The Spiritists Outdone.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 190, 1 July 1873, Page 7

The Spiritists Outdone.

The London correspondent of the Birmingham Fast writes as follows : If any devout Spiritists prevail in the Midlands, they should make a pilgrimage at once to the Crystal Palace, at Sydenham. There are two mediums there, Mr Maskelene and Mr Cooke, who have great qualifications for astounding them. They greatly surpass the Davenport Brothers. They make tables dance, walking-sticks converse, wreaths of flowers to float through the air and present themselves to favourites of the spirits ; a lady floats in the air—not in a dark seance but in the open daylight. The audience are not required to sit round in the dark, holding each other’s hands, like so many idiots ; but sit at liberty, with powerful opera-glasses in their hands, are invited on the stage, and sit there during the performances—“manifestations,” I ought to say. A cabinet is placed before the audience, elevated, so that persons can see under it, and over it, and on both sides of it; and incredulous auditors are permitted on the stage, who can watch behind it. The floor below it is covered with a carpet, which renders the use of a trap-door impossible, and there are no possible means by which persons placed in the box could escape from it without observation ; yet a man enters the box, his legs are locked in heavy wood stocks ; when the door is opened the man is gone, and no one can conceive in what way he has disappeared. He returns to his box in the garb of a gorilla, manifesting Satanic proclivities. He succeeds in

dragging into his cabinet one King Bill, a butcher, and both gorilla and butcher are gone when the door is opened ; and although a distinguished Spiritist was allowed to be on the stage, and a very incredulous and suspicious gentleman from the body of the* meeting, yet neither could discover how the disappearances came about. Whether the gorilla ate the butcher, or whether the butcher ate the gorilla, or whether both ate each other, nobody was able to say, or to suggest in what possible manner they could have disappeared. The Maskelene and Cooke spirits excel all others that have ever troubled the world before. The Davenport Brothers were always found in their cabinet. They were like spirits who had lost their legs, they never could get away. But these spirits disappear with velocity. For a long time the Spiritists have been, so they say, getting the better of this world, but now the children of this world have got the better of the spirits. Mr Maskelene and Mr Cooke play Spiritist pranks which no Cock-lane ghost could pretend to, and which would have brought Dr Johnson down upon his knees in wonder and adoration. Two centuries ago the end of Messrs Maskelene and Cooke "would have been fire and faggot.