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Anti-Establishment Healing: Spiritualism in Britain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Most of the people discussed in this paper would have been amazed at being drawn into a publication chiefly concerned with ecclesiastical history. Some would undoubtedly have treated the words as a rag of very great redness. To elucidate the incongruity, I will briefly summarise who these people were, and when they lived.
The period is roughly 1850-1910; the people are those whom I define as plebeian autodidacts. By plebeian I mean, inclusively, anyone from lower-middle-class downwards. By autodidact, I mean anyone who makes their education their own affair, independently of social superiors. In the nineteenth century at least, self-education was seldom a matter of individual effort alone, but also of collective endeavour: comprising agitations for freedom of the press and of assembly, and the defence or exercise of such rights once gained; public readings, scientific demonstrations, lecture-series and, not least, marathon public debates. Thus we have to speak of a plebeian autodidact culture. It was not, of course, the culture of the majority of members of those classes I have lumped together as plebeians. Had it been, we could use the glibber word ‘popular’.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1982
References
1 Ashman, Joseph, Psychopathic Healing, (London 1874) p 43 Google Scholar, Testimonial number 1.
2 Obituary [in Medium and Daybreak, vol 14 (1883) p 5].Google Scholar
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5 Obituary.
6 See discussion in Medium and Daybreak with Mr. Alfred Ginders, in all the four issues of September 1871, particularly p 319.
7 Ashman, Psychopathic Healing, preface.
8 Obituary.
9 Which probably occurred as early as April 1870: see notice by Young, F. R. in Medium and Daybreak, vol 5, 1870, p 21.Google Scholar
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21 Conceivably the famous escaped slave (hence the middle name).
22 E.g. ‘Madame Louise of New York’, noted in Human Nature, vol 7 (1873) p 47.
23 E.g. Mrs Davidson, Human Nature, same date and page.
24 Visibility Invisible and Invisibility Visible, 1888, subtitled A New Year Story Founded on Fact; and similar claim in preface.
25 Ibid pp 45-57.
26 Ibid pp 58-65.
27 Medium and Daybreak, vol 10 (1875) pp 71, 92, 316, 172, respectively.
28 Ibid vol 11,(1876) p 364. The second and enlarged edition of her Facts on Vaccination was stated to be in the press for publication by Burns during September 1876 (ibid, p 590). Text of her lecture at Marylebone: Ibid, p 428. Debating: ibid vol 12 (1877) p 140. She subsequently joined a select band of dignitaries as a vice-president of the South London Anti-Vaccination Society (Report of the latter’s annual meeting, ibid vol 14 (1879) p 43.
29 Ibid vol 11 (1876) p 495; vol 12, (1877) p 431.
30 Ibid vol 16 (1881) p 640.
31 Ibid vol 23 (1888) p 825; Rolandus, pp 290f.
32 Her Physianthropy was much enthused over in the spiritual lyceums’ (Sunday Schools) Lyceum Banner, vol 4 (1894) p 15.
33 Labour Annual and Reformers’ Year Book (1899) pp 165f, includes photograph.
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42 Christian Spiritualist, 1874, p 141; Spiritual Magazine, 1874, p 479.
43 Ashman, Psychopathic Healing, p 1 f.
44 Ibid p 42.
45 Two Worlds, 2 December 1887, p 47: a 3/4-column advertisement (I have homogenised the printing and capitalisation in these extracts).
46 Ibid, 9 November 1888, p iii.
47 E.g. ibid, 4 April 1890, p iii: Mrs Burchell.
48 See, for example, the list of W. J. Lecdcr in ibid April 1899, p 231.
49 For a shorter but equally wide list see: ibid 5 April 1889, p iii: Mr. Wakefield. For another, this time surely offering arbortifacients, see: ibid 7 April 1899, p 232: Prof. J. R. de Ross; or Mrs. Goldsborough’s medicines: ibid 2 December 1887, p 47.
50 Medium and Daybreak, 2 January 1874, p 15, small advertisement. Harper seems to have been working alongside a Mrs. Empson, who contributed ‘Clairvoyant examination for diagnosis of disease’.
51 Though as late as 1887 he was still based in London - though no longer in the centre - whence he was offering instruction in ‘the Science of Curing Diseases by Somnambulic [sic] Medicine’: Two Worlds, 2 December 1887, p 47.
52 Ibid 4 April 1890, p iii.
53 Report on the Practice of Medicine and Surgery by unqualified persons in the United Kingdom (London 1910) section on England, throughout. I owe thanks to Dr. Roger Cooter for alerting me to this basic and tantalising source.
54 For a classic statement of this orthodoxy see Lewis, I. M., Ecstatic Religions (London 1971) throughout.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
55 Rowell, G., ‘The Origins and History of Universalist Societies in Britain, 1750-1850’, JEH vol 22 (1971).Google Scholar