Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1908-08-16

whenever possible personal examinations of the
seers of the visions and the places of their occur
renee. Finally. there were various subcommittee
of inquiry into the physical phenomena of spiritual
ism,-the knockings table turnings. production of
spirit forms, and similar marves of the Home
Slade-Moses type of medium" From the outset.
these subcommittee demonstrated the value of
psychic research protection to the interests of
society. by exposing, after another, the fraudu-
lent character OF the pretended wonder workers.
Enter Richard Hodsson
TN this region of inquiry no one was more success
full than a recruit from distant Australia, by name
Richard Hodgson Hodgson. unlike Sidgwick and
Myers and many Others of his associates had not
engaged in psychic research from the hope that
the truths of the Bible might thereby be demon
strated His motive that of the detective
eager to unravel mysteries. From his boyhood
he had had singular fondnesS for solving tricks
and puzzles of all sorts; and when, in 1873 he came
to England to complete his education at Cambridge,
he naturally gravitated into the company of Sidg-
wick, Myers. and Quincy busted in
undertaking that appealed to his detective instinct
He was radically different from them in tempera-
ment and point Of view-not at all mystical full
interested in occult subjects only so far as they
furnished working material for his nmble and in
quiring mind.
The Cambridge trio, however, took kindly to him,
invited him to join the Society for Psychical Re-
search. and two years after its formation in
strumenta in sending him to India to investigate
the methods of Madam Blavatsky. the high priestess
of the theosophic movement which was then winning
adherents throughout the civilized world.
an international reputation a detective of the
supernatural. With the aid of two disgruntled
conederates of the theosophist leader, he claimed
to have demonstrated the fasity of the foundations
which her claims rested, and to have shown that
downright swindling constituted large part of her
stock in trade. With redoubled ardor he now
plunged into the task of exposing the spirtualistic
mediums plying their vocation in England, and
for this purpose enlisted the assistance of a pro-
fessional conjurer, S. ]. Davey, who was also
member of the Society for Psychical Research
Davey, after little practice succeeded in dupli-
eating by sleght of hand many of the most
impressive feats of the mediums; doing this, indeed,
SO we'll that many spiritualists alleged that he was
in reality a medium himself. Hodgson for his
part, by clever analysis of the Davey performances
and of the feats of Davey's mediumistc COMPETE
tors. brought home to his colleagues in the Society
for Psychical Research lively sense of the folly of
depending the human eye detector of fraudu-
lent spiritualistic phenomena His crowning tri-
umph came with his exposure of Eusapia Paladlno
the Italian medium who is still popular on the
European continent
But in time even Hodgson met his Waterloo
Sent the United States to investigate the trance
phenomena of Mrs. Leonora E. Piper, he was forced
to confess that in her the theory of fraud fell
to the ground, and is well known Re ended by