Washington Irving Bishop: Proving Mediums Frauds

Exposing frauds,
before becoming one
himself

It's Washington Irving Bishop Day here at Imp of the Diverse, and it even isn't his birthday (March 4, 1856, if you're curious or wish to celebrate it next year). I just keep stumbling across him when looking for other things. He's clearly one of those people who were famous in a certain period, but whose fame did not endure. Certainly, if we were reading a letter from the 1890s, and someone mentioned Oscar Wilde, we need no footnote. Washington Irving Bishop; better not assume your readers have heard of them. (Unless they read this blog.)

I have only begun my research on Bishop, and I'm finding much beyond the very brief biography of him in Wikipedia. He seems to be a neglected nineteenth-century figure, with an odd career path followed by the odd and tragic end, collapsing on the stage as he was doing his mind-reading act (which he claimed was not a trick), and the subsequent inquest over the autopsy.

Before Mr. Bishop was a mind reader, he had an interesting profession, that of exposing mediums as frauds, at a time when Harry Houdini was a two-year-old in Hungary. On May 23, 1876, Mr. Bishop made a demonstration of tricks used by spiritualists. The Milan Exchange picked up the New York Post story on June 1, 1876.

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Even the Miraculous Needs a Press Agent

The sort of picture I'd remember
if you had seen it.

Rod Dreher today linked to a piece by Julie Lyons on a pair of Texas exorcists. These aren't the first exorcisms Ms. Lyons has seen, having also attended exorcisms "while on Christian church missions in Nigeria and Botswana."She says of Ruth, the Pollard's client in Texas that,

Either she is an Academy Award-winning horror-film actress, with Ferrari-smooth shifts of body and voice, or she is encountering something in a subconscious realm. At one point, she speaks the name of a demon in a distinctly foreign voice: “Ba-al.” Later, in casual conversation, the pronunciation comes out differently: “Bail,” with a bit of a twang—the name of a Canaanite god mentioned numerous times in the Bible.

And of her earlier experiences, she says,

Through travels with church groups to Nigeria and Botswana, I’ve also seen phenomena I cannot attribute to natural means. I watched a boy of 10 or so who fell to the floor and began speaking in a guttural, grown man’s voice. Although I was among ordinary Nigerians who converse in broken, heavily accented English, the boy orated with precise British diction. At another time in the same place, a woman rolled and flailed with such force that she sent plastic chairs scattering.

There is possibly a huge gulf between phenomena that Ms. Lyon cannot attribute to natural means and phenomena that cannot be attributed to natural means. I don't suppose Ms. Lyon has video of the boy speaking "with precise British diction."

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You can follow my blog on Twitter (@impofthediverse) or on Facebook. If you like this post, share it with your friends. If you have a comment just for me, e-mail me at impofthediverse@gmail.com.

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