The Witch of Lime Street

by David Jaher

  MORE ADVANCE PRAISE FOR DAVID JAHER’S The Witch of Lime Street

  “Jaher’s narrative style is as engaging as his character portraits are colorful. Together, they bring a bygone age and its defining spiritual obsessions roaring to life. Fascinating, sometimes thrilling, reading.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “In this meticulously researched and entertaining work, David Jaher explores a largely forgotten chapter in Anglo-American history—the post–World War I rise of Spiritualism, born of a deep desire to commune with the spirits of slain soldiers. The cast of fascinating, masterfully drawn characters ranges from Harry Houdini, a supreme rationalist, to Margery Crandon, a self-proclaimed Boston medium with a huge following. This is, on a deep level, a cautionary tale of the bizarre, painful deception and self-deception associated with human unwillingness to accept the finality of death—especially youthful death.”

  —Susan Jacoby, author of Freethinkers and The Age of American Unreason

  “David Jaher’s tale of the bizarre 1920s fever fad for Spiritualism and séances is as gripping as a mystery thriller, as evocative of that post–Great War decade as a documentary, and as haunting as a ghost story. A fascinating piece of time travel to a forgotten era.”

  —Kate Buford, author of Native American Son: The Life and Sporting Legend of Jim Thorpe

  “Jaher’s meticulously researched account of Scientific American’s infamous contest to find an authentic medium had me racing through the pages to find out how it all turns out. To keep this spoiler free, I’ll just say that the paranormal showdown of the early twentieth century doesn’t wrap up how you may think.”

  —Stacy Horn, author of Unbelievable: Investigations into Ghosts, Poltergeists, Telepathy, and Other Unseen Phenomena, from the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory

  Copyright © 2015 by David Jaher

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN is a registered trademark and the Crown colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jaher, David.

  The witch of lime street : séance, seduction, and Houdini in the spirit world / David Jaher. — First Edition.

  1. Margery, 1889–1941. 2. Women mediums—United States—Biography. 3. Spiritualists—United States—Biography. 4. Spiritualism—United States—History—20th century. 5. Houdini, Harry, 1874–1926. 6. Doyle, Arthur Conan, 1859–1930. I. Title.

  BF1283.C85J34 2015

  133.9'1092—dc23

  [B] 2105009392

  ISBN 9780307451064

  eBook ISBN 9780307451088

  Cover design by Elena Giavaldi

  Cover photographs: (Harry Houdini) Corbis; (Mina Stinson) Mary Evans Picture Library/Everett Collection

  v4.1_r1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I: The Dead Boys

  The Borderland

  Occult Fever

  Madame Ouija

  The Ether of Space

  Waiting for the Sunrise

  Part II: The River of Doubt

  The Wand of Youth

  The Magician in Love

  The Spiritualist Ties

  The Great Leap

  The American Mysteriarch

  Seek and Ye Shall Find

  A Séance for Teddy

  Part III: The New Wilderness

  1922: Don’t Let Them Tame You

  The Salt Highway

  The Men from Beyond

  Séance by the Sea

  The Prize

  The Ghost Hunters

  Part IV: The Saxophone and Spirit Trumpet

  1923: Speed

  A Jaunt with Kitty

  A Square Deal for the Psychics

  The New Sherlock Holmes

  The Crawford Experiment

  The Eve of the Hunt

  Part V: The Great Spirit Hunt

  The Wizards of Sound

  The Jolly Medium

  You Must Not Laugh

  A Waste of Science

  The ABC Club

  The Dark Side of Summerland

  Faces in the Sky

  I Am a Winner

  The Spookess from Chicago

  Ain’t We Got Fun

  The Helson Report

  Bearding the Lion

  The White Dove

  Sensationnel

  The Boy Medium

  Part VI: The Witch of Lime Street

  1924: An Evening on Lime Street

  Margery

  Dangerous Games

  Kisses from the Void

  Catch Her If You Can

  The Tipping of the Scales

  House of Crimson

  All the Muse That’s Fit to Print

  A Dead Man Rising

  Everything Lovely

  A Shake-Up in the Contest

  Who Is Margery?

  A Man As Light As a Feather

  Onward, Psychic Soldiers

  Houdini’s Box

  Showdown at the Charlesgate

  The Postmortem

  A Drawn Battle

  Two Gospels

  She Did That with Her Hair

  It Was Some Party, Wasn’t It?

  Voodoo Priestess

  Part VII: Spirits of the Dead

  1925: The Fading Light

  A Stormy Forum

  Showman and Scientist

  A Living Demonstration

  All Eyes Were on Boston

  The Unkindest Cut of All

  The Craziest Road of All

  Houdini Won’t Talk No More

  The Blooded Reporter

  Lost Boys

  To Hell with Harvard

  Such Damn Fools

  Part VIII: How Death Deals Its Cards

  1926: The End of Magic

  Philadelphia

  Chicago/Washington

  New York

  Boston

  Montreal/Detroit

  A Grim Halloween

  Will Houdini Return?

  The Gift

  Part IX: The Shadow of a Dream

  The Last Dance

  1930: A Troubled Spirit

  I Ain’t Pretty Anymore

  Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life!

  When the Rain Stopped

  Sources

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For my grandmother, Henrietta Jaher, and the memory of her son, my father, Frederic Cople Jaher

  Magick…is the most perfect and chief science.

  —MARCUS AGRIPPA

  The Borderland

  A woman in a black velvet coat pushed through the revolving doors of the Grosvenor Hotel and, waving a miniature Union Jack in each hand, waltzed slowly around the marble hall. The gentlemen loitering there watched her dance past the sitting room that had been as subdued as a séance circle moments before. Almost as one they put aside their newspapers and rose from their armchairs. Such a spectacle at eleven in the morning—in the staid Grosvenor of all places—could only mean one thing: the boys had done it at last! Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was among the first to cheer. For four years the famous detective writer had displayed unwavering support for the Cause. He felt strongly that the War was worth the grievous cost.

  Like many parents throughout the country, Sir Arthur’s thoughts turned at once to his son. Here was the sort of boy to whom the nation owed its gratitude! Capt. Kingsley Doyle of the First Hampshires had fought with distinc
tion at Arras and been wounded at the Somme. To his father’s relief, he had recently been transferred to London. Sir Arthur had seen him less than a fortnight previous, “looking his brave steadfast self.” Now, for all of them, the long struggle was over. A raucous cheer was heard from the street. The woman in black departed without saying a word. Following her lead, Sir Arthur rushed out to witness the great celebration of November 11, 1918.

  He didn’t know how so many flags could immediately appear, but they seemed to be waving from every window along Buckingham Palace Road. An old fellow was shaking a rattle as though it were New Year’s Eve. Motors were tooting. The maroons were crashing. It sounded like all of London was banging away. Jostled by a rush out of Victoria, Sir Arthur lost his bowler. Picking up another man’s hat, he joined the march to the palace. Toward the Mall boisterous soldiers converged with munitions girls in overalls. A young girl, hoisted onto the top of an omnibus, led a crowd in singing “Tipperary.” But then something spoiled the moment for Doyle. A motorcar pulled up with officers in staff uniforms and a “hard-faced” civilian. The man in plainclothes wrenched open a bottle and crudely poured whiskey into his mouth. Sir Arthur half hoped the crowd would lynch him. The British Empire had lost a million men. He felt no need to mourn them—mourning was, so to speak, against his religion. The Armistice was for him a day of communion and prayer.

  When Sir Arthur reached the palace, he didn’t attempt to penetrate the cheering throng in the courtyard. Taller than most, he could see the balcony over the main entrance festooned with scarlet and gold. It had started to drizzle. A crowd of soldiers chanted, “We want King George!” Moments later he heard a single mighty cheer. The King in his naval uniform and the Queen in a fur coat emerged from a window and stood on the balcony waving to the crowd. A sudden hush took hold as the Guards presented arms. Officers stood at attention. Men removed their hats. The band struck up and twenty thousand voices began to sing. Sir Arthur had never heard a more rousing rendition of “God Save the King.”

  ♦

  Four years earlier, under a bright August sky, Londoners then too sang the hymn and called for their Regent. War had just been declared and Sir Arthur had rushed to enlist. Despite being fifty-five at that time, he was a man with prodigious energy and verve. He still played a respectable game of cricket, broke a hundred at billiards, skied the Alpine passes, raced motorcars, and was a crack shot with both a Lee Enfield and sidearm. Respectfully, the War Board turned him down. He resigned himself to training the old chaps in the Home Guard. Few civilians, however, were as informed of the Great War’s progress as he—officially a mere deputy lieutenant in the Civilian Reserve of Surrey—for Sir Arthur had performed special service for the Crown. Asked in 1914 to lend his influential pen to the war effort, he wrote an effective piece of recruitment propaganda: To Arms! The call of duty had also inspired him to undertake an epic account of the War—The British Campaign in France and Flanders—for which the generals supplied the material. It was the younger men in his family who did the fighting. To Arms! he had urged, and to the trenches they’d gone.

  ♦

  From the beginning it had been a ghostly war. Something otherworldly had reportedly appeared in the sky over Mons, Belgium—where in their first action the British Expeditionary Force was overwhelmed by the Huns. Clouds in the shapes of celestial warriors were rumored to have protected the small army in their retreat. Firsthand witnesses to the vision seemed as elusive as the shades. Still, it became widely accepted in England that a miracle had occurred. Sir Arthur was not so sure. The German waves had met the best riflemen in Europe firing fifteen rounds a minute. Had the British really needed ghost archers from Agincourt to save them that day in Flanders? The battle had affected Sir Arthur in a more personal way. His brother-in-law Malcolm Leckie had served valiantly as a medical officer at Mons, and had died there.

  When a soldier died at the front, the Tommies would say that he’d “gone west.” Sir Arthur was fond of that expression; it suggested to him that the boy had taken a distant journey but was not lost to his comrades and family. He might in fact still be reached via some unusual mode of long-distance communication—such as trance mediumship or automatic writing. As it happened, there was an eccentric young woman in his home at Crowborough in East Sussex who believed that she was a channel to the borderland where the dead and living might mingle.

  This clairvoyant—his wife Jean’s best friend, Lily Loder-Symonds—had originally been taken in by the Doyles as a nanny. Unfortunately, she soon developed a chest ailment and began forsaking her worldly duties. When three of her brothers were killed at the Battle of Ypres, her condition worsened. On warm days Sir Arthur often read to her in the garden, where one could hear the dull thunder of the great guns across the Channel. Later, in the evenings, in a room fragrant with flowers and medicine, Lily might take up a pen and practice spirit communication. One night Malcolm Leckie’s spirit supposedly possessed Lily’s hand and came through in words Arthur and Jean recognized as his own. This was how the Doyles came to believe that the dead could be reached.

  Generally, Kingsley did not question Sir Arthur’s views. Deferential and eager to please, he had studied medicine in accordance with his father’s wishes, and when the war broke out he abandoned those studies at his behest. Religion was the only subject on which they disagreed. Kingsley was devoutly Christian like his deceased mother, Sir Arthur’s first wife, and viewed Spiritualism as an occult faith. The growing sect had only a single tenet as far as Kingsley understood it—belief in survival beyond the grave—and only one established ritual: the séance. The worship of ghosts, as Kingsley saw it, was blasphemous and absurd. It dismayed him to see his father attempting to communicate with the spirits of dead soldiers and publicly encouraging the macabre practice. But he had no idea how large a role he himself would play in stoking his father’s controversial faith.

  When the Foreign Office had approached Sir Arthur in the summer of 1916 to observe and report on the fighting, he eagerly agreed. For a gentleman with a military assignment this first involved the traditional visit to Savile Row. “Feeling a mighty impostor,” he was outfitted for the front in a “wondrous khaki garb” his tailor threw together. A caricature, in his mind, of an officer, he watched as silver flowers instead of pips were attached to his epaulettes. Before setting off for Europe he had pinned to his breast medals he had received sixteen years earlier as a field doctor in the Boer War. Yet Sir Arthur, rugged and adaptive, was to be no mere parade warrior at the front. Accepted without ceremony, he soon found himself gripping a gas mask and crouched in a forward observation trench. Men leaned beneath the parapets smoking and watching him curiously. “Holmes,” one Tommy explained to another. A gaunt corporal sat on the fire-step tending a wound to his leg. Spectral faces peered out from the dugouts and mineshafts. A shell hissed overhead. Sir Arthur saw the red flash by the German line as the earth shuddered. In front of him was No-Man’s-Land—a misty stretch of craters, tree stumps, rusty wire, and rotting dead, which he smelled but could not see. This was the borderland. For him, “the most wonderful spot in the world.”

  Two days later, Sir Arthur had the chance to see Kingsley at Mailly. The boy had greeted him with his usual “jolly grin” and spoke of the preparations for a grand offensive in France. “Don’t worry about me, Daddy,” he had said, and then went off to fight at the Somme—where 20,000 British troops died on the first day. Something shifted for Sir Arthur after his son was almost killed there. Back in England, where Kingsley spent two months recuperating from shrapnel wounds to his neck, Sir Arthur began to advocate the spiritist balm—the séance—for those whose sons hadn’t survived. Lily had succumbed to influenza by then, however, and the spirits were temporarily silent at Crowborough.

  Now it was Sir Arthur who spoke. Throughout the grieving country he gave emphatic lectures on the “miracles” Lily had produced. No one could doubt his own sacrifices. At a time when the life expectancy for a fighting officer was two or three
months, the roll call for soldiers from Sir Arthur’s family was answered for the most part in the next world. His sister Connie’s son, Second Lt. Oscar Hornung of the Essex Regiment—a simple and religious boy—had been killed by a bomb. Another sister, Lottie, lost her husband, Maj. Leslie Oldham of the Royal Engineers, to a sniper his first days in the trenches. A nephew of Jean’s had fallen, and so on and so on. Through Lily, Sir Arthur had heard from all of these dead boys. He published a popular book describing his odyssey into the spirit world, The New Revelation. His message to the bereaved was simple and direct: their sons were not lost! He claimed in a letter to his mother that he no longer worried that Kingsley might fall. “I do not fear death for the boy,” he said, “for since I became a convinced Spiritualist death became rather an unnecessary thing, but I fear pain or mutilation very greatly.” When Kingsley, who had recovered from his injuries and been sent once more to the front, was recalled to resume his medical training, that fear too was assuaged.