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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