Biography of Sir William Crookes (1832-1919)
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ASCS ACADEMY FOR SPIRITUAL AND CONSCIOUSNESS STUDIES, INC. Biography of Sir William Crookes (1832-1919) ir William Crookes (June 17, 1832- April 4, 1919) was an esteemed British physicist and Schemist who ventured into psychical re- search in 1869, primarily to investigate medi- umship. He is most remembered for his investiga- tions of Daniel Dunglas Home and Florence Cook. While he expected to discover fraud, Crookes came away from his investigations as a believer in medi- umship and other psychic phenomena. The Dictionary of National Biography refers to Crookes as a “Victorian Man of Science” and tells of his many contributions to physics and chemistry. However, it makes only passing refer- ence to his controversial “excursions into psychi- cal research,” seemingly excusing him for such an indiscretion by explaining that Sir William thought all phenomena worthy of investigation, and re- “When I first stated in the [Quarterly Journal fused to be bound by tradition and convention. of Science, October, 1871] that I was about to inves- A Fellow of the Royal Society, Crookes tigate the phenomena of so-called Spiritualism, the studied and taught at the Royal College of Chem- announcement called forth universal expression of istry before becoming a meteorologist at the Rad- approval,” Crookes wrote. “[It was said] that ‘if cliffe Observatory, Oxford. In 1858, he inherited men like Mr. Crookes grapple with the subject, tak- enough money to set up his own laboratory in Lon- ing nothing for granted until it is proved, we shall don, In 1861, he discovered the element thallium, soon know how much to believe.’ These remarks, and later invented the radiometer, the spinthari- however, were written too hastily. It was taken for scope, and the Crookes tube, a high-vacuum tube granted by the writers that the results of my exper- which contributed to the discovery of the X-ray. iments would be in accordance with their precon- He was founder and editor of Chemical News and ception. What they really desired was not the truth, later served as editor of the Quarterly Journal of Sci- but an additional witness in favor of their own ence. Knighted in 1897 for his scientific work, he foregone conclusion. When they found that the was not someone to be easily duped or to fabricate facts which that investigation established could strange stories. not be made to fit those opinions, why – ‘so much He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1910 the worse for the facts.’ They try to creep out of and received honorary degrees in law and science their confident recommendations of the enquiry by from Birmingham, Oxford, Cambridge, Ireland, declaring that ‘Mr. Home is a clever conjurer, who Cape of Good Hope, Sheffield, and Durham uni- has duped us all.’”1 versities. www.ascsi.org Page 1 of 4 Over a period of some three years, ending all our faces. Home’s handkerchief was gently laid July 2, 1873, Crookes had 29 sittings with Home on our heads, shoulders, and hands, and then gen- and observed many different phenomena, includ- tly removed and carried elsewhere.”3 ing levitations, phantoms, a floating accordion Crookes became convinced that Home was playing music, luminous hands, luminous clouds, no charlatan and that some form of “psychic force” and communication from invisible entities. A was taking place through him. He took every pos- number of his fellow scientists were present at sible precaution in ruling out trickery, even pick- some of the sittings, but few of them would go ing Home up at his apartment and watching him public with their observations. Alfred Russel Wal- dress. “I am, therefore, enabled to state positively, lace, co-originator with Charles Darwin of the nat- that no machinery, apparatus, or contrivance or ural selection theory of evolution, was an excep- any sort was secreted about his person,” Crookes tion. further recorded, adding that most of the séances On April 12, 1871, Crookes reported that were held in his home under lighted conditions one of his guests was levitated out of his chair, and that Home had no opportunity to rig anything floated across the table, and dropped with a crash in the séance room.4 at the other end of the room. This was repeated a Crookes wondered why there was so much second time and also with another guest. After tomfoolery. On 28, 1871, a group of spirits com- that, they witnessed an accordion float across the municated, explaining that it was not one spirit in room while invisible hands played “one of the particular communicating through Home but a most sacred pieces I have ever heard, and being ac- “general influence.” This general influence further companied by a very fine male voice.”2 Sweet explained that they were experimenting on their voices then addressed them, although Crookes did side just as Crookes was experimenting on his. not report what they had to say. From 1872 to 1874, Crookes studied Flor- “As the evening got on the power in- ence Cook, whose mediumship involved the mate- creased,” Crookes continued, “and hands came rialization of a spirit calling herself Katie King. Be- amongst us. Serjeant Cox had a book taken from cause darkness and a materialization cabinet were his pocket, and whilst it was being removed he lib- required, there was much suspicion that Cook was erated one of his hands (joining the hands of those changing costumes in the cabinet and impersonat- on each side of him and clasping the two with his ing a spirit. However, Crookes reported observing other hand, so as not to leave any person’s hand both of Katie and Florence at the same time, thor- free) and he caught the fingers in the act of remov- oughly examining Katie King, and photographing ing his book. It was only a hand, there being no arm her. “…to imagine, I say, the Katie King of the last or body attached to it, and it eluded his grasp and three years to be the result of imposture does more carried the book right across the table, where it was violence to one’s reason and common sense than to gently laid on my wife’s hand. Then hands came believe her to be what she herself affirms,” to nearly all of us, faces were stroked and our Crookes stated.5 hands patted and on some occasions the fingers The scientific community was shocked by lingered long enough to admit of being felt. On Crookes’s endorsement of Home and Cook. As a several occasions I made rapid darts in front, try- result, he came under attack by many closed- ing to catch the arm when the fingers were touch- minded scientists – those who shared Sir David ing near me, but not once did I touch anything. Brewster’s attitude that such phenomena were Things were then carried about the table from one completely opposed to scientific law and therefore to another. Serjeant Cox’s gloves were shaken in there was no explanation other than that Crookes www.ascsi.org Page 2 of 4 had been duped. Various theories were offered as and philosophy at the University of Warsaw and to how he had been deceived. It mattered not that one of the founders of the Polish Psychological In- Wallace had observed Home’s ability as had a stitute in Warsaw. After he began investigating number of other scholars and scientists. Moreover, psychical phenomena, he changed his views. “I rumors circulated that Crookes had a romantic in- found I had done a great wrong to men who had terest in Miss Cook and that this fogged his judg- proclaimed new truths at the risk of their posi- ment. tions,” he confessed. “When I remember that I Wearied by the attacks and rumors, branded as a fool that fearless investigator, Crookes gave up psychical research and returned Crookes, the inventor of the radiometer, because to orthodox science. While he maintained a private he had the courage to assert the reality of psychic interest in psychical research, he spoke very little phenomena and to subject them to scientific tests, of the subject in public, often very guarded and oc- and when I also recollect that I used to read his ar- casionally indicating that the “psychic force” he ticles thereon in the same stupid style, regarding had witnessed may not have been the work of spir- him as crazy, I am ashamed, both of myself and its. However, in a speech before the British Asso- others, and I cry from the very bottom of my heart. ciation for the Advancement of Science in 1898, he ‘Father, I have sinned against the Light.’”8 said he had nothing to retract. His writings in sub- Dr. Charles Richet, the 1913 Nobel Prize sequent years indicate that he returned to a belief winner in medicine, dedicated his 1923 book, in spirits and, concomitantly, the survival of con- Thirty Years of Psychical Research, to Crookes and sciousness at death. In a letter dated February 6, Frederic W. H. Myers. Like Ochorowicz, Richet in- 1915 to Sir Oliver Lodge, Crookes addressed a itially scoffed at Crookes’ findings. “…the idolatry question by Lodge about a statement made years of current ideas was so dominant at that time that earlier. “Respecting my alleged statement that I no pains were taken either to verify or to refute had never had a satisfactory proof that the dead Crookes’s statements,” Richet wrote. “Men were can return and communicate you must bear in content to ridicule them, and I avow with shame mind that the quotation is from a letter said to be that I was among the willfully blind.