WCP4344

[1]

Waldron Edge, Duppas Hill, Croydon

January 13th. 1880

My dear D^r. Ingleby¹

I have written to one of the Council of B[ritish]. N[ational]. Association of Spiritualists², telling him that I consider the alleged exposé a disgrace to them by allowing it to be possible on their premises & under their supervision. It is an excellent comment on what I said in my last letter. Have no tests at all unless you are satisfied they are tests. In this case there was apparently tying, which was not a test. If it was a test, — that is, if so done that she could not get out herself, then some non-human power got her out, & her mediumship is thereby established. If it is was not a test, then the Committee & [2] those who did the tying are self-condemned as incapable experimenters! The disgrace and exposé is really on such persons, not on the poor medium who t is the plaything of powers over which for the time she has no control.

I look upon all so-called materialization as utterly valueless without tests. These tests are of many kinds, & are often best obtained when the medium is perfectly free. Thus, a common test is to see a barefooted white-robed figure, to touch & examine & speak to this figure, and then, 5 or 10 seconds after is has been disappeared behind the curtain to be called in, & find the medium nicely dressed in black, with laced-up boots, & every thing [3] as perfectly in order as when she came in half an hour before. This I have done myself with Mr. Corner's[?] sister. But even in this case I would not like to swear it was not Miss Cook's³ own body if I had seized it!

For mixed audiences there is only one suitable test for materialization seances. To have a cabinet formed by a deal[?] frame covered with gauze nailed on [the] outside, after the medium has entered. This test has succeeded in Newcastle⁴, & till it can be made to succeed in ^London it is a shame to submit a medium — especially a lady — to the chance of being seized by ignorant strangers an publickly[sic] accused of imposture [4] entirely through the mismanagement of those who know her character & antecedents & ought to be her protectors.

I daresay you will think my view of this matter a very absurd one, — but I know how helpless mediums are, and how much injustice is often done them by spiritualists who ought to know better as well as by the public who do not.

Believe me | Yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Dr. C.M. Ingleby