing fraudulent pictures by the use of a miniature flashlight instrument. (see Chpt. 22).

Major Rampling-Rose was a commercial photographer with the usual professional bias against psychic photography. He deals with numberless films every year. He is naturally impressed by the fact that he never comes across psychic photographs and concludes therefrom that when others do they are not sufficiently expert or sharp not to be taken in by photographic freaks or fraud. The fact is that the persons who claim to, or are thought to produce psychic photographs are extremely rare.³

F.W. Warrick adds Many professional photographers possessing assuredly as much knowledge of photography have made careful and prolonged study of the very exceptional persons by the influence of whom Extras appear and have come to a different opinion on the matter.

1. Source of quote: Hankey, "J. Hewat McKenzie: Pioneer of Psychical Research" from http://www.survivalafterdeath.info/articles/mckenzie-barbara/harris.htm

2. Letter in Psychic News June 1995. Leslie Price’s letter continues– The point here is that in psychical research there are three ways to become famous: to report positive results, to expose someone, to get into the media. Harry Price did all three regularly, but nothing may be what it seems, starting with a fictitious early life documented in Dr Hall's book.

3. Quotation from F.W. Warrick in Experimemts in Psychics (1939).

Quotes from Observers

Psychic photography is a fact, but its phenomena are varied. Fraud there may have been, on occasions, mistakes of observation also, but there is now a vast body of evidence which can no longer be ignored or denied, establishing the fact that it is possible to obtain original photographs of those who have departed this life."

(Psychic Photography, by Rev. C.L. Tweedale, in Light March 1918)

Many storms have broken over the Crewe Circle, but the cause of them has usually been the limited knowledge of the strange possibilities of psychic photography on the part of the sitters and of the public and ... ‘the critics’ ignorance’. Hope himself was as much interested as anyone in the problem as to how the effects were produced, and had often discussed the matter, although, of course, he was satisfied that they were due to spirit agency.

(The Problems of Psychic Photography, a lecture by F. R. Scatcherd, Feb 1921)

Mr. East, a miner, of 36, New Street, Port Talbot, after a sitting in 1920 reported: When I asked what their charges were, Mr. Hope replied: ‘Four and sixpence a dozen. For the sitting, nothing. This is a gift from God, and we dare not charge for what is freely given us. Our pay is often the wonder and joy depicted on the faces of those, like yourselves, who have found that their loved ones are not entirely lost to them. We get all kinds and classes of people here. Some even are threadbare and too poor to pay train-fare, but we treat them all alike, as we recognise in each a brother or sister.’

(The Case for Spirit Photography, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 1922).

It is advisable to mention at the outset that I am fully alive to the possibility of fraud and trickery and that they constitute the great difficulty in experimentation in the field of psychics, and that trickery is (however respectable the medium or subject) ten thousand times more probable than supernormal occurrences. At the same time, I would point out that trickery in the taking of photographs under reasonably strict conditions is by no means as easy as is stated in some quarters, and such continuous trickery over a period of twenty-seven years (as in the case of Mr. Hope) without detection in the very act is unthinkable.

(Experiments in Psychics, F.W. Warrick , 1939).

The Work Begins – 1908-09

In Conan Doyle’s book, A Case for Spirit Photography, Felicia Scatcherd tells us that:

‘the circle sat every Wednesday from eight until nine, securing a picture on an average of one a month at the outset. One of the circle was a non-Spiritualist but was later converted when a picture of his father and mother were obtained.’

She continues:

A strange thing is that when all were anxiously desiring a picture, a message appeared on the first plate exposed. This message promised a picture next time and stated that it would be for the master of the house. The promise was kept several sittings later, when the picture of Mr. Buxton’s mother and of Mrs. Buxton’s sister came on the plate. Mr. Buxton was of the opinion that this was given to do away with the idea of thought photography. They were all thinking of a picture and never dreamed that such a thing as a written message would be given.

As they persevered with their sittings Hope’s own mediumship developed. From various reports we know that he was clairvoyant, occasionally giving a description, (before a sitting), of the spirit person who was close by, and later he was known to be in a light trance, under the control of a spirit Master of Ceremonies who in more than one report is named as Massa. This trance state may have accounted for his distracted behaviour, frequently commented on in reports, when taking the photographs.

Even here at the beginning of his development the first controversy begins. Felicia Scatcherd records in Conan Doyle’s book:

"Many storms have broken over