The First Psychic: The Peculiar Mystery of a Victorian Wizard [Paperback]

We live in an age of relatively slight entertainments from spiritualists. Modern spiritualists claim to get messages from "the other side," and clearly impress audiences with their accuracy; skeptics, however, point out that such performances show merely skills in "cold reading" and bilking an audience that is already eager to believe. The Victorians did it better. Daniel Home got messages from the departed, to be sure, but by the help of spirits, he also levitated furniture, made hovering musical instruments play in the air, and floated himself in and out of three-story windows. Or at least that is what he claimed, and more importantly, that is what people (including scientists) who saw the performances claimed for him. Charlatan or ambassador to the Spirit World, Home created a sensation that was the international talk of all levels of society. Peter Lamont, who has worked as a magician, thinks that Daniel Home was the most interesting person who ever lived. You probably have some other candidate for such a title, but Lamont in the entertaining biography _The First Psychic: The Peculiar Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard_ (Little, Brown) makes his own choice clear. The book is also an examination of how we know what we know, and how we have to deal with incredible anomalies.

Home had a mission, to convince a skeptical world that these were not tricks and that the supernatural world was affecting the natural one through himself as intermediary. It was to be a tough sell, but while skeptics were numerous, believers were enthusiastic. Home had serious detractors who were conjurors, but many of the effects which Home was able to achieve, or which were remembered as being achieved by him, were unique and remain unexplained. It is a shame that the conjurors did not join in the scientific investigation of Home's powers. One of the lessons that James Randi has taught contemporary investigators of psychic phenomena is that scientists are really no better at avoiding being deceived by tricksters than anyone else, and that a magician needs to be on the investigative team to spot deception. No such spotter was called upon when Sir William Crookes, the discoverer of the element thallium, undertook an investigation of Home's powers by different tests. In the Victorian heyday of science, it was held that a scientist was the man to make objective and keen observations, and would not be liable to deceit. Crookes, as eminent a scientist as there was in Britain at the time, had never been deceived by his chemicals and expected no deception from Home. Indeed, his findings were that Home's effects were genuine, and although Crookes did not go so far as saying that they were the product of spirit manifestation, he proposed that there was a Psychic Force that would need to be a new target of investigation by physicists. He invented the application of the word "psychic" to those who could manifest such a force, with Home being the first person so labeled. Home gloried in the endorsement, which was later tarnished when Crookes certified as genuine the effects of other psychics who had obviously deceived him.

Without taking fees for his sessions, Home took charity and engaged in dramatic stage readings from literature which were popular. At one point he was adopted by a wealthy widow who provided him thousands of pounds, but went to court to get them back, claiming that she had only provided the funds when spirits, speaking through Home, advised her to. He converted to Catholicism, but was expelled from Rome for necromancy. Eventually, he was disgusted with the fraudulent claims of psychics - other psychics - and his last book was a repudiation of the methods of the others. During his retirement, the performance style of psychics changed, with physical manifestations no longer worthy of scientific evaluation, and the more slippery clairvoyance or telepathy becoming fashionable. Lamont gives an entertaining account of a man who performed remarkable feats and gained widespread fame, and throughout gives a fair assessment without insisting that Home was genuine or fraudulent (only if you get to the notes does he state frankly his own belief that "Home was a charlatan whose feats have never been adequately explained.") Nevertheless, there are many mysteries enjoyably presented here, and many performances, and behaviors of performers and observers, at which to wonder.

Lamont writes well, followed a thread to the end. But, he spent way too much time trying to prove DD Hume a fraud. Rather than trying to understand the man and his work. Plus he got diverted a great deal with other mediums who were quite likely fraudulent, at least at times. Lamont's conclusion, despite all EVIDENCE to the contrary, was that Hume was a charlatan. Maybe the pot was trying to call the kettle black. Better luck with your next book, Mr. Lamont.

"The problem underlying the life and work of D.D. Home can be briefly summed up by saying that it is the problem of miracles in its most acute form." These words open the appendix to Eric Dingwall's chapter on Home in his book "Some Human Oddities." Dingwall, like Lamont, had an extensive conjuring background and was well-acquainted with the techniques of fraudulent mediums and the testimony of credulous sitters. Both authors regard Home as an unsolvable problem (although in Lamont's case this does not mean support for a paranormal interpretation, as he makes clear), but instead of focusing his attention solely on Home's phenomena Lamont chronicles the way Home was viewed by his contemporaries and how they tried to deal with the accounts of his seances. This makes his book unique among the Home biographies and gives the reader insight into religious doubts that began to infiltrate the Victorian mind as Biblical criticism and scientific advancements combined to cast doubt on the ideas of God and man's soul. This apprehension served as fertile ground for mesmerism and Spiritualism to thrive, which in turn allowed charlatans of all kinds to prey upon vulnerable persons of all classes.

Lamont successfully navigates the pitfalls associated with this line of inquiry. Previous biographies of Home have focused more or less exclusively on his phenomena, either defending it as a genuine mystery or paranormal manifestation, or criticizing it as a conjuring trick or hallucination of some kind. While there are some interesting points to be made along this line (and Lamont touches on some of these throughout his book), the general arguments pro and con that have been made over the last 100 years on this amount to nothing. Lamont bypasses this by claiming that we really have no way of knowing (although he makes his own opinion clear at the end) and proceeds instead to discuss how, regardless of whether Home's phenomena was conjuring or not, the testimony of his seances was problematic for science and religion. For scientists, who relied on observation to conduct experiments, testimony (especially from persons among their own ranks like Crookes) of levitating men, moving furniture, and the like raised questions of objectivity. Was there a distinction between their approach to their own work and what Crookes was doing? If so, what was it? In the religious sphere, questions arose in regard to the distinction between the accounts of Home's seances as reported from Spiritualists and the testimony of the Gospels. It was admitted by more than one theologian that the former were actually better evidence, and obviously this raised a number of other questions.

Lamont details all of this and in doing so allows the reader to participate a little in the intricacies and difficulties of doing historical work. What sources to trust? Which are reliable? Etc... This all makes for fascinating reading and makes Lamont's biography the definitive starting point for anyone interested in this subject. Perhaps most importantly, he writes on all of this in a lively, fresh and witty manner much in the style of his previous subject of the Indian Rope Trick.

Some reviews of the book seem to be troubled by Lamont's own view on Home, i.e. that he was likely a charlatan but we can't explain his tricks. However, for anyone with a conjuring background this is good sense. Any skilled magician has had to learn his/her trade from a state of conjuring ignorance and in the process of this education one is constantly confronted with effects for which there appears to be no known method. With time and practice most magicians are able to spot certain techniques and patterns that are used over and over and can surmise the method, even if some small wrinkles are introduced by the performer. Conjuring has its own evolution and one can trace all the effects back many years to some common ancestry. This doesn't mean it's easy, even for experienced conjurers, to detect the method of an effect all the time. Indeed, many practicioners delight in creating effects that can fool other conjurors, not just Joe Public. There is a term for these unsolved effects...they are appropriately called "problems". Many "problems" arise in the seance reports of D.D. Home and Lamont, as a conjuror, is being honest in describing his opinion. He has no doubt come across puzzling descriptions of performances before, only to learn later how they were done (and in the process perhaps how inaccurate the descriptions of them actually were).

I must comment on one reviewer's points raised. He makes mention of private letter collections in which Home was detected in fraud. I've spent a number of years looking through just those collections and I can't say I've come across anything resembling an exposure. The reference to the letter of Vernon Rymer in Lamont's book refers to some of the scandals Home was supposedly involved in while residing in Florence. Much of this ultimately centered around a Mrs. Baker and was of a personal nature, having nothing to do with Home's phenomena. Hiram Powers did claim during this time to have caught Home cheating but his "evidence" consists of nothing more specific than anything else that has been chronicled and in later years he seems to have retracted much of it anyway, affirming his belief that Home's phenomena was genuine (although he continued to have a personal dislike for the medium). I am also rather curious how we don't have the "vaguest notion" of what kinds of effects Home was performing but we do seem to know that his hosts were "fat, near-sighted, quite elderly, half-drunk, etc..." While I've read perhaps more than 100 accounts of various things alleged to have happened at Home seances, like self-playing accordions, the handling of fire coals, the levitation of the medium, movement of furniture, etc,...I can't say I've come across any accounts describing drunk, near-sighted heavy people. The only references to some oversized participants I've come across were ones that sat on the table while it was lifted into the air, so now we have to deal with a 100 pound table rising off the ground with a 200+ pound person on top of it.

The reviewer doesn't seem to feel enough is discussed regarding Crookes' zeal for mediums (especially female ones) but I think Lamont makes it rather clear in chapter "The Last Word". And if one wants to attack ambiguous assertions, certainly the evidence put forth that Crookes had an affair with Florence Cook qualifies for such an assault. There is nothing credible in this, only vague hints that could be interpreted in any manner the reader chooses. This material has been argued over for several decades and would have needlessly bogged down the book. It is simply enough to point out that Cook was caught in fraud after Crookes endorsed her, and that certainly impugns his judgment to that effect. In addition, while there may be different versions of the book, mine does have a picture of Home right next to the title page.