The Fox Sisters and the 19th Century Spiritualism Movement

May 28

I’ve been taking classes at Hunter college for almost a year now. I started out with the goal of finishing a BA in theater. But I’ve become more interested in aligning my studies with whatever I’m working on at the time.

Introduction

The 19th Century spiritualism movement involved mediums claiming powers to communicate with the dead. Mediums invited willing participants into their parlors, and spoke with deceased relatives, spouses and friends. Spirits responded with “raps,” knockings on walls, floors or tables.

This movement was enormously popular. One critic admitted that:

“...in 1856, it seems more likely that spiritualism would become the religion of America, than in 156, Christianity would be the religion of the Roman Empire, or in 756 that Mohammedanism would be that of the Arabian population.” (Moore 475)

This movement certainly resembled a religion. But in mid-19th Century America, people were driven more and more to question beliefs. Science, discovery and rational thinking were all the rage. (Moore 478)

How could a movement based on talking to ghosts thrive at a time when people were fascinated with science? Many factors contributed to spiritualism becoming one of the most dominant entertainments of the day. Here, I’ll discuss three of those factors through the story of two teenage girls who inadvertently kicked the whole thing off.

Come and Investigate

1848. Hydesdale, NY. It all started with a prank. 15 year old Margaret and 12 year old Kate Fox, fooled their superstitious mother with a simple apple tied to a string. Bumping the apple on the floor caused what came to be known as a “rapping” sound. Their mother investigated, but could not find the source of the sound. The sisters continued their fun, claiming the source of the rapping was a dead man buried in their basement. Soon, the rapping began responding to their mother’s questions with shocking accuracy.

Before long, friends and family joined the investigation, and the phenomenon grew by word of mouth, until hundreds came from miles around. (Chapin 163) The girls’ older sister, Leah, quickly sussed out the scheme, but instead of ratting her sisters out, she went into business with them. By 1849, the three sisters held their first large public seance demonstration at the greatest venue in Rochester, NY.

An ad in the local newspaper read:

“Let the citizens of Rochester embrace this opportunity of investigating the whole matter, and see if those engaged in laying it before the public are deceived, or are deceiving others, and, if neither, [let them] account for these truly wonderful manifestations. . . . Come and investigate. Price-25 cents.” (Chapin 174)

Traveling exhibits of newly discovered phenomena were quite popular at the time. “Professor Rogers” showed off the new pseudosciences of phrenology and mesmerism. “Miss Bertha,” the clairvoyant claimed to “read without eyes.” “Dr. Dods” claimed he could cure diseases with his “Electrical Psychology.” Many of these acts generated controversy in the form of letters to local newspapers, and attacks from the clergy. (Chapin 174)

The Fox sisters did not say “Come and believe.” They said “Come and investigate.” Why would they invite the audience to bring critical thinking to an otherworldly phenomenon? Why would they invite controversy?

The (in)famous P.T. Barnum claimed that Americans enjoyed the “intellectual exercise” involved in figuring something out. He claimed that people loved:

‘...‘the continual appearance of new marvels [and also] to a jargon that concentrated on methods of operation, on aspects of mechanical . . . construction, on horsepower, gears, pulleys, and safety valves.’’ (Harris 74)

Barnum created:

“...a space wherein people could play with the boundary between marvel and analysis and between credulity and skepticism;” (Walker 40)

In fact, Barnum so believed in this principle, that he regularly published newspaper articles debunking his own shows! One of his acts featured a supposed mermaid. Barnum published editorials from doctors claiming the sea creature was a fake; “...when doctors disagree, the people must decide for themselves…” (Walker 39) The implication was clear: curiosity and debate sold more tickets than certainty.

American clown, Dan Rice understood the same:

“...no advertising more profitable than that obtained by one of [his] circuses being attacked from the pulpit.” (Natale 69)

Medium Martin Van Buren Bly toured as a medium channeling a dead Quaker, then two years later, toured an exposé debunking seance techniques. (Walker 42)

At times, skepticism not only sold tickets. It created new believers. Skeptic Charles Lee set out to demonstrate the Fox Sisters’ techniques and reveal them as frauds. But to his chagrin, his demonstrations often had the opposite effect:

“What was very ludicrous, however, was that several in the audience, who now for the first time had witnessed anything in the ‘‘spiritual knocking’’ line, and had remained skeptical, now became zealous converts to the doctrine of Spiritualism, and still refer to my exhibition as the strongest kind of demon-strative argument in its support.” (Walker 30-31)

R. Lawrence Moore asserted that spiritualism provided a new way of viewing religion, not through blind belief, but through the very modern methods of scientific experimentation. (Chapin 159)

David Chapin observes that this approach allowed audiences to become active participants in the stories that mediums told through their seances.

A good deal of entertainment involves audiences sitting in seats passively, while performers stand on a stage and take the active role of entertaining. In our own time, we’ve seen the internet grant audiences the same kind of agency. For years, movies and television broadcast to a largely passive audience. Now, social networks allow audiences to partake in stories by commenting in real time, creating memes and fanfiction, and by engaging in controversies, whether about news items, political movements, or the lives of the rich and famous.

In the 19th Century, spiritualist seances provided the same kinds of participation audiences craved, the same opportunities to show off their own knowledge, and assert their own opinions.

Playing on Gender Prejudice

The Fox sisters further played up this “come and investigate” mentality by playing their roles as young, demure and unassuming women in a male dominated society, and leveraging those roles to their advantage. The Rochester editor, D.M. Dewey declared:

“It would be more difficult for us to believe that either of the two girls sitting before us were practicing deception and trying to humbug us, than to believe that the knocking was supernatural.” (Chapin 185)

An historian of the time claimed the sisters did not comprehend “their own mediumistic experience.” Another observer said that Kate Fox knew nothing more about the phenomena she channeled than “...a canary bird.” (Chapin 181) Nathanial P. Willis said that the sisters were “...prettier than average…” and that the girls displayed “...good-humor and simplicity…” A writer for The Herald noted that Maggie Fox was “...a very pretty, arch-looking, black-eyed, and rather modestly behaved young girl.” (Chapin 181) David Chapin, author of The Fox Sisters and the Performance of Mystery, asserts that the girls “...actively created themselves as passive objects of investigation...a role that conformed well with 19th Century beliefs about gender.” (Chapin 185) The Fox sisters were wily enough to allow the men who “came and investigated” to believe that such unassuming and pretty young women simply were not capable of fooling them. Even vehement skeptics, like Captain Isaiah Rynders, appear to have been taken in by the sisters’ demur posturing. Rynders went to see the Fox sisters specifically to debunk them, but later wrote: “

“If they humbug you, they do it in the most amusing and agreeable manner…” (Chapin 183)

The Rise of the Mass Media

We’ve seen two ingredients that contributed to spiritualism’s success; playing with the tension between belief in the afterlife, at a time when Americans were obsessed with science and discovery, and the Fox Sisters’ ability to leverage popular prejudicial views of women.

I’d like to discuss one more ingredient: the rise of mass media, in the form of the penny press. The penny press was exactly what it sounds like: Newspapers, circulars and periodicals that sold for a penny. Most other newspapers in America sold for six cents. So for the first time, the penny press made news available to just about everyone in the rapidly growing middle class.

As more people joined the middle and working classes in the 19th Century, they gained more disposable income. They also gained an increased hunger for news, entertainment and gossip. At the same time, newspapers went from hand printing, to mass, steam-powered printing. Finally, at a time when most newspapers were subscription-based, the penny press started earning revenue through advertising, giving them a financial interest in circulating as widely as possible. (Wikipedia “Penny Press”)

Nathaniel P. Willis, who called the Fox sisters “...prettier than average…” in the previous section, wrote for the penny press New York Herald. The Fox Sisters’ original Rochester invitation appeared as an ad in the local newspaper:

When Captain Isaiah Rynders went on his mission to expose the sisters, he did so with the intention of publishing his findings in the New York Herald. (Chapin 183)

The penny press became a wide-spread and influential mass medium perfectly suited to advertising spiritualist events, and for amplifying the controversies those events generated.

Bibliography

Chapin, David. “The Fox Sisters and the Performance of Mystery.” New York History , APRIL 2000, Vol. 81, No. 2 (APRIL 2000).

Natale, Simone. “Supernatural Entertainments : Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture.” Penn State University Press, 2016.

Walker, David. “The Humbug in American Religion Ritual Theories of Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism.” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Winter2013), pp. 40

Harris, Neil. “Humbug, The Art of P.T. Barnum.” University of Chicago Press, 1981

Moore, R. Laurence . “Spiritualism and Science: Reflections on the First Decade of the Spirit Rappings” American Quarterly, Oct., 1972, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Oct., 1972)

Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_press

SEANCEaudiodramaocculthistory

Mark Harris