Reuben Briggs Davenport

“ And here the infamy of bringing forward two little girls to do the work of base and vulgar charlatanism, appears in all its revolting character. The eldest of the children was then but nine years old. Had she been dressed in accordance with her tender age, it would have taken only very slight observation to detect the secret of the “rappings.” Those persons now living, who were present at this and at other public exhibitions of Spiritualism at that time, will easily remember that Margaret and Catherine Fox appeared on a platform in long gowns, as if they had been full-grown women. ”

“ Spiritualism is a humbug from beginning to end. It is the greatest humbug of the century. I don’t know whether she has told you this, but Maggie and I started it as very little children, too young, too innocent, to know what we were doing. Our sister Leah was twenty-three years older than either of us. We got started in the way of deception, and being encouraged in it, we went on, of course. Others, old enough to have been ashamed of the infamy, took us out into the world. ”

“ From so little a plant has grown a gigantic weed of deceit, corruption and fraud, nurtured upon the fattening lust of money, and of the flesh.
What has developed from it is not alone a system of so-called communications through a puerile code of signals with an unseen world; but, as Dante describes, in his incomparable epic, forms of monstrosity which combine a hideous human semblance and a loathly animal foulness, so this venomous evil has become conglomerate in its hateful phases of delusion, and its petty sordidness and depravity. ”

“ But of all the professors of occult science, hermetic philosophy or Spiritualism, the Rosicrucians were the most exalted and refined. With them the possession of the philosopher’s stone was to be the means of health and happiness, an instrument by which man could command the services of superior beings, control the elements, defy the abstractions of time and space, and acquire the most intimate knowledge of all the secrets of the universe. ”

“ Thus the doctor wrote to Maggie in New York:
“Is the old house dreary to you? * * * Oh, Maggie, are you never tired of this weary, weary sameness of continual deceit? Are you thus to spend your days, doomed never to rise to better things?—you and that dear little open-minded sister Kate (for she, too, is still unversed in deception) —are you both to live on thus forever? You will never be happy if you do; for [Pg 223] you are not, like Leah, able to exult and take pleasure in the simplicity of the poor, simple-hearted fools around you. ”

“ Some day it will be known that one other person beside Lizzie, who afterwards occupied a filial relation to this woman, detested even more strongly the atmosphere of hypocrisy and deceit with which the latter surrounded herself, and hated, too, the rankling obligation under which an unkind fate had placed her.
It is not so wonderful that men of learning and originality were drawn to the mysterious séances of the Fox girls, when it is considered that they became a sort of fashionable “fad,” as the receptions of Mesmer did in the last century in Paris. ”

“ There are many who, if they would but speak truly, could declare that ruin of conscience, brain and health, has resulted either from their willing faith in flimsy illusions or their weak connivance in puerile deception.
I have touched but little upon the unclean side of Spiritualism. Thousands upon thousands of virtuous men and women entertain its theory or hold to its faith. ”

“ When the children persisted in deluding their mother, partly for their amusement and partly because they were ashamed to retract what had already caused so much excitement and had drawn so much attention to themselves, Lizzie used to break out indignantly:
“Now, Maggie, how can you say that it was done by spirits! You know yourself that it’s all a story. It’s a great shame to pretend such things.” ”

“ Margaret Fox Kane says at the present time:
“The apple-dropping trick appeared to us small children so simple and innocent, that we could only wonder that any one attached so great an importance to the sounds we produced. Only think of our ages at that time, and then ask, if you will, how we could have even the shade of a realization of the real meaning of this deception!
“This lying book of Mrs. Underhill’s, notwithstanding its abominable object, does give some slight inkling of the truth here and there.
“It is thus that the wicked confound themselves. ”

“ Kane wrote:
“At present, you have nothing to look forward to, nothing to hope for. Your life is one constant round of idle excitement. Can your mother, who is an excellent woman, look upon you, a girl of thirteen, as doomed all your life to live surrounded by such as now surround you, deprived of all the blessings of home and love and even self-respect?” ”

“ Kane was still in Europe, and that she would never return to this country. I even heard at the time when Katie, her sister, was sent abroad, that Maggie was in Rome, in company with a well known gentleman. I am very much surprised to know that she is in this city, and more surprised that she threatens to make such silly pretended revelations as you say she proposes. They can only be revelations in name. She cannot reveal anything that can injure the spiritualist cause or that will weaken in any one’s mind the truth of what we teach. ”

“ The evil effects of Spiritualism upon the moral and mental condition of its followers is the deepest [Pg 237] stain upon its history. The wrecks of thousands of intellects are monuments to its heartless fraud and malign influence.
Mrs. Kane has often said that if in her late years she had wholly submitted herself to its foolish vagaries and its base temptations, she would undoubtedly be now a raving maniac. ”

“ Thus they went from one stage to another of this queer illusion, and, being compelled by a harder and more mature intelligence to repeat their part over and over again, became the chief means of establishing that injurious belief in communications from the spirits of the departed, of which such great numbers have become the victims.
Many an older offender against common sense, reason and strict morality persists through force of circumstance in the pathway he has chosen, and does not turn backward, merely because he cannot do so without wearing the face of shame. ”

“ The multitude of forms that a certain kind of deception, when once it obtains a foothold in the public mind, will assume, is often wonderful.
Spiritualism has resorted to all the trickery that for ages has been used to delude and delight the populace. ”

“ Kane on her arrival in this city, the striking head-lines of which I have cited above, capped the climax of consternation. This article is well worthy of reproduction.
The eccentric circles wherein “isms” reign in discordant supremacy will be probably as deeply exercised over an approaching exposure of the tricks and illusions of Spiritualism, as they were over the rude logic of common sense and justice which drew aside the thin veil of fraud in the case of Madam Diss De Barr, and revealed the real nature of her flimsy system of deception in all its vulgar absurdity. ”

“ If these phenomena have not humbug at the bottom, so much the worse for us. What can they indicate in a spiritual way, except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point that it has ever reached while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings whom death—in requital of their gross and evil lives—has degraded below humanity. ”

“ No right minded man or woman can think otherwise.
I have found that fanatics are as plentiful among “inferior men and women” as they are among the more learned. They are all alike. They cannot hold their fanaticism in check, and it increases as their years increase. All they will ever achieve for their foolish fanaticism will be loss of money, softening of the brain and a lingering death.
MARGARET F. KANE.
This anathema dismayed those who had basely profited by Spiritualism, and it brought a deeper shock to the hearts of many who were sincere believers. ”

“ I read in the Herald of Saturday, May 5, an account of the sad misfortune that has befallen my dear sister Katie, Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, and in the article it is stated that I am still a resident of New York, which is a mistake. I sailed for England on the 22d of March, and I presume my absence has added to my darling sister’s depressed state of mind. The sad news has nearly killed me. My sister’s two beautiful boys referred to are her idols.
Spiritualism is a curse. God has set His seal against it! ”

“ That there was digging is certain.
That there had been plenty of time to hide anything that David Fox had desired to hide in the cellar, is certain.
Yet Mrs. Kane remembered absolutely nothing about anything having been found in the cellar that bore the slightest semblance to any portion of the human frame. If any bones (perchance, like those found in the creek, the skeleton of a horse) were uncovered, she denies positively that any doctor ever gave the opinion that they were the remains of a man. ”

“ Kane stoop to the level of even a partial belief in the pretended wonders of “Spiritualism.” The allusions made to it in his letters, when not grave or indignant, are full of a certain contemptuous playfulness, well calculated to reprove the conscious deceitfulness practised by the childish Maggie, while not offending the natural pride which was yet apart of her imperfectly formed character. When the doctor was in Boston, he wrote to her sister Katie:
“Well, now for talk. Boston is a funny place, and ‘the spirits’ have friends here. ”

“ Ann Leah Underhill apparently values most highly in connection with the claim of inherent and hereditary “mediumistic” powers residing in certain individuals and families. This is the somewhat noted so-called exhibition of “mediumistic” ability by a child of Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, a babe, only about six weeks old at the time that it began. It is needless to go into all the details of the wonders attributed to little “Ferdie” Jencken, now a fine lad of fifteen, which rest wholly upon the testimony of persons who were interested in magnifying them to the greatest extent. ”

“ No jugglers ever drove a more prosperous business than did the “Fox family” for a number of [Pg 127] years, when once fairly launched upon that sea of popular wonder, which somebody has said is supplied by the inherent fondness of mankind for being humbugged.
Mrs. Fish had actually the project of founding a new religion, and she tried hard to convince her younger sisters and her own child that there were really such things as spiritual communications, notwithstanding that all of those that were produced in their séances they knew to be perfectly false. ”

“ When I recovered I was driven again into Spiritualism, and I gave exhibitions with my sister Katie. I knew, of course, then, that every effect produced by us was absolute fraud. Why, I have explored the unknown as far as human will can. I have gone to the dead so that I might get from them some little token. ”

“ I make it a rule to present any petition to the Senate, which is respectful in its terms; but having discharged this duty, I may be permitted to say that the prevalence of this delusion at this age of the world, among any considerable portion of our citizens, must originate, in my opinion, in a defective system of education, or in a partial derangement of the mental faculties, produced by a diseased condition of the physical organization. I cannot, therefore, believe that it prevails to the extent indicated in this petition.
Different ages of the world have had their peculiar delusions. ”

“ David S. Fox, son of John and Margaret Fox, lived about two miles from the home of his father in Arcadia.
Maggie and Katie Fox were as full of petty devilment as any two children of their age ever [Pg 84] were. They delighted to tease their excellent old mother, who by all who knew her is described as simple, gentle and true-hearted. In their antics, they would resort to all sorts of ingenious devices, and bed-time witnessed almost invariably the gayest of larks. ”

“ Some stalwart and docile sympathizers must be enlisted outside of her own people who could be depended upon to stand by them as against too strenuous inquiry, or hot-tempered public assault.
Immediately upon Margaret’s arrival at the house in Rochester, in which Mrs. Fish lived, and which adjoined a graveyard, the “manifestations” redoubled. They were produced by the combined efforts of Leah, Margaret and Katie. Mrs. Underhill narrates that one night, about this time, a “spirit” walked about in their room, as if in his bare feet, when they were all supposed to be in bed. ”

“ It is true that never once have I received a message or the token of a word that did not leave a still unsatisfied longing in my heart, a feeling that it was not really my loved one after all, who was speaking to me, or if it was my loved one, that he was changed, that I hardly knew him and that he hardly knew me. ”

“ If Spiritualism in any form survives the blow now given it by Margaret and Catherine Fox, who were its creators, it will only be because of the veiled licentiousness introduced into it by those who have enlarged upon its original plan. ”