Dr. Mary Walker’s “Extreme
Hobby”
J. Murray Case, “Follies of Spiritualists,” Religio-Philosophical Journal, May 15, 1880.
To the Editor of the Religio-Philosophical Journal:
Several years ago I met in Washington the renowned Miss Dr. [Mary Edwards] Walker. She was clad in bloomers, had on a neatly fitting frock coat, and upon her “shingled” head, artistically rested a “jockey hat.” She sported a gold-headed cane, which she handled with the dexterity of a city dandy. Her step was quick and elastic, and her head bobbed from side to side, in perfect time with the patter of her pretty little boots. Her every action and movement was that of a fast young man. Coming into her society one feels like saying, “How are you, doctor? Take a cigar? Let’s go in and have a glass of beer!”
The doctor has a right to wear “breeches,” cut her hair short and part it where she pleases, if she only gets on a little “woman’s toggle,” enough to evade the law against women dressing in male attire. I don’t believe, however, there is a patent nostrum that will make her whiskers grow. The doctor may have tried all of them, but thus far she has not succeeded in producing a mustache so much coveted by young sports. Nature never designed that a woman should be a man, nor a man a woman, and these efforts at transposition, especially on the part of the male sex who seek to appear as feminine as possible, is an evidence of a weak, unbalanced or disordered mind.
The most profound thinkers in the world are numbered among Spiritualists, but there is a small proportion who are an “odd set.” These are generally the most noisy. They are angular—full of all manner of notions, ready to believe everything and condemn everybody that does not agree with them. They carry all their hobbies to extremes, and are perpetually forcing their eccentric notions upon the people who do not care to hear them. They take it for granted that the world owes them a support, and are generally as presumptuous as a cow in a cabbage patch. You will always find this class of Spiritualists always opposing those who expose fraud and deception. They are perpetually self-deceiving themselves, and when fraud is demonstrated beyond question, they invariably invent some excuse in justification. I have seen this class of Spiritualists “talk to the spirits” for an hour when all the “raps” were produced by my own shirt collar. I have seen old rickety chairs and tables deliver satisfactory communications, which become the subjects of glowing articles to the papers. Women’s corset strings sometimes make excellent “communicating spirits.” Some one says, “I hear the spirits rapping on Jennie’s chair.” Jennie is envious of the honor, and she breathes lightly for “one rap,” sighs gently for “two,” and swells her little bosom when the corset strings sing out “three,” and now a channel of communication is opened up between the “seen and unseen,” when grandma, grandpa, uncles and aunts bring glad tidings from the other side.
The manifestations change. The spirits are requested to “tip the table.” “Please tip the table towards Jennie. Now tip it—tip it, please!”—and Jennie presses down a little and those on the opposite side draw long breaths and raise their hands a little. The credulous remark, “It is going to tip; I feel it tipping!—there! there, it is going!”—and over it goes into Jennie’s lap. Jennie becomes the heroine of a newspaper article, and another “great medium” has been developed.
In order to make a variety, some one must be developed as a “trance speaker.” John Spooks gets the “jerks,” which may or may not be genuine. The electric and magnetic currents produced by a circle of individuals sitting round a table will produce the “jerks” in some people and they can’t help it. Everybody believes that John is going to be developed as a “trance speaker.” John is negative, and the magnetic influence of a half dozen or more minds centered upon him, produces the desired result. John is placed under their control. He feels as if he was etherealized and suspended somewhere between the heavens and the earth, yet he is conscious all this while. It is assumed that he is under the control of a spirit, and the circle request the same to speak. John speaks. It is asked, “What spirit is this?” John answers, “George Washington.” He don’t like to do so, but he has been forced into a position from which he cannot retreat. He has assumed that a spirit was speaking through him, and certainly a spirit must know his own name. Under the psychological influence of the sitters, John has closed his eyes and assumed the “trance,” and, of course, it won’t do for him to know anything he has said. He talks Indian, Dutch, and English, just according to the psychological influences of others or his own will force, but nothing he says rises above his abilities, if properly drawn out in his normal condition.
Now, John has been forced to practice a little deception—“not of his own free will and accord,” but through the psychological influence and credulity of the sitters. Neither is Jennie especially to be censured for making her corset strings represent her deceased grandmother, for like the boy that stole the lump of sugar, “she didn’t mean to do it.”
Thus these credulous, over-zealous people are making fraudulent mediums every day, and are ready to defend fraud under all circumstances. I believe I am safe in making the assertion that nine tenths of the fraud in Spiritualism may be traced back to the influences exerted upon sensitive people by this class of credulous Spiritualists. These are a few of the follies we need to eradicate before we can stop the production of fraudulent manifestations and purge Spiritualism of its excresences.
Mary Edwards Walker, Spiritualist and Recipient of the Congressional Medal
of Honor
(St. Lawrence Branch, American Association
of University Women)
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