Fox sisters

Fox sisters
The Fox sisters were three sisters from Rochester, New York who played an important role in the creation of Spiritualism: Leah (April 8, 1813 – November 1, 1890), Margaretta (also called Maggie), (October 7, 1833 – March 8, 1893) and Catherine Fox (also called Kate) (March 27, 1837 – July 2, 1892). The two younger sisters used "rappings" to convince their older sister and others that they were communicating with spirits. Their older sister then took charge of them and managed their careers for some time. They all enjoyed success as mediums for many years.
In 1888, Margaretta confessed that their rappings had been a hoax and publicly demonstrated their method. Despite their confession, the Spiritualism movement continued to grow in popularity.
Early years
In 1848, the two younger sisters – Catherine and Margaretta – lived with their parents John and Margaret, who were Methodists, in Hydesville, New York, a former hamlet that was part of the township of Arcadia in Wayne County, New York, just outside Newark. The girls had been born and raised "in or near Consecon, a tiny village in Prince Edward County, Ontario where their father owned a farm. The family moved to Hydesville, New York in 1847.
The house was reputed to be haunted, yet is reported to have been a prank. (The sisters claimed in 1888 that they made the sounds by cracking their knuckles and other joints as well as other means. By that time, 40 years later, the sisters were famous mediums.) Margaretta Fox, in her later years noted that neighbors were sure that the house was haunted, reputedly after a man who had been murdered in the house by an (innocent) man named Bell.
Kate and Margaretta were sent to nearby Rochester during the excitement – Kate to the house of her sister Leah (now the married Leah Fox Fish), and Margaretta to the home of her brother David – and the rappings followed them. Amy and Isaac Post, a radical Quaker couple and long-standing friends of the Fox family, invited the girls into their Rochester home. Immediately convinced of the genuineness of the phenomena, they helped to spread the word among their radical Quaker friends, who became the early core of Spiritualists. In this way appeared the association between Spiritualism and radical political causes, such as abolition, temperance, and equal rights for women.
Emergence as mediums
On 14 November 1849, the Fox sisters demonstrated their spiritualist rapping at the Corinthian Hall in Rochester. This was the first demonstration of spiritualism held before a paying public and inaugurated a long history of public events featured by spiritualist mediums and leaders in the United States and in other countries.
Kate and Margaretta became famous mediums and they held séances for hundreds of people. Many of these early séances were entirely frivolous, where sitters sought insight into "the state of railway stocks or the issue of love affairs."
Horace Greeley, the prominent publisher and politician, became a kind of protector for them, enabling their movement in higher social circles. Their public séances in New York in 1850 attracted notable people, including William Cullen Bryant, George Bancroft, James Fenimore Cooper, Nathaniel Parker Willis, Horace Greeley, Sojourner Truth and William Lloyd Garrison. Although Greeley watched over the sisters, the lack of parental supervision was pernicious, as both of the young women began to drink wine.
Criticism
Beginning in 1850, some critics concluded that the girls made the rappings themselves, including physician E. P. Longworthy, John W. Hurn, Reverend John M. Austin, and Reverend D. Potts. In 1851, the Reverend C. Chauncey Burr wrote in the New-York Tribune that by cracking toe joints the sounds were so loud, they could be heard in a large hall. In the same year, investigators from the University at Buffalo concluded that the raps were made by cracking joints of their body and that the raps would not occur if they had cushions under their feet.
In 1851, Mrs. Norman Culver, a relative of the Fox family, admitted in a signed statement that she had assisted them during their séances by touching them to indicate when the raps should be made. She also claimed that Kate and Margaretta revealed to her the method of producing the raps by snapping their toes and using their knees and ankles.
Charles Grafton Page, a patent examiner and patent advocate, had developed a keen eye for detecting fraudulent claims about science. In his book Psychomancy (1853), Page observed that the rapping sounds came from underneath the girls' long dresses. In 1857, the Boston Courier set up a prize of $500 to any medium who could demonstrate a paranormal ability to their committee. The Fox sisters made an attempt and were investigated by a committee which included the magician John Wyman. The committee concluded the raps were produced by bone and feet movements and thus the Fox sisters failed the challenge. A report by the Seybert Commission in 1887 stated that after investigating various mediums including Margaret; the phenomena could have easily been produced by fraudulent methods. The report noted that the raps were heard close to Margaret and a séance sitter, Professor Furness had felt pulsations in her foot.
Kate was examined by William Crookes, the prominent physicist, between 1871 and 1874, who concluded the raps were genuine. However, Crookes was described as gullible and the mediums he investigated were caught using trickery.
Harry Houdini, the magician who devoted a large part of his life to debunking Spiritualist claims, provided this insight:
Confession
Eager to harm Leah as much as possible, the two sisters traveled to New York City, where a reporter offered $1,500 if they would "expose" their methods and give him an exclusive on the story. Margaretta appeared publicly at the New York Academy of Music on October 21, 1888, with Kate present. Before an audience of 2,000, Margaret demonstrated how she could produce—at will—raps audible throughout the theater. Doctors from the audience came on stage to verify that the cracking of her toe joints was the source of the sound.
Margaretta told her story of the origins of the mysterious "rappings" in a signed confession given to the press and published in New York World, October 21, 1888. In it, she explained the Hydesville events.
Later career and recantation
Margaretta expanded on her career as a medium after leaving the homestead to begin her Spiritualist travels with her older sister, Mrs. Underhill. Margaretta used new methods of creating raps by using the muscles of their lower leg.
Pressured by the Spiritualist movement and her own dire financial circumstances, Margaretta recanted her confession in writing in November 1889, about a year after her exhibition. She had attempted to return to Spiritualist performances, but never again attracted the attention or paying clientele of the sisters' earlier careers.
Bones in childhood house
In 1904, remains were found in the cellar when a false wall fell down. The Boston Journal published a story about the discovery, claiming that it was the body of the supposed peddler, on November 22, 1904. However, the police at the time didn't open an investigation, as a physician who examined the bones found that it consisted of random bits of bones, including chicken bones, and concluded they had been placed there as a practical joke.
A few years later, a "peddler tin box" was claimed to have been found in the cellar along with the remains, although there is no mention of the box in earlier accounts of the finding. The remains and the tin box are now in the Lily Dale Museum. Skeptical researcher Joe Nickell concluded after researching the box that at least part of the bones were those of animals, a continuation of the hoax. There has been no confirmation that the peddler existed. The alleged false wall appears to be due to an expansion of the foundation, not the concealment of a secret grave.
Personal lives
Leah, on the death of her first husband, married a successful Wall Street banker. Margaretta met Elisha Kane, the Arctic explorer, in 1852. Kane was convinced that Margaretta and Kate were engaged in fraud, under the direction of their sister Leah, and he sought to break Margaretta from the group. Kane married Margaretta nonetheless, and she converted to the Roman Catholic faith. When Kane died in 1857, she returned to her activities as a medium.
Kate had traveled to England in 1871, the trip paid for by a wealthy New York banker, so she would not be compelled to accept payment for her services as a medium. The trip was apparently considered missionary work since Kate sat only for prominent persons, who would let their names be printed as witnesses to a séance. In 1872, Kate married H.D. Jencken, a London barrister, legal scholar, and enthusiastic Spiritualist. Jencken died in 1881, leaving Kate with two sons. In 1876, Margaretta joined her sister Kate, who was living in England.
Over the years, sisters Kate and Margaretta had developed serious drinking problems. Around 1888, they became embroiled in a quarrel with their sister Leah and other leading Spiritualists, who were concerned that Kate was drinking too much to care for her children. At the same time, Margaretta, contemplating a return to the Roman Catholic faith, became convinced that her powers were diabolical.
Kate died at her home, at 609 Columbus Avenue in New York City, on July 3, 1892. Less than a year later, Margaretta, deep in alcoholism, was living on charity as the sole tenant of an old tenement house at 456 West 56th Street. She was taken to the home of Spiritualist Mrs. Emily B. Ruggles, 492 State Street in Brooklyn, where she died on March 8, 1893. All three sisters are interred in Brooklyn, New York: Margaretta and Catherine in Cypress Hills Cemetery, and Leah with the Fox family in Green-Wood Cemetery.
Legacy
Parapsychology
The Fox sisters have been widely cited in parapsychology and spiritualist literature. According to psychologists Leonard Zusne and Warren Jones, "many accounts of the Fox sisters leave out their confession of fraud and present the rappings as genuine manifestations of the spirit world." C. E. M. Hansel notes in 1989 that "remarkably, the Fox sisters are still discussed in the parapsychological literature without mention of their trickery."
In popular culture
The Fabulist Fox Sister (2020 musical), by Luke Bateman and Michael Conley.
The Foxes of Hydesville (2023 podcast), written & directed by Shawn Christensen and starring Carey Mulligan.
Notes
References
Further reading
Chapin, David. (2004). Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kent Kane, and the Antebellum Culture of Curiosity. University of Massachusetts Press.
Davenport, Reuben Briggs. (1888). The Death-Blow to Spiritualism: Being the true story of the Fox sisters, as revealed by the authority of Margaret Fox Kane and Catherine Fox Jencken. New York: G.W. Dillingham.
Edinger, Ray. (2015). Love and Ice: The Tragic Obsessions of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane, Arctic Explorer. Savannah: Frederic C. Beil, Publisher.
Hansel, C.E.M. (1989). The Search for Psychic Power. Prometheus Books.
Houdini, Harry. (2011, originally published in 1924). A Magician Among the Spirits. Cambridge University Press.
Mann, Walter. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. Rationalist Association. London: Watts & Co.
Natale, Simone (2016) Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. .
Page, Charles Grafton. (1853). Psychomancy: Spirit-Rappings and Table-Tippings Exposed. New-York: D. Appleton and Company.
Stuart, Nancy Rubin. 2005. The Reluctant Spiritualist: The Life of Maggie Fox. New York, Harcourt.
Wiseman, Richard. (2011). Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There. Macmillan.
Vincent Medina. 2016 Supernatural Existence: The Rise and fall of the Fox Sisters
External links
The Fox Sisters: Communicating with the Beyond, Spiritualism and the Lily Dale Community by John H. Martin
Boston Journal article from 1904 regarding the discovery of a body in the cellar of the Fox sisters' house.
Photograph of Kate and Maggie Fox, New York, 1852. Thomas M. Easterly. From the Missouri History Museum.
19th-century occultists
American occultists
American spiritual mediums
Burials at Cypress Hills Cemetery
People from Rochester, New York
People from Wayne County, New York
Sibling trios