Sir William Crookes

Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), a chemist and science
journalist, was born in London, and began his scientific career at the age of
sixteen when he entered the Royal College of Chemistry in Oxford Street,
London. He worked largely on organic chemistry, chemical physics and
meteorology.

Science and business were integrated activities
throughout his life. By the 1880's he had made a comfortable living from his
development and commercialisation of such ventures as the sodium amalgamation
method of gold extraction, the chemical exploitation of sewage as a fertilizer,
and also electric lighting.

He was eclectic in his interests, ranging over pure and
applied science, economic and practical problems, and psychic research. He was
a well-known name in the late Victorian scientific community. He was knighted
in 1897 and in 1910 appointed to the Order of Merit. At various times he was
president of the Chemical Society (1887–9), the Institution of Electrical
Engineers (1890–94), the Society for Psychical Research (1897), the British
Association for the Advancement of Science (1898), and the Society of Chemical
Industry (1913).[1]

The most controversial aspect of Crookes's career was his
investigation of mediums in the 1870's and 1880's. Historians such as Edmund
Edward Fournier d'Albe (2014) have speculated (perhaps anachronistically) that
it was following the death of a much-loved brother at sea that Crookes
underwent some form of ‘profound spiritual crisis.’[2]
Crookes began to attend séances, becoming interested in the kinetic, audible,
and luminous phenomena that could be witnessed in fashionable demonstrations of
the period. To the disgust of members of the scientific community such as W. B.
Carpenter, J. Tyndall, and T. H. Huxley (but supported by A. R. Wallace),
Crookes was persuaded that the mediumship of some practitioners was genuine.[3]

In 1871 he began tests on the medium Daniel D. Home involving
two different forms of lever-based experiments, in an attempt to bring these
physical phenomena under the reign of natural law.[4]
Crookes reported that they observed and recorded scientifically inexplicable
increases in the spring force in both experiments. On this experiment Crookes
said: “*The references I now give afford*
an answer to the statement that these results must be verified by others. They
have been verified over and over again. Indeed, my own experiments may be
regarded merely as verification of results already obtained and published by
eminent scientific men in this and other countries*.”[5]*
He became convinced that Home possessed a psychic force that could be used to
modify gravity, produce musical effects, and perform feats unknown to science
or conjuring. The *Royal Society*
rejected his papers on the subject on the grounds that the experimental
conditions were insufficiently exacting, so Crookes reported them in his own *Quarterly Journal of Science*. Crookes
also supported the pretty young medium Florence Cook, who materialized a
phantom called Katie King. He staked his very considerable scientific
reputation on the validity of the extraordinary phenomena he described.[6]

In the first chapter of Crookes’ ‘Researches in the
Phenomena of Spiritualism’ (1874) he made clear the issues with former attempts
at the scientific study of spiritualism: “*No*
observations are of much use to the student of science unless they are truthful
and made under test conditions; and here I find the great mass of
spiritualistic evidence to fail. In a subject which, perhaps, more than any
other lends itself to trickery and deception, the precautions against fraud
appear to have been, in most cases, totally insufficient, owing, it would seem,
to an erroneous idea that to ask for such safeguards was to imply a suspicion
of the honesty of someone present*.”[7]*
This demonstrates his desire to apply his extensive scientific background to
the honest study of such phenomena, and considered himself unique and valuable
for doing so.

His ventures into psychical research were strongly
criticized by contemporaries and certainly led him into some curious company,
but they demonstrate that he thought all natural phenomena worthy of
investigation, and that he refused to be bound by tradition and convention. He
was certainly, for a time, a significant proponent of spiritualism. However
rather than demonstrating a clear interest in uncovering the ‘spiritual meaning
and message to humanity’ widely considered to be an element of modern
spiritualism, it appears his focus tended toward scientific attempts to account
for and explain supernatural phenomena within ‘natural law’.

[1]W.
H. Brock, ‘Crookes, Sir William (1832–1919)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32639, accessed 16 Feb 2017].

[2]Edmund
Edward Fournier d'Albe, *The Life of Sir*
William Crookes *(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p.177.*

[3]W.
H. Brock, ‘Crookes, Sir William (1832–1919)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32639,
accessed 16 Feb 2017].

[4]Edmund
Edward Fournier d'Albe, *The Life of Sir*
William Crookes *(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p.174.*

[5]Masayoshi
Ishida, ‘A Review of Sir William Crookes’ Papers on Psychic Force with Some
Additional Remarks on Psychic Phenomena,’ *Journal*
of Scientific Exploration*, Vol. 26, No. 1, 2012, p.11-12.*

[6]W.
H. Brock, ‘Crookes, Sir William (1832–1919)’, Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/32639, accessed 16 Feb 2017].

[7]William
Crookes, ‘Researches in the Phenomena of Spiritualism’ (London: *The Quarterly Journal of Science*, 1874)
p.4-5.