Newspaper, Spiritualism, and British Society, 1881 - 1920
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Clemson University TigerPrints All Theses Theses 12-2009 'Light, More Light': The 'Light' Newspaper, Spiritualism, and British Society, 1881 - 1920. Brian Glenney Clemson University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses Part of the European History Commons Recommended Citation Glenney, Brian, "'Light, More Light': The 'Light' Newspaper, Spiritualism, and British Society, 1881 - 1920." (2009). All Theses. 668. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/668 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. "LIGHT, MORE LIGHT”: The “Light” Newspaper, Spiritualism and British Society, 1881-1920. A Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Masters in History by Brian Edmund Glenney December, 2009 Accepted by: Dr. Michael Silvestri, Committee Chair Dr. Alan Grubb Dr. Megan Taylor Shockley i ABSTRACT This thesis looks at the spiritualist weekly Light through Late Victorian, Edwardian, and World War I Britain. Light has never received any extended coverage or historical treatment yet it was one of the major spiritualist newspapers during this part of British history. This thesis diagrams the lives of Light ’s first four major editors from 1881 till the end of World War I and their views on the growth of science, God, Christ, evolution, and morality. By focusing on one major spiritualist newspaper from 1881 till 1920, this thesis attempts to bridge the gap in spiritualist historiography that marks World War I as a stopping or starting point. This continuous historical treatment of Light and the ideas developed by the editors in the paper from late Victorian England to the first years following World War I allows various trends to be correctly analyzed. One such trend is the revival of “traditional” images and definitions of God and Christ during World War I. While the two Edwardian editors of Light , Edward Walter Wallis and David Gow had steadily moved the paper away from traditional Protestant definitions of God, the war brought them back to the forefront. This revival further demonstrates that the secularization of British society was incomplete and even temporarily reversed during World War I. In addition this thesis provides fresh insight into the spiritualist movement in general. It demonstrates that the individualistic nature of spiritualism allowed it to shift and morph into whatever a follower wished it to be. This characteristic made spiritualism an extraordinarily difficult ii movement to classify for it could maintain both conservative and liberal tendencies and personalities within it. iii DEDICATION This thesis is dedicated to God, whose breath allows me to live, and my wife, whose love and support have helped me continue even when I thought I could not. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis would never have been complete without the help of a number of different people. I want to first thank my thesis advisor, Dr. Michael Silvestri who stuck with me even when separated by a few countries. Your support and guidance were invaluable. I want to also thank my committee members, Dr. Alan Grubb and Dr. Megan Taylor-Shockley, for working with me on a summer defense. The Library of Congress’ Rare Reading Room department also deserves a thank you for its diligent work hauling giant bound copies of Light to and from their collection innumerous times for me. They were always accommodating and ready to help. Of course I want to thank my parents who have always been my biggest fans, no matter what scheme or plan I devised. Thank you for being there always. My wife has stuck through my adulterous affair with this thesis and for that I am eternally grateful. I love you. Finally, I want to give God glory for giving me the strength to continue, even while teaching full-time and working late into the night. I would be nowhere without His support. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page TITLE PAGE .................................................................................................................... i ABSTRACT ..................................................................................................................... ii DEDICATION ................................................................................................................ iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................... v INTRODUCTION I. Light , Spiritualism, and the Secularization of British Society ....................... 1 CHAPTER I. Science, Religion and the First Three Editors of Light ................................ 24 II. The Evolution of the Spirit .......................................................................... 59 III. The Great War, Spiritualism, and Christianity ............................................ 95 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................. 140 A: The Readership of Light ............................................................................ 141 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 143 vi INTRODUCTION LIGHT , SPIRITUALISM, AND THE SECULARIZATION OF BRITISH SOCIETY This thesis originally began with a simple question: If the late Victorian, Edwardian, and World War I eras in Britain witnessed the growth of science and an emphasis on reason, why did they also spawn and cultivate the seemingly illogical religious movement of spiritualism? In the search for an answer I discovered that the question contained at least two false assumptions. To begin with, spiritualism was anything but an illogical movement. The modern movement of spiritualism began in Hydesville, New York, in 1848 with a pair of sisters named Margaretta and Catherine Fox. These sisters claimed to be able to communicate with spirits through various tap and raps that occurred in their home. The movement of spiritualism grew out of these humble beginnings into both a quasi-scientific organization that attempted to prove the afterlife through scientific tests with mediums and a religious faith that looked to the words of the dead, passed through mediums, as inspiration and guidance in this world and the next. The spiritualist movement quickly gathered speed and was carried across the ocean to England. Soon séances (the gathering of people and a medium usually around a table for the purpose of communicating with the dead) were born. Throughout England spiritualist societies and newspapers began to spring up and multiply, while famous mediums could fetch a few thousand listeners when they gave lectures or public séances. 1 By the turn of the 20 th century there were between ten thousand to a hundred thousand spiritualists in England alone. 1 One of the reasons for its popularity, as Jenny Hazelgrove has recently shown, was spiritualism’s use of culturally relevant ideas and assumptions that made conversion “feel natural and even inevitable” for many Britons in this era. 2 Spiritualism not only provided clarity for anyone whose faith in Protestant Christianity had begun to crumble, but did so in a way that combined the familiar Victorian tenets of faith in God, rigid morality, personal responsibility, and an unending belief in progress with newer views of science and evolution. Within spiritualism, a Briton could rest secure, nestled between a materialistic worldview that believed humans had no soul and no purpose and an equally frightening Christian vision that all unsaved men or women were destined for the fiery furnace. Since the movement drew from and rejected parts of both outlooks, it could use both to its advantage while casting aside any part that conflicted with its central message. For instance, spiritualism could believe in eternity without the messy problems of blind faith, and at the same time scold the scientist for ruining a séance because of his unbelieving and disruptive attitude. Spiritualism, therefore, could be hypocritical and contradictory at times, but it was not culturally illogical in the context of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century British society. Rather, it was an attempt by sound and searching men and women to strike a middle ground between the extremes they saw around them. 1 Janet Oppenheim, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 50. 2 Jenny Hazelgrove, Spiritualism and British Society between the Wars, (Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2000), 2. 2 There have been a number of important studies of British spiritualism but most of them emphasis World War I as a breaking point in cultural history and therefore, most historical treatment of spiritualism never links wartime spiritualism to a larger context. For example, Jay Winter has examined spiritualism during the war and after, while Janet Oppenheim in her landmark work, The Other World , stops at the outbreak of the Great War. Oppenheim argues that the postwar context had drastically changed and “new converts were responding, not to the intellectual and emotional crises of the mid- and Late Victorian decades, but to the unprecedented horrors of World War.” 3 This is true to a point, but it is the contention of this