The Death-Blow to Spiritualism. Reuben Briggs Davenport
themselves henceforth to the noble task of undoing the great evil which they have done, and of leaving no single stone of foundation behind them for weak-minded future generations to base a futile faith upon.
In these pages will be found the full and truthful story of Spiritualism, as it was and is, as gathered from the lips of both Margaret Fox Kane and Catharine Fox Jencken, and verified by letters, documents and published data. It is written with their full knowledge and earnest sanction.
The bold fabric of lies built up to sustain the claim that the “rappings” in which all spiritualistic so-called phenomena originated were unaccountable except on the supernatural hypothesis, can no longer be cited to an intelligent mind. The elaborate narrative published by the eldest sister, Mrs. Ann Leah Fox Underhill, who is now the only remaining stay of spiritualistic deception, is proven to be false from title-page to finis.
I have given in the following pages, the real lives of Mrs. Kane and Mrs. Jencken, in so far as they bear in any important degree upon the development of the fraud of Spiritualism.
II. RENUNCIATION.
CHAPTER I.
GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT.
The world of “spiritualists” and non-spiritualists was startled on the 24th of September, 1888, by the publication in the New York Herald, of an article with the following head-lines:
“GOD HAS NOT ORDERED IT.”
To many, an article of this kind seemed in a degree sensational. Not to those, however, who had previously had some inkling of the secret history of Spiritualism, and who for years had looked for the day of its inevitable confounding.
A sudden disclosure like this, by one of the “Mothers of Spiritualism,” if the term may be used, suggested a sort of reckless vagary, a species of extravagance, due, as might have been fancied, to some abnormal condition of the mind.
Yet to those who had had an intimate acquaintance with Maggie Fox Kane this step had long been foreshadowed. As will appear later, no one could have imagined the real intensity of moral pain that for years she had endured.
In recent years, both she and her sister, Catharine Fox Jencken, had been but poorly provided with this world’s goods. Obliged to depend almost wholly on themselves for support, they had dropped more and more out of sight, till the public at last hardly recognized their names, if perchance they appeared in print, as those of the principal instruments in the founding of Spiritualism. For this, there was a reason. It was a deep-seated and long increasing disgust with their fraudulent profession—the fuller realization to their minds, as their knowledge of the world grew broader, of the monstrous evil to which, innocently at first, they had given birth. So at intervals they were filled with despairing despondency and remorse. Their weaknesses, their self-indulgence, their lack of providence for themselves, are largely attributable to these causes. It could not be said of them that they were ever remarkably selfish, or cold-hearted or calculating. Such a character, however, has of right been coupled with the name of their elder sister, who by reason of the ties of blood and of her older experience ought long ago to have led them out of the by-ways of imposture, instead of persistently seeking to shut off their escape from this horrible bondage, and to plunge them deeper into the mire of guilt and infamy, so that the chance of their rising above it, and denouncing it, might grow less and less.
The impulse to set herself right on the record of the world, after years of enslavement in the hateful gyves of charlatanism, must stand to Maggie Fox’s credit alone. It sprang from her own bosom, not from the inspiration, suggestion or persuasion of any one else. Returning from Europe in September, 1888, after a peculiar experience, which had convinced her that those chiefs of spiritualistic fraud who feared her and her sister, because they held the key of the whole of the artificial mystery, were bent upon persecuting them into an abject silence, she at once put in execution the resolution which had been so long in process of growth, but until then had never been fully ripened.
This was to effect the unqualified exposure of the false system of Spiritualism. She naturally chose as a medium for her repentant message to the world, that great cosmopolitan journal, the New York Herald, which is known in every corner of the earth, and is ever ready to perform an important service to mankind. Before she started on her homeward voyage, she committed herself once and for all to this courageous and worthy step.
The disclosures regarding the notorious Madam Diss De Barr had offended Mrs. Kane more than anything which had occurred in Spiritualism in a long time, for they presented the enforced association of her name and the simple, childish origin of the “Rochester knockings,” with the gross and revolting frauds which had been their outgrowth. So imbued had she become, by this time, with the idea that the developed system of Spiritualism was something to be loathed, as Milton loathed the hideous creature who sat by the inner portals of hell, that words could not express her utter scorn and hatred of this common woman, who posed as an agent of sacred communications between the living and the dead.
The New York Herald of May 27, 1888, contained this letter, written by Mrs. Margaret Fox Kane in London:
THE CURSE OF SPIRITUALISM.
Gower Street, Bedford Square, W. C.,
London, May 14, 1888.
To the Editor of the Herald:
I read in the Herald of Saturday, May 5, an account of the sad misfortune that has befallen my dear sister Katie, Mrs. Kate Fox Jencken, and in the article it is stated that I am still a resident of New York, which is a mistake. I sailed for England on the 22d of March, and I presume my absence has added to my darling sister’s depressed state of mind. The sad news has nearly killed me. My sister’s two beautiful boys referred to are her idols.
Spiritualism is a curse. God has set His seal against it! I call it a curse, for it is made use of as a covering for heartless persons like the Diss De Barrs, and the vilest miscreants make use of it to cloak their evil doings. Fanatics like Mr. Luther R. Marsh, Mr. John L. O’Sullivan, ex-Minister to Portugal, and hundreds equally as learned, ignore the “rappings” (which is the only part of the phenomena that is worthy of notice) and rush madly after the glaring humbugs that flood New York. But a harmless “message” that is given through the “rappings” is of little account to them; they want the “spirit” to come to them in full form, to walk before them, talk to them, to embrace them, and all such nonsense, and what is the result? Like old Judge Edmonds and Mr. Seybert, of Philadelphia, they become crazed, and at the direction of their fraud “mediums” they are induced to part with all their worldly possessions as well as their common sense, which God intended they should hold sacred. Mr. Marsh’s experience is but another example of hundreds who have preceded him.
No matter in what form Spiritualism may be presented, it is, has been and always will be a curse and a snare to all who meddle with it. No right minded man or woman can think otherwise.
I have found that fanatics are as plentiful among “inferior men and women” as they are among the more learned. They are all alike. They cannot hold their fanaticism in check, and it increases as their years