Coming Out of the Cabinet
or, ‘The Spiritualist Striptease’
‘A grand parlour room bathed in the dim and eerie glow mixed of phosphorous and magnesium lamps hosts an arrangement of ladies and gentleman seated on edge – eagerly awaiting the fine figure of a scantily clad, nubile maiden to appear before them. Through some mysterious ritual, the audience witness a noble girl in her teens fall into trance and be taken amongst the shadowing shapes of the room to the dark enclosure intended for her… Here she is willingly bound at her wrists, neck and ankles, placed in an enclosure and then concealed by a heavy curtain. A gentleman stands near her, pleased with his bondage; he too awaits the emergence of phenomenal beauty. The perfect image of innocence bound in an era of scandal. The chanting and gentle singing of psalms masks the emotion of the group while the master of ceremonies, holds himself in anticipation for the climax.
Then, it happens.
The onlookers are in awe and dare not move, nor breath so loud as to disturb Her.
She is coming.
Perfect, snow white feminine hands with long tapered fingers appear through the folds of the curtain and gradually, inch by inch, the youthful silky figure of the beautiful Katie King materialises from the fabric. The 23 year old daughter of the legendary John King – a 17th century Caribbean pirate is here. A petty criminal, an adulteress, a murderess, long dead, now repentant – and here.
The audience gasp in disbelief, some in fear, some in awe, others in ecstasy as they witness the realisation of their long coveted Spiritualist dreams.
“It’s true!” “It can’t be so!” “ It is!”
The corsetry of some ladies is suddenly several inches too tight, and others struggle to find such rationale for their apparent delirium. However, this figure before them, swathed in white is indeed watching them just as they are watching her.
She moves. She appears to draw a young man out from the safety and sobriety of his seat and beckons him toward her with her ghostly white fingers, smiling eyes and parted lips. Like a skilful puppet master, she pulls his ethereal strings and he glides directly under her spellbinding gaze. Within inches of touch, the ghostly lips move to the chosen cheeks where they caress the warm skin and travel to whisper secrets to his pulsating temples and ears.
The atmosphere is charged and through the quaking excitement of the voyeurs, a burning lust for truth overcomes one man. He lunges toward the Spectral Beauty and grabs at her. Gasps of horror and shrieks of panic rip apart the meditative concentration of the room. Such a ghastly offence! An act which no gentleman would ever attempt, had been committed; but there in his forceful gripping arms lay the horrified body of the young medium in her undergarments staring out from her large round eyes with flummoxed gaze and skin awash with heated vexation.’
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Had you been privy to a mediumistic sitting in the mid to late 19th Century, the above scenario is a likely interpretation of what you might have seen. To commune with the dead was the ultimate Victorian parlour game, the highlight of many a scientist’s research and a window to God and the sociable Dead for many others of varying social rank. This was the forefront of Spiritualism and Psychical Research. Indeed, some might comment that there was more sleaze than soul involved, but for a deeply, sexually repressed society, this “science” of the day embraced all the taboo of sex and death that any decent lady or gentleman could palate; such social engagements were justified in the name of scientific research. By the 1870s, the older, more stereotyped image of the spirit medium had in essence died and was being gratefully replaced with the young (and often underage) daughters of respectable families.
“We anxious investigators can scarcely complain of the change which brings us face to face with fair young maidens in their teens.” Rev. C.M. Davies (1875)
The famous physicist and chemist, William Crookes made his mark on the Spiritualists when he dedicated himself to testing such young mediums under scientific scrutiny such as Mary Rosina Showers and more infamously, Florence Cook.
Florence Cook was reputably born around 1850 and was the young lady who regularly materialised Katie King between 1872 and 1874. Florence willingly participated in Crookes experiments where he endeavoured to study both the medium and the materialisation, Katie King. Crookes had Florence move in with him so as to watch her closely, help evade opportunity for trickery and of course so that he was in a likely position of witnessing any full spontaneous materialisation of Katie King. Many people scoffed at this arrangement and according to one sceptic – Trevor Hall, Florence was sharing Crookes’ a bed as his mistress. According to some sources, Florence was also rumoured to have been as young as fifteen, although it is also thought that she lied about her age. Furthermore, the spirit of Katie King had declared that she would take full form throughout the year to prove the existence of the spirit world in repentance of her wicked life. As such, it was rumoured that Florence shared her bed with Katie King during this year of “development”.
During her manifestations, Katie King –like many other spirit forms – emerged from behind a curtain or from a cabinet or closet piece where the young attractive mediums were bound by ribbons and strings to prevent fraud. However, not all performances such as these were intended to be evidential of the spirit world. Ann Eva Fay was famous in the late Nineteenth century for her “phenomenal” act in which she was tied by her hand, neck and ankles to a pole, seated on a chair and secreted in a closet. Various musical instruments were placed on her lap, and after the closet door was closed, the audience would hear the instruments being played form within and then witness her garments e.g. a hat and hoop being cast from the closet. Interestingly, as mediumship grew in vogue and profit, Ms. Fay began to be billed as a talented medium. Unsurprisingly, people started to really question the authenticity of the mediums; wondering if it was all a vaudeville showpiece; people were keen to catch the girls mid-trickery.
Many of the young mediums were found to be concealing their “spirit” costumes in their drawers and others were found to have accomplices to act the part of the spirit. What is a little less easy to explain are the eye witness accounts of levitation, however, reports of Florence Cook levitating on to a table and floating around the room are incongruous with one another. Some say she floated onto and off a table. Others say her clothes floated off and she was levitated on to the table naked before them; excited gossip and rumours will be near impossible to disentangle from any truth, especially when sexual fantasy was courting the fantastic.
Successful or not as a Psychical Researcher, Crookes was “privileged to walk arm in arm with the spirit.” However, through his career, the rumours of Crookes infatuation with the young lady grew; but his apparent fixation was not with Miss Cook but the spectral Ms. King; even going as far as “to take her in his arms to see if she were real”- purely on grounds of scientific enquiry.
The mediums were generally subject to physical inspections where they would be examined and compared to the apparent physical bodies if the “spirits”. Audience members were sometimes allowed to feel around in the darkened cabinet to compare by touch, the bodies of the medium and of the spirit. The texture of their fleshes e.g. the smoothness of their necks; a lock of “spirit” hair would be cut; their and undergarments examined and as in the case of Florence Cook, one sceptic remarked that the “corset and stays worn by Katie King were terribly fashionable”…”trimmed with lime”. The very thorough body searches were generally conducted by women- for decency’s sake -and the contents of the girls’ drawers would be inspected. Many fraudulent mediums were found to have secreted items around their person and in their undergarments; frequently the scanty spirit costume. One journalist of The Daily Telegraph remarked upon “the ungraceful confusion” created by the strewn garments behind the curtain or cabinet doors; this journalist presumable would have been like many of the audience who were imagining the chaotic garment aftermath of the striptease act preceding the materialisation of spirit.
Some mediums even purported to produce paranormal objects and ectoplasm from their bodies some are even claimed to have produced substances from their vaginas.
In more recent days similar trends have been seen; Fodor (1967) refers to an incident in 1934 where a medium, Mrs. E.F. Bullock, reports having felt a hand massaging her womb during transformations. It has been claimed that mediums draw on their sexual energy to manifest spirit forms. Furthermore, some have purported a psycho-sexual theory of such phenomena. Theoretically this suggests that hauntings and spiritualism are a reaction to sexual repression – akin to our Victorian Spiritualists it seems that their may be a correlation between sexual repression and a desire to know the dead.
So what was really going on? The current scientific community in the main, regard Florence Cook and her contemporaries as fraudsters with financial motivations (The young mediums often received regular donations from wealthy believers). It seems that there must have been more than simple trickery going on, How could such eminent scientists such as Crookes, have been so easily duped? Perhaps they were willingly deceived by these young women. Perhaps this fantasy role-play allowed young women to explore their sexual prowess and older gentlemen to feel needed and accessible to the fairer sex. The parlour rooms suddenly became the playground for eroticism involving, the undressing of young and apparently naive women, their restraint, their being unleashed (as an alter ego perhaps?) to have their bodies idolised and of course their subsequent physical examinations and attention.
Perhaps it was acceptable being a believer rather than having scarlet desires and admitting to being deliberate party to such scandalous events.
It seems that even Queen Victoria herself was not short of a spiritual advisor or two. Highland ghillie John Brown who allegedly had the gift of “second sight”, served both the Queen and Prince Albert in their Highland estate. It is said that after Prince Albert died, John Brown acted as the ethereal messenger between the two and thus some might speculate that the lonely Queen of Sexual Repression was privy to some post-humous materialisations of a Prince Albert.
Spiritualism- was it all smoke and mirrors for a truly Freudian love affair? Was it all a case of hysteria*? It seems to me that our Victorian predecessors found an outlet for sexuality in such a time of self-denial and chastity. Consequently, it seems that the importance of social responsibility and a code of ethics within scientific research must be heeded as we continue as a nation to battle with Eros and Thanatos. We still hold the Victorians in high regard among our fantasies and perhaps these sittings had all the psychological elements of an erotic masquerade where Sex wears the face of Death and innocence dances hand in hand with power.
* the term “hysteria” was of Victorian origin and refers to a “wandering womb”. The wandering of a woman’s sexual organs was typically to blame for female emotional outbursts.
Bibliography Brookesmith, P. (2004). The Fortean Times. Issue 179. Dennis Publishing. Fodor, N. (1964). Between Two Worlds. Paperback Library, N.Y. Oppenheim, J. (1985). The Other World, Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press.
If using, citing or referencing please credit ‘K. L. Allan, Ministry of Burlesque’ and cite www.kittie.me.uk
