Florence was 14 when she first began
making claims of mediumistic ability. Her claims were supported by what
appeared to be her propensity to slip into sudden trances in front of
friends and family members, during which loud knocks and raps
reverberated in the room around her. Objects were also said to move of
their own volition when Florence was in trance, a situation that
reportedly resulted in her being fired from her job as an assistant
teacher in a local school. Given to sudden trances, unable to work as an
assistant teacher, what was poor Florrie to do but answer the
paranormal call and officially declare herself a spirit medium once and
for all? And that’s exactly what she did.
At the age of 15, Florence Cook began
holding seances, with a special emphasis on the manifestation of “spirit
faces”, which appeared in a small aperture at the top of the wooden
spirit cabinet inside of which she sat with her arms and legs bound
securely to a chair. After the seance, sitters were invited to look
inside the cabinet where they would see Florence still sitting limply in
her chair, her limbs still bound, her face ashen white, supposedly a
result of the draining nature of the psychical energy she had been
required to employ in order to produce the manifestations.
Florence’s mediumistic star continued to
rise at a steady, but relatively uneventful pace until the summer of
1872, when the sudden appearance of “Katie King” at one of Florence’s
seances caused a stir among members of the spiritist community. Seasoned
seance-goers were already familiar with Katie King, who was something
of a spirit celebrity, having been a frequent guest at many American
seances ever since first appearing at seances held by the notoriously
sullen and persistently enigmatic Davenport Brothers in
Buffalo, New York and in the famed spirit room of the music-loving Koon
family of Athens, Ohio in the 1850s.
Her sudden materialization at one of
Florence Cook’s seances was the first time she had been seen outside of
the United States, which, considering her purported history, was a bit
strange. According to Katie (yes, she talked as well), she was the
spirit of Annie Owen Morgan, the daughter of a Welsh pirate called Henry
Owen Morgan (known as John King in the spirit world), who had died at
the age of 23 in the 17th century after a life of crime and disregard
for her fellow human beings. To make up for her wicked ways while in the
flesh, she was now spending her afterlife making the rounds at various
seances in an effort to convince the world of the reality of spirits and
a life beyond this one. Why she had taken the name “Katie King” after
shedding her earthly flesh is anyone’s guess. But that question was
probably the farthest thing from the minds of the sitters who witnessed
her unexpected appearance in the aperture of Florence’s spirit cabinet
that long ago summer night in Hackney. Gazing out at them with shadowed
eyes, her face deathly white, Katie explained that she would remain with
Florence for three years during which time they could expect many
extraordinary things to take place. Even so, it was almost another full
year before sitters were treated to the sight of a fully manifested
Katie, outside of the spirit cabinet, a lapse that Katie claimed was
necessary in order to allow Florence time to develop her mediumistic
skills to the proper degree required for such a feat.
Once Katie made her first full-form
appearance, the former pirate’s daughter
began appearing regularly at seances, walking among the sitters,
stopping to talk with a fortunate few, and even touching them and
allowing them to touch her. Photographs of Katie King show the figure of
a young woman draped in what look like linen bedsheets, her hair
obscured by an awkwardly shaped headdress that also seems to be made out
of a linen bed sheet. They also show a young woman whose face bears a
remarkable (if not exact) resemblance to that of Florence Cook’s.
Sitters noticed the likeness between spirit and medium as well. One
sitter, in particular, took active issue with the similarity. Londoner
John Volkman, who later married another well-known medium, Mrs. Samuel
Guppy, was attending one of Florence’s seances when Katie King appeared,
as she almost always did, and began to walk and talk among the sitters.
As Katie passed him, Volkman leapt from his chair and grabbed her
around the waist, setting off a wild struggle, in the process of which
the supposed spirit managed to leave several bloody scratches on his
face. Other sitters intervened, allowing Katie to escape from Volkman’s
grasp, at which point, according to one witness, she “simply
disappeared.” However, upon opening the door of the spirit cabinet,
those who looked inside saw Florence slumped, as usual, in her chair,
although he clothing was in an uncharacteristic state of disarray.
The incident with Volkman precipitated a
definite downward turn in Florence’s popularity. Never mind that
Volkman’s future wife, Mrs. Guppy (as she is always referred to in
spiritualist literature) was one of Florence’s most rabid rivals and
most likely had foreknowledge of what Volkman intended to do, if not a
hand in the actual orchestration of the event. The careers of 19th
century mediums were tenuous at best, rising and falling in accordance
with public perception, and the scuffle between Katie and Volkman cast
strong doubts on the spirit’s authenticity. But Florence was not about
to let one unfortunate incident destroy the success she had worked so
hard to achieve. Ever resourceful, she responded to Volkman’s salvo with
a most ingenious defense: she invited well-known scientist and
part-time psychical investigator, William Crookes to investigate her
mediumship.
Crookes, who was later
knighted and awarded the Order of Merit, was best known at the time for
his discovery of the element thallium. Twenty two years later, he would
also go down in history as the man who identified the first known sample
of helium as well as the inventor of, among other things, the Crookes
tubes, which were used for investigating cathode rays. But in 1873, he
was apparently more interested in investigating psychical phenomena and
Florence Cook in particular. His interest in psychical matters had been
sparked by the death of his younger brother, Philip, who died of yellow
fever whilst involved in the laying of telegraph cable between Cuba and
Florida in 1861. However, despite extant letters Crookes wrote to
friends and family members, which reflect what seems to be his mostly
favorable view of spiritualism, Crookes was still a scientist at heart
and insisted on conducting his investigations within rigid strictures
that precluded any attempts at fraudulence on the part of his subjects.
By the time he met Florence Cook, Crookes had already investigated some
of the most famous mediums of his day, including former Rochester rapper
Katie Fox and English levitation medium Daniel Dunglas Home. Crookes’
interest in the psychical field was great enough to prompt him to join
both The Society for Psychical Research and The Theosophical Society, on
behalf of the latter of which he served as president from 1907 to 1912.
No record exists of the details of the
first meeting between Crookes and Florence, but things must have gone
relatively well because, shortly thereafter, Crookes agreed to conduct
an extended series of test sittings with Florence at his house in Camden
Town. During the course of the tests, Florence often stayed at the
house with Crookes and his wife, Ellen, sometimes on her own, other
times accompanied by her mother and sister. As could be expected,
Crookes kept copious notes of the tests he conducted with Florence,
notes which indicate that the scientist was absolutely convinced of the
medium’s authenticity. At one point, Crookes went so far as to enlist
the aid of electrical engineer Cromwell Varley in order to ascertain
whether Florence changed her physical position during the appearance of
Katie. Connecting a galvanometer to a resistance coil, Crookes and
Varley soldered two gold sovereigns to platinum wires and attached them
to Florence’s wrists, making it impossible for Florence to move without
the movement registering on the galvanometer, which was visible outside
of the spirit cabinet. According to Crookes, the galvanometer showed no
significant fluctuations. Not only that, he claimed, but during one of
Katie’s appearances, he held her hand, which he described as “cold and
clammy” while Varley checked in on Florence, whose hand he also felt and
found to be “small and dry, and not long…like Katie’s.”
For Crookes, this seemed to be proof
enough that Florence and Katie were indeed separate entities, one a
flesh and blood young woman, the other a spirit from the other side of
the veil. But others remained unconvinced. It has been suggested that
Crookes and Florence worked together to deceive Varley, whose credulity
was necessary in order for Florence to pass the test and thus repair the
damage that had been done to her career. But if that’s true, what would
compel a man of Crooke’s reputation to risk his standing as a scientist
for the sole purpose of helping a young medium to continue bilking the
public? Well, one needn’t be a scientist or a medium to answer that
question, of course. It’s the next one that requires some pondering. If
Crookes and Florence were having an affair, how did they manage to carry
it out, in Crookes’ own house, with his wife almost always present,
several children living at home, and frequent visits from Florence’s
mother and sister?
It bears noting that, at the time of the
tests, Florence was married to a man by the name of Edward Corner, who
doesn’t seem to have been suspicious of anything untoward going on
between Crookes and Florence, or if he was, apparently made no attempt
to stop it. And Crooke’s wife, Ellen seems to have been somewhat fond of
Florence, maintaining a friendship with her even after the tests were
completed. Perhaps, if there was something between Crookes and Florence,
it never actually reached the physical stage. It’s entirely likely that
Florence, a young woman used to doing what she had to do in order to
get by, simply played on an older man’s weakness for the charms of a
pretty girl and reaped the benefits of his infatuation. Whatever
occurred or didn’t occur between them, Crooke’s support of Florence and
Katie wasn’t enough to sustain the medium’s career at its former level. A
year after completing her tests with Crookes, Florence held a seance at
which Katie appeared and broke the news that she was going to be
leaving the medium side for good. Witnesses reported that they could
hear Florence sobbing softly inside the spirit cabinet as Katie said her
sad good-byes. However, her departure from Florence didn’t stop the
spirit from showing up at numerous other seances across the globe, at
one of which she was even supposedly photographed. Unfortunately, no
extant copy of the photograph remains.
Crookes maintained an interest in
psychical investigations, but devoted himself mainly to science in the
ensuing years, lauded until the end for his many achievements and
contributions to the field. He died in 1919, two years after his wife.
Florence descended deeper and deeper into ignominy, eventually becoming a prostitute in Battersea, where she died of
pneumonia in 1904, still only in her 50s. A few years before her death,
prior to her final move to Battersea, a reporter visited her and found
her “sadly resigned, but nonetheless amiable” in her reduced
circumstances. During the course of their conversation, he claimed, the
former mediumistic star mentioned that she always slept with the light
on. “She said it was because she had pretended to be a spirit so often,”
he wrote, “that, now, in her old age, she was afraid of a real spirit
coming to punish her.”
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