Mediums

Leonora Piper
1857-1950

OF BOSTON, the foremost trance medium in the history of psychical

research, to whom is due the conversion of Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Richard
Hodgson, Prof. James Hyslop and many other intellects to a belief in
survival and communication with the dead.

When eight years old playing in the garden, "suddenly she felt a sharp blow
on her right ear, accompanied by a prolonged sibilant sound. This gradually
resolved itself into the letter S. which was then followed by the words "Aunt
Sara, not dead, but with you still." The child was terrified. Her mother made
a note of the day and the time. Several days later it was found that Aunt
Sara had died at the very hour on the very day. A few weeks later she cried
out at night that she could not sleep because of "the bright light in the room
and all the faces in it," and because of the bed that "won't stop rocking."
Discounting occasional experiences of this kind, her childhood was normal.
At 22 years of age she married William Piper of Boston. Soon after this she
went to consult Dr. J. R. Cocke, a blind professional clairvoyant who was
attracting considerable attention by his medical diagnoses and cures.

She fell into a short trance. At the second visit to the clairvoyant's circle,
held for effecting cures and developing latent mediumship, when Dr. Cocke
put his hand on her head, she saw in front of her "a flood of light in which
many strange faces appeared." In trance she rose from her chair, walked to
a table in the centre of the room, picked up a pencil and paper, wrote
rapidly for a few minutes, and handing the written paper to a member of the
circle she returned to her seat. The particular member was Judge Frost, of
Cambridge, a noted jurist; the message, the most remarkable he ever
received, came from his dead son. The report of Judge Frost's experience
spread and Mrs. Piper was soon besieged for sittings. She was not at all
pleased by this sudden notoriety and apart from members of her family and
intimate friends she refused to see anyone. However, when Mrs. Gibbins,
Prof. William James' mother-in-law applied for a sitting (she heard of the
strange things through servant gossip) for some inexplicable reason her
request was granted. Her own, and subsequently her daughter's
experience, the marvellous story which they brought back induced Prof.
James to play the esprit fort before his family. But his impression of
supernormal powers on the part of the medium was so strong that he not
only continued sittings, but for the next eighteen months virtually controlled
all sance arrangements. Referring mainly to this first period of his
experiences he wrote in 1890 in SPR Proceedings, Vol. VI.;

"And I repeat again what I said before, that, taking everything

that I know of Mrs. Piper into account, the result is to make
me feel as absolutely certain as I am of any personal fact in
the world that she knows things in her trances which she
cannot possibly have heard in her waking state, and that the
definite philosophy of her trances is yet to be found."

When Prof. James began his experiments, a soi disant French doctor,
Phinuit, was in exclusive control of the sittings from the other side. He
appears to have been inherited from Dr. Cocke. He was known there as
Finne or Finnett. His manifestation was not immediate. The first control of
Mrs. Piper was an Indian girl of the strange name: Chlorine. Commodore
Vanderbilt, Longfellow, Lorette Penchini, J. Sebastian Bach and Mrs.
Siddons, the actress, were next encountered with as communicators.
Phinuit had a deep gruff voice, in striking contrast with the voice of the
medium. His exclusive regime lasted from 1884-1892 when "George
Pelham," a friend of Dr. Hodgson, who died in an accident, appeared and
manifested in automatic writing. The trance speaking was left for Dr. Phinuit
and the control, speaking and writing, was often simultaneous. In 1897 the
Imperator group took charge of the sance proceedings. Phinuit
disappeared and Pelham became relegated to the role of a minor
communicator. While Phinuit had much difficulty in keeping back other
would-be communicators, the advent of the Imperator group of controls
made the communications freer from interruptions and from the admixture
of apparently foreign elements. They excluded "inferior" intelligences,
whom they speak of as "earth-bound" spirits, from the use of the light.
Under the new regime the communications assumed a dignity and loftiness
of expression, as well as a quasi-religious character, which they had
heretofore entirely lacked. Moreover, the passing in and out of the trance
state which in the earlier stages had been attended with a certain amount
of difficulty and discomfort, now, under the new conditions, became quiet
and peaceful. Prof. William James called special attention to the point that
the Imperator group of controls not only exhibited characteristic
personalities, but they could divine the most secret thoughts of the sitters.
As a lasting influence of this regime in later years Mrs. Piper showed
remarkable development as spiritual adviser in her waking state.

"It is almost," writes Alta L. Piper in 1929, "as if, since the
trance state has been less and less resorted to, the cloak of
Rector has fallen upon Mrs. Piper herself, and the good that
she has been able to do along these lines, during the past
nine or ten years, is almost unbelievable."

Mrs. Piper did not exhibit physical phenomena, except one single
manifestation: she could withdraw the scent from flowers and make them
wither in a short time. To establish rapport with her spirit communicators
she utilised psychometric influences, usually asking for an object which was
about the person of the departed. Prof. James succeeded in hypnotising
her and found the conditions of the hypnotic and medium-trance entirely
different. He found no signs of thought-transference either in the hypnotic
condition or immediately after it. Of the earliest trances there is no
contemporary record. When, owing to other duties, Prof. James
relinquished direct control of the Piper sances he wrote to various
members of the SPR of the puzzling and remarkable facts of the
mediumship. It was the result of these representations that Dr. Richard
Hodgson arrived in America for the express purpose of continuing the
investigation on behalf of the SPR.

With his advent there began the most famous period of Mrs. Piper's
mediumship. Dr. Hodgson was the keenest fraud-hunter, the most
pronounced sceptic and he took every precaution to bar the possibility of
deception. For some time Dr. Hodgson engaged the services of a detective
to follow Mrs. Piper and watch possible attempts to obtain information
normally. On the first three days of the week, when sittings were given, Dr.
Hodgson forbade her to see a morning newspaper. He arranged the sittings
without communicating the name of the sitter to Mrs. Piper. The sitters were
in most cases unknown to her and were introduced under the pseudonym
"Smith." The sittings were often improvised for the benefit of chance callers
of whose very existence Mrs. Piper could not have been aware. She was
usually weakest precisely where the pseudo medium is most successful.
She was vague about dates, preferred to give Christian names to
surnames and mostly concentrated on the description of diseases,
personal idiosyncrasies and character of the sitters. She fished out
significant and trivial details from their past of which a fraudulent medium
could least have got hold of. On the other hand, she often failed to answer
test questions. The spirit of Hannah Wild manifesting through her could not
describe the contents of the sealed letter which she wrote before her death
and the names which Stainton Moses gave as the names of his earthly
guides were in each case incorrect.

The hypothesis of fraud has been discussed in its every aspect by Dr.
Hodgson, Professor William James, Prof. Newbold, of Pennsylvania
University, Dr. Walter Leaf and Sir Oliver Lodge. In 1898 Prof. James wrote
in the Psychological Review:

"Dr. Hodgson considers that the hypothesis of fraud cannot

be seriously maintained. I agree with him absolutely. The
medium has been under observation, much of the time under
close observation, as to most of the conditions of her life, by
a large number of persons, eager, many of them, to pounce
upon any suspicious circumstance for (nearly) fifteen years.

"During that time not only has there not been one single
suspicious circumstance remarked, but not one suggestion
has ever been made from any quarter which might tend
positively to explain how the medium, living the apparent life
she leads, could possibly collect information about so many
sitters by natural means. The scientist who is confident of
'fraud' here must remember that in science as much as in
common life a hypothesis must receive some positive
specification and determination before it can be profitably
discussed, and a fraud which is no assigned kind of fraud, but
simply 'fraud' at large, fraud in abstracto, can hardly be
regarded as a specially scientific explanation of concrete
facts."

He added, at a later period:

"Practically I should be willing now to stake as much money

on Mrs. Piper's honesty as on that of anyone I know, and I
am quite satisfied to leave my reputation for wisdom or folly,
so far as human nature is concerned, to stand or fall by this
declaration."

In 1888-89 Prof. Hyslop joined the investigation. On the first two or three
occasions he took the extraordinary precaution of putting on a mask before
he got out of the cab, removing it only after Mrs. Piper was entranced, and
resumed it before she awoke. Twelve sittings were sufficient to convince
him of the untenability of the secondary personality hypothesis. He
declared, without hesitation, that:

"I prefer to believe that I have been talking to my dead

relatives in person; it is simpler."

His first report was published in Proc. SPR, Vol. XVI. and concluded:

"I give my adhesion to the theory that there is a future life and
persistence of personal identity."

In unabated zeal, Dr. Hodgson was seeking for still more stringent
precautions and experiments and conceived the idea of removing Mrs.
Piper from her normal surroundings and placing her in a foreign country
among strangers. This is how Mrs. Piper's first visit to Britain came about.
She arrived in November, 1889. She was met at the station by Prof. (Sir
Oliver) Lodge and escorted next day to Cambridge by Myers at whose
house she stayed.

"I am convinced," says Myers, "that she brought with her a

very slender knowledge of English affairs and English people.
The servant who attended on her and on her two children
was chosen by myself, and was a young woman from a
country village, whom I had full reason to believe to be
 trustworthy and also quite ignorant of my own or my friend's
affairs. For the most part I had myself not determined upon
the persons whom I would invite to sit with her. I chose these
sitters in great measure by chance; several of them were not
residents of Cambridge; and except in one or two cases
where anonymity would have been hard to preserve, I
brought them to her under false names - sometimes
introducing them only when the trance had already begun."

Mrs. Piper gave, under the supervision of Myers, Lodge and Dr. Walter
Leaf, eighty-eight sittings between November, 1889, and February, 1890.
Wherever she stayed in Britain her movements were planned and arranged
for her and even when shopping she was accompanied by some member
of the SPR. Lodge even exceeded Myers in caution. Prior to her stay in
Liverpool his wife engaged an entire new staff of servants. Lodge safely
locked away the family Bible and, throughout the duration of her stay, all of
Mrs. Piper's correspondence passed through Sir Oliver Lodge's hands who
had permission to read it in almost every instance.

In his first sitting his father, "Uncle William" and "Aunt Ann" and a child of
his who died very young, were described. There were some flaws in the
descriptions which were later rectified. Many personal and intimate details
of their lives were given. In subsequent sittings the names of the dead
relatives were communicated in full and supernormal knowledge of the
history of the whole family was generally exhibited. Sir Oliver Lodge's
report was published in 1890 with an introduction by F. W. H. Myers, who
concluded:

1. That many of the facts given could not have been learnt even by a skilled
detective.

2. That to learn others of them, although possible, would have needed an

expenditure of money as well as of time which it seems impossible to
suppose that Mrs. Piper could have met.

3. That her conduct has never given any ground whatever for supposing
her capable of fraud or trickery.

Few persons have been so long and so carefully observed; and she has
left on all observers the impression of thorough uprightness, candour and
honesty. The second part of the report was contributed by Dr. Walter Leaf.
A letter from Prof. William James was appended in conclusion.

Sir Oliver Lodge enumerates thirty-eight cases in which information, not

within the conscious knowledge of the sitter, was given. In only five
instances did the sitter acknowledge that the facts were at one time known
to him. Considering the extraordinary familiarity of Phinuit with the boyhood
days of two of his uncles Lodge was curious how much of this knowledge
might be obtained by normal means. He sent a professional inquiry agent
to the scene for the purpose of making full and exhaustive inquiries.

"Mrs. Piper" wrote the agent "has certainly beat me. My

inquiries in modern Barking yield less information than she
gave. Yet the most skilful agent could have done no more
than secure the assistance of the local record keepers and
the oldest inhabitants living."

In his summary Lodge states:

"By introducing anonymous strangers and by catechising her

myself in various ways, I have satisfied myself that much of
the information she possesses in the trance state is not
acquired by ordinary common-place methods, but that she
has some unusual means of acquiring information. The facts
 on which she discourses are usually within the knowledge of
some person present, though they are often entirely out of his
conscious thought at the time. Occasionally facts have been
narrated which have only been verified afterwards, and which
are in good faith asserted never to have been known;
meaning thereby that they have left no trace on the conscious
memory of any person present or in the neighbourhood and
that it is highly improbable that they were ever known to such
persons. She is also in the trance state able to diagnose
diseases and to specify the owners or late owners of portable
property, under circumstances which preclude the application
of ordinary methods."

Further he says:

"That there is more than can be explained by any amount of

either conscious or unconscious fraud - that the phenomenon
is a genuine one, however it is to be explained - I now regard
as absolutely certain; and I make the following two
statements with the utmost confidence:

1. That Mrs. Piper's attitude is not one of deception.

2. No conceivable deception on the part of Mrs. Piper can

explain the facts."

After Mrs. Piper's return to America Dr. Hodgson took charge again. His
first report was published in 1892 in Vol. VIII of the SPR Proceedings. In an
excess of caution he refused to consider, on the available evidence, the
acceptance of the spirit hypothesis as justified. Yet his inner self was
wavering. He was torn with doubts. But not for long. In 1892 a notable
evolution was witnessed in the Piper phenomena in the quality of trance
communications by the development of automatic writing and by the advent
of Pelham as control. Hodgson's second report, which appeared in SPR
Proceedings, Vol. XIII, in 1897, ended with the adoption of the spirit
hypothesis. His statement was very firm:

"I cannot profess to have any doubt but that the 'chief
communicators '... are veritably the personalities that they
claim to be; that they have survived the change we call death,
and that they have directly communicated with us whom we
call living through Mrs. Piper's entranced organism. Having
tried the hypothesis of telepathy from the living for several
years, and the 'spirit' hypothesis also for several years, I have
no hesitation in affirming with the most absolute assurance
that the 'spirit' hypothesis is justified by its fruits and the other
hypothesis is not."

It is interesting to quote here the following note from Alta L. Piper's

biography of her mother:

"During the latter years of his investigation I more than once

heard Dr. Hodgson say, ruefully, that his amour propre had
never quite recovered from the shock it received when he
found himself forced to accept unreservedly the genuineness
of the so-called 'Piper phenomena.'"

A third report which Dr. Hodgson intended to publish was cut short by his
unexpected death in 1905. Mr. J. G. Piddington came over from Britain and
a committee was formed to dispose of the material on hand. The reports
were filled with intimate and personal data concerning the sitters. They
trusted Dr. Hodgson but would not trust anybody else. Finally, over the
valiant fight of Prof. Hyslop all these reports were returned to the original
sitters and the valuable material was lost. Mrs. Piper remained under the
jurisdiction of the SPR and the sittings were continued under the charge of
Prof. Hyslop.

In 1906 Mrs. Piper made a second visit to Britain. It was mainly devoted to
elucidate the mystery of cross-correspondences. Several famous
investigators (Myers, Edmund Gurney, Hodgson, etc.) died and
communications of an intricate nature were purported to emanate from their
surviving spirits. Seventy-four sittings were held with Mrs. Piper. Many
others with Mrs. Verral and Mrs. Holland. The result was summed up and
analysed by Mr. Piddington. According to his findings the coincidences of
thought and expression in the various messages were too numerous and
too detailed to be accounted for by chance. In 1909 Prof. James published
his report on the Hodgson communications in the Britain and American
SPR Proceedings jointly. He felt the presence of an external will, but could
not commit himself. On the Myers, Gurney and Isaac Thompson
communications in the same number of Proceedings Sir Oliver Lodge
wrote:

"On the whole they (messages) tend to render certain the existence of
some outside intelligence or control, distinct from the consciousness, and,
so far as I can judge, from the subconsciousness also, of Mrs. Piper or
other mediums. And they tend to render probable the working hypothesis,
on which I choose to proceed, that the version of the nature of the
intelligences which they themselves present and favour is something like
the truth. In other words, I feel that we are in the secondary or tertiary touch
- at least occasionally - with some stratum of the surviving personality of the
individuals who are represented as sending messages."

All this while it only happened once that aspersions were cast, in public, on
Mrs. Piper's character and phenomena. On October 20, 1901, the New
York Herald published a statement of Mrs. Piper, advertised as a
confession, in which she was quoted to say that she intended to give up the
work she had been doing for the SPR as fourteen years' work was not
enough to clear up the subject and summed up her own views as follows:

"The theory of telepathy strongly appeals to me as the most

plausible and genuinely scientific solution of the problem ... I
do not believe that spirits of the dead have spoken through
me when I have been in the trance state ... It may be that
they have, but I do not affirm it."

According to the inquiries made by the editor of Light Mrs. Piper forbade
the publication of the article as soon as she learnt that they advertised it
with the word "confession" above it. She received a telegram from the New
York Herald assuring her that the word was used for advertising only and
would not appear in the article. On October 25, 1901, Mrs. Piper stated in
The Boston Advertiser:

"I did not make any such statement as that published in the
New York Herald to the effect that spirits of the departed do
not control me ... My opinion is to-day as it was eighteen
years ago. Spirits of the departed may have controlled me
and they may not. I confess that I do not know. I have not
changed ... I make no change in my relations."

As Sir Oliver Lodge points out, her honesty was not in question and the
New York Herald spoke of her throughout in laudatory terms;

"since little value would be attached to her opinion in favour

of the spiritistic hypothesis, it cannot fairly be urged that her
opinion on the other side would weigh with us. Mrs. Piper in
fact ... is not in a more favourable, but even in a less
favourable position for forming an opinion than those who sit
with her, since she does not afterwards remember what
 passes while she is in trance."

The management of Mrs. Piper's work during 1908-09 was a grave mistake
says Mrs. Piper's biographer. Instead of being carried on along systematic
and evidential lines it was devoted largely to private and personal sittings of
which inadequate or no records were kept. The sitters also undertook to
make certain physical tests and experiments of an unwarrantably harsh
character. According to Alta L. Piper this had an important share in the
temporary withdrawal of power. In October, 1909, Mrs. Piper made her third
visit to Britain. Prostrated by a heavy cold she was not able to give her first
two or three sittings before late spring and early summer of 1910. These
sittings were supervised by Sir Oliver Lodge. The return from the trance
state was very difficult. Both the sitters and the controls were disturbed by
the conditions and at a sitting on May 24, 1911, a coming suspension of
mediumship was announced. The last sitting was held on July 3. After the
appearance of a new control, "Mme. Guyon" it was closed by Imperator. In
the years that followed communications by automatic writing remained
intermittent but the trance state did not make its appearance until 1915
when the famous Faunus message, relating to the forthcoming death of Sir
Oliver Lodge's son, Raymond was given. Between 1914 and 1924 no
regular work was done by Mrs. Piper. The failing health of her mother to
whom she was very devoted, made increasing demands upon her time and
strength, Further, no suitable supervisor for her work was found. In October,
1924, Dr. Gardner Murphy conducted a series of sittings at the end of
which the SPR agreed that Mrs. Piper should sit with the Boston SPR
during the season of 1926-27. She complied.

Mrs. Piper's work cannot be sufficiently appreciated. For several decades

her powers were tested to a degree which no other medium had
approximated. Psychical research owes a debt to her which cannot be
discharged.

Bibliography: Sage M.: Mrs. Piper and the SPR, 1903; Anna Manning
Robbins: Both Sides of the Veil, 1909; Alta L. Piper. The Life and Work of
Mrs. Piper, 1929.

Source (with minor modifications): An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).

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