William Benjamin Carpenter FRS was a fierce critic of the 'epidemic delusion' of spiritualism - but the spirits came for him in the end, as Keith Moore relates...
The physicist (1851-1934) has been in the news of late, as 蘑菇视频 recovered a photographic plate from the 1875 Eclipse Expedition to Siam, which he led. That story was described by my colleague Vida Milovanovich in a previous blog. Schuster’s letters, also in the Society’s archives, have some wonderful content, including one striking diatribe from the physiologist (1813-1885).
William Benjamin Carpenter, by Wilson & Beadell, ca. 1865-1870 ()
Carpenter has many interesting connections to 蘑菇视频. Our archives contain some wonderful images associated with his microscope studies of foraminfera, the rather beautiful single-cell and shelled organisms of Earth’s marine waters, and these include George West’s original illustrations from Carpenter’s Philosophical Transactions papers. Carpenter participated in the exploratory ocean voyages of H.M.S. Lightning (1868) and H.M.S. Porcupine (1869-1870) which dredged for ocean life, and which would lead to the round-the-world scientific endeavours of (1872-1876), the first large-scale oceanographic study. Carpenter championed them all, involving both 蘑菇视频 and the Admiralty. But he had other interests in unknown regions, hence the letter to Schuster.
Detail of a plate from George West’s (1855)
Written in 1877, Carpenter’s letter () takes its lead from the then-current debate about the mechanism behind what are sometimes called ‘light-mills’, the radiometers invented by (1832-1919). These were displayed at Royal Society soirees, and several scientists attempted explanations of what was causing the vanes in these vacuum glass bulbs to rotate when exposed to light. It’s difficult to comprehend the kind of vitriol between the warring parties over what is now a scientific toy you can find in many museum shops. But the disagreement between Crookes and Carpenter ran deeper, fuelled by Carpenter’s dislike of Crookes’s naivety when it came to spiritualism.
Radiometer by William Crookes, ca. 1875 ()
Crookes’s fascination with the occult coincided with his radiometer work of the early 1870s, and it seems that ‘unknown forces’ may have linked the two in his range of interests. Famously, the future President of 蘑菇视频 considered so-called spirit mediums to have genuine powers, including (d.1904) who claimed to materialise the spirit of ‘Katie King’. William Carpenter was alert to this credulity, as a stick with which he might beat his radiometer opponent – or as he put it, ‘a rod in pickle for him’. He had noted an American newspaper reprinting a letter from Crookes ‘endorsing the genuineness of the performances of a Miss or Mrs Fay…’.
Anna Eva Fay: Baker's Art Gallery, Public domain, via
(1851-1927) was the scandal-prone vaudevillian (or ‘the high priestess of mysticism’) who toured the United States as a medium and mind-reader from the 1870s. While in London, she managed to sidestep a galvanometer test by Crookes, convincing him of the genuineness of her powers (although she later confessed trickery to ). By 1876, her stage secrets were published in the press – or as Carpenter noted, ‘arrant jugglery… exposed in Boston, New York and elsewhere, by a gentleman of independent position, a godson of Washington Irving, who shows exactly how they are done’.
Page from MS/663/1/48, Carpenter to Schuster, 11 July 1877
This was, in fact, Fay’s manager, Washington Irving Bishop (1855-1889) who later worked up his own mentalist show – he may or may not have been the godson of the author of the amusingly spooky (1820). Carpenter did meet and test Bishop, finding his stage skills interesting from a physiological point of view, although Bishop would inevitably claim vindication for his act by men of science. Carpenter composed a summary of his thinking in the small book of lectures (1877), noting that ‘I have no other motive but a desire to do what I can to save from this new form of Epidemic Delusion some who are in danger of being smitten by its poison’.
Rather tragically, the spirits would eventually come for Carpenter in 1885 – not the ghostly kind, but the quite different Victorian fashion for ‘vapour baths’, a miniature domestic version of the more public Turkish bath. The apparatus involved sitting or standing beneath canvas, while steam was piped in from a boiler heated by a spirit lamp or domestic coal fire. Carpenter accidentally upset the spirit lamp of his apparatus, and rapidly succumbed to the horrific burns; a sad end to an engaging Fellow of 蘑菇视频.
