The Thought Reader Craze: Victorian Science at the Enchanted Boundary - Softcover

Wiley, Barry H.

9780786464708: The Thought Reader Craze: Victorian Science at the Enchanted Boundary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786464704 ISBN 13: 9780786464708

Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2012

Beginning in 1870, the hunger for scientific discovery in Great Britain drove prominent scientists, philosophers, and others to promote the legitimacy of telepathy. At the same time, mind-reading as a form of entertainment gained increasing popularity as persuasive performers like John Randall Brown, W. I. Bishop, and Stuart C. Cumberland convinced reporters that they truly could read the thoughts of others. The widely publicized, sometimes bizarre, interactions between scientists and these charlatans ushered in the Thought Reader Craze, a period that lasted through 1910 and saw entertainers make and lose fortunes and scientists make and lost reputations. This volume explores this unusual cultural phenomenon, showing how it endured through the years due to public scientific pronouncements, astonishing performances by the thought readers, and the rapidly changing industrial society.

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From the Author:

I had written and lectured on several remarkable individuals in magic journals and conferences,when it became obvious that instead of telling bits of the thought reading story, it would be more satisfying from a number of points of view to do the entire story -- thus the work and research on The Thought Reader Craze, McFarland, 2012. I had originally written an extensive article with the same title for Gibeciere (the journal of the Conjuring Arts Research Center in New York) 2009, which focused only on the performers of thought reading. I then used that work as a basis while shifting the focus of my research to the scientists, philosophers,clergy and others who sought so mightily to prove that telepathy was a basic human capability -- and in that process to provide, for the first time,scientific proof of life after death. As a result, I came to know remarkable people who were very helpful in supporting my digging into the background and lives of key persons in the search for telepathy, including reading the letter of Frederic W.H. Myers in which the term "telepathy" was first proposed -- a word that means "to touch at a distance". And the amazing Blackburn-Smith tests along with the tests of the young Creery sisters, which became the basis for the firm assertion by the Society for Psychical Research that telepathy was now proven.
Except that is wasn't.
Beginning on December 5, 1908, in the journal John Bull, Douglas Blackburn began a six-part exposure of how he and George Albert Smith had deceived the SPR in 1883. The SPR did not respond, as John Bull was looked on much as we look on grocery store scandal magazines now. A confidential memo was circulated to certain members of the SPR laying out the organization's planned strategy to dismiss Blackburn's claims with proper dignity. That memo "Mr. Blackburn's Confession" is publicly revealed in its entirity for the first time (with permission) in Appendix H. But when on September 1, 1911, a prominent newspaper, the London Daily Mail, published a summary of the six-part series, the SPR could no longer ignore the issue.
The book took two years to research and write. It was an enjoyable time as I was encountering events and people about which I had had previously known very little. The Thought Reader Craze was enthusiastically reviewed in twelve journals, US and UK, including the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, and a full two-page review in the Skeptical Enquirer.
I have, like any author, incorporated that research into the writing of subsequent short stories and novels.

About the Author:

Retired high-tech executive Barry H. Wiley is the author of numerous books on the history of thought reading and spiritualism. He is an associate of the Inner Magic Circle, London, and a member of the Order of Merlin of the International Brotherhood of Magicians. He lives in Southern California.

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