page_title: Daniel Dunglas Home
section_title: Accordion experiment
hierarchical_section_title: Daniel Dunglas Home / Critical reception / Accordion experiment
caption_attribution_description: English: Sketch of the medium Daniel Dunglas Home holding an accordion in a cage.
context_page_description: Daniel Dunglas Home was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will. His biographer Peter Lamont opines that he was one of the most famous men of his era. Harry Houdini described him as "one of the most conspicuous and lauded of his type and generation" and "the forerunner of the mediums whose forte is fleecing by presuming on the credulity of the public." Home conducted hundreds of séances, which were attended by many eminent Victorians.
  There have been eyewitness accounts by séance sitters describing conjuring methods and fraud that Home may have employed.
context_section_description: In the accordion experiment, Home sat at a table, with Crookes and another observer on either side of him, each with a foot on one of Home's feet. Home inserted his hand inside a wire cage that was pushed under the table. One of Home's hands was placed on the top of the table, and the other inside the cage which held an accordion on the non-key side, so the keyed end was hanging downwards. The accordion was reported to have played musical sounds. However, the amount of light in the room was not stated, and the accordion was not observed in good light. According to Frank Podmore there was no evidence the accordion played at all, as the keys were not observed to have moved. Podmore suggested the musical sounds could have come from an automatic instrument that Home had concealed.
  In 1871, William Benjamin Carpenter wrote a critical evaluation of the Crookes experiments with Home in the Quarterly Review. Carpenter wrote that although Crookes, his assistant and Sergeant Cox claimed to have observed the accordion float in the cage; Dr. Huggins did not testify to this, and no information was given to whether the keys and bellows were seen to move. According to Carpenter no solid explanation could be given until the experiment is repeated, however, he suggested that the accordion feat that Home performed may have been a conjuring trick achieved with one hand. Carpenter concluded that Crookes should repeat the experiment in open daylight without the cage in the presence of other witnesses.
  J. P. Earwaker heavily criticized the design of the accordion experiment as it took place under a dining room table. Earwaker who read Crookes' report noted that "no reason for this strangest of all strange positions is even hinted at." He also wrote "it never occurred to [Crookes] to notice whether the keys were depressed or not... it would be obvious that if the keys were not pressed down, it was impossible for the music really to have come from the accordion, and its true source must have been looked for elsewhere."
  The magician John Nevil Maskelyne also criticized the design of the experiment for taking place under a table. The psychologist Millais Culpin wrote the experiment was not scientific and questioned why the experiment was done under the table instead of in a more convenient position on top of it. Before the accordion experiment with Crookes, Home had performed the accordion feat for over fifteen years under various conditions but always under his control. It was reported by sitters and Crookes that Home's accordion played only two pieces, Home Sweet Home and The Last Rose of Summer. Both contain only one-octave.
  The psychical researcher Hereward Carrington and spiritualism expert Herbert Thurston have claimed the accordion experiment was not the result of deliberate fraud. This is in opposition to magicians and skeptical researchers who evaluated Crookes' reports from the experiment.
  The magician Henry Evans suggested the accordion feat was Home playing a musical box, attached to his leg. Skeptic Joseph McCabe wrote that Home may have placed a musical box in his pocket or on the floor. According to McCabe "the opening and shutting of the accordion could be done by hooks, or loops of black silk. So with the crowning miracle, when Home withdrew his hand, and the accordion was seen suspended in the air, moving about in the cage (under the dark table). It was probably hooked on to the table." The 19th-century British medium Francis Ward Monck was caught using a music box in his séances that he had hidden in his trousers. The fraudulent medium Henry Slade also played an accordion while held with one hand under a table. Slade and Home played the same pieces. They had at one time lived near each other in the U.S.A. The magician Chung Ling Soo exposed how Slade had performed the trick.
  The writer Amos Norton Craft suggested a false keyboard:
  The trick has since been often repeated and explained. The medium must have the semblance of key-board, made of some light material, concealed in his coat sleeve or about his person. This he attaches 
caption: Sketch showing how Home held the accordion.
exif: {}