Author: Amelia Musik
This article is a part of the MAGIEL GO GLOBAL initiative, a program aimed at international cooperation between quality student publications.
By the second half of the 16th century, the phrase: “till death do us part”, popularized by the Book of Common Prayer, became a common wedding vow. Nowadays, hearing those words, we are most likely to imagine the newlyweds dying peacefully together of old age — unless the divorce does them part, which is much more frequent than a few centuries ago. That doesn’t mean the couples of olden times were always growing old together. To be frank, it wasn’t considered whole eternity — the moment of death was expected to come much sooner, given the average lifespan. Life expectancy in the UK, through the end of XVIII century to the beginning of XXth, varied somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. Common premature demise caused by wars, disease and poverty, combined with gothic fascinations of the times, resulted in generations being obsessed with death and what lies beyond it.
Mourning practices of the Victorian era were grand, with the whole household changing decor and the way they dressed for an extended period after the death of a loved one. The person who shaped mourning traditions of today’s western world is most probably the namesake of the era herself, Queen Victoria. It was she who wore black gowns for the remaining 40 years of her life after her husband Albert died. The grim mood casting a shadow over the reign of their beloved queen suited the general atmosphere during the times.
The aforementioned sentiments of the era, combined with the rise of interest in spiritism and rapid development of technology, left us with plenty of photographic evidence about people’s attitude towards the concept of transience. Post-mortem photography came as a natural conclusion of mourning portraits of the past. Although still expensive, photography was much more accessible than commissioning a painting, which was a privilege only the upper classes had. Post-mortem, especially of young children, who were at the highest risk of death, is often the only image of them existing. Photos most often show the deceased either already in their casket or laid to look as if they were asleep. Babies were usually photographed in their mothers’ arms. Looking at the images brings the feeling of a certain uncanniness. But the discomfort in my opinion is important here — to look and acknowledge the inevitable tragedy of death, often depicted as coming much too soon. Post-mortem photography is not quite exactly related to the topic of spirit photography, but it’s important to mention it, because business success of con-artists largely came from the society’s need to capture loved ones for the last time after their demise. This uncovers the exploitative nature of that practice, which can’t be forgotten when remembering the stories of spirit photographers. It wasn’t only griefstruck relatives who used the services of those men. Many people were just fascinated with the paranormal, but it is important to remember what stood at the basis of those mediums’ triumphs.
Spirit photography has its origins in 1860s Boston, spiritualism thrived in America at the time as well. Most specifically to an amateur photographer — William Mumler. He was a silver engraver, who was spending his free time working on his hobby in a local studio. Around 1861, while developing his self portrait, he claimed that the ghost of his cousin who passed 12 years prior appeared on it. The image distributed in the American press had brought him waves of fame and plenty of visitors willing to pay to see other people’s dead loved one’s portraits. Mumlers business thrived amid the vast deaths of the Civil War. It is simple to dismiss the trickery of spirit photographers now, but to folk of the 1800s, the sole existence of photography was much more impressive and mysterious than to us. The fact is, Mumler gained a large amount of recognition — a few years after the assassination of president Lincoln, his widow, Mary Todd, came to Mumler. Ghost of Abraham Lincoln is one of the most interesting examples of spirit photography, mostly due to the icon status of the portrayed. Mumler’s story is not the one of success though. At the beginning, most people believed in his otherworldly abilities. By the end of the decade, there were more and more skeptics of his practice. He was first caught, when a visitor of his studio recognised one of the ghosts as his, very much alive, wife. The story turned into a scandal and Mumler fled Boston to open a studio in New York. Soon after the move in 1869, he was charged with fraud and put on trial. It was impossible at the time to prove exactly how he manipulated the photos, so that’s how he got acquitted. His career definitely fell down after that but not without some notable exceptions — the photograph of Lincoln was taken a few years after the scandal.
The method of creating a ghost photo is fairly simple for the most part — at least with equipment available today. Anyone who was in a darkroom knows that overlapping two negatives or creating a double exposure is a rather simple trick. It did surely take some artistry though to make it look legit. Art historians still debate, for example, how Mumler managed to create an impression of Lincoln holding his hands on Mary’s shoulders — the effect looks creepishly realistic even by today’s standards. But for the most part spirit photography boiled down to smartly layering two photos on each other, making a photographed spirit look transparent or blurred. Spirit photography could really start to thrive with the introduction of glass plate negative in the 1850s. It replaced formerly used paper negatives due to it’s durability and possibility of making reprints, which was useful overall, but quite important to the story tackled here. Ghost photography is in its essence early photo editing. It was the introduced option of copying and layering that made it possible.
Few decades after the failures of Mumler, another famous hoax takes place. This one involves a prominent medium, a paranormal investigator and even British icons like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In 1863, in English town Crewe (Cheshire) William Hope was born around the time his predecessor Mumler was at the highest points of his career. Back then, Crewe was home to about 40 thousand people and one of the most influential railroad companies of the country, Grand Junction Railway. It took it only several decades to become a place where an important medium group was formed called Crewe Circle. Hope, initially a carpenter, in the beginning of 1900s became interested with the occult. Although the Victorian era was surely on its way out, replaced by a change of mentality due to the reigns of the new king, Edward VII, fascination with spiritualism stayed in the culture. William Hope claimed to have a similar start to Mumler. According to his reports, when in 1905 he was developing a picture of a man, the dead sister of the portrayed miraculously appeared behind him. Hope took it as a sign of his paranormal abilities, and this led him to form Crewe Circle, a group of six spirit photographers that he stood at the front of. During the first years of their activity, Crewe Circle supposedly burned all their works as they were afraid of being charged with witchcraft — surprisingly the Witchcraft Act established in 1735 was binding in the UK till 1951, when it was updated to the Fraudulent Mediums Act. It is important though to empathize that Hope and his friends were not facing a possibility of burning at the stake. Even by 1735, the mentality around the occult changed drastically. The law stated that everyone who would claim to be capable of any supernatural acts would be charged as a con artist, so Crewe Circle members were in fact fearing being accused of fraud.
All of this changed when Archdeacon Thomas Colley joined the group. He was a rector of Stockton, an avid spiritualist, and — in most stories of William Hope — he is described as an eccentric man. During his staying in Stockton, he had built a device called a speak pipe — most probably working like a simple megaphone. He would reward children who repeated religious phrases down the pipe with fruit or coins. More important to the story of Crewe Circle, he was a respected figure who legitimized Hope’s abilities to the public. Another influential supporter of William Hope was none other than Sir Arthur Conan Doyle — author of Sherlock Holmes stories. Doyle was also a believer of the occult throughout all his life, publishing few works on the topic. He was even a vice president of Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures (SSSP) — an organization researching spirit photography, rivaling the skeptical Society for Psychical Research (SPR). A member of SPR would in future be the one to expose Hope. For the time being, Crewe Circle grew in prosperity. It was World War I, similar to the case of Mumler, and Civil War, when demand for Hope’s services grew. Grief struck families of those who perished, those families wanted to see them for one last time. To ensure legitimacy of his actions, Hope insisted that his customers would bring their own sealed photographic plates, they could also inspect all the equipment themselves. This method would soon be the reason for him being exposed. Around 1922, SPR began its investigation on Crewe Circle. The person in charge was Harry Price — now probably the most famous paranormal detective in history. Exposing Hope was the first success of his career, he was 41 at the time and joined SPR two years prior. Before that he was a conjurer, what certainly turned out to be useful. Price didn’t deny the existence of paranormal, there were mediums that he deemed legit in his investigations. While trying to prove Hope to be a fraud, Price came to him as a client, with his own sealed plates, like the instructions said. What Hope didn’t know was that those specific plates were marked with the logo of the producer. If William Hope was actually using plates customers gave him, like he claimed, there would be a small design on Price’s photos — which they lacked. Price published his findings in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. It was a high-profile case at the time, Crewe Circle were probably the most important authors of spirit photography in Britain. Covering such a popular topic strongly affected Price’s career since the articles were related to his testimony, he was suspected of tampering with evidence. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, for example, supported Hope for the rest of his life and even published a book called The Case For Spirit Photography, where he defended him and the rest of Crewe Circle. Despite being exposed, Hope retained a notable amount of following ‘till his death in 1933 and worked as a spirit photographer until then. The fascination with spiritism, though, slowly died out during the 1920s and no other prominent photographer of the kind appeared after Hope.
