A MEDIUM CHARGED

Hokitika Guardian, 27 July 1928, Page 2

A MEDIUM CHARGED

WITH FORTUNE TELLING

Yustmlian Press Assn.—United Service

LONDON, July 24

1 lie appearance of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge at the AVestminster Police Court in defence of a spiritualist medium, Mrs Clarke Caution, who declared that she was dominated hy the-spirit of the Great White Chief, an American Red Indian, who had lived four hundred years ago, aroused considerable interest.

The Crown charged Airs Caution with telling fortunes, basing its case on the evidence of four policewomen who visited her.

M iss Mercy Phillimore, the Secretary of the London Spiritualist Alliance, was also charged with aiding Mrs Caution. The London Spiritualist Alliance contains many prominent London people, who regarded the case as one of utmost importance. “I have lived long enough to realise that there are a great many tilings in the world of which one cannot be certain,” declared the Magistrate, who dismissed the summonses, but who ordered the defendants to pay £3O as costs.

Sir A. Conan Doyle gave evidence that the London Spiritualist Alliance did not countenance fortune telling, hut said it existed to study the causes, facts, and possibilities of receiving messages from the dead, and to refute the idea that death was all. He said that the careers of mediums ) were watched most carefully, and undoubtedly the majority of them were genuine. The laws governing these things were beyond human comprehension. He added that the mediums were unconscious during control. Sir Oliver Lodge said that he always approached the subject that was popularly described as spiritualism from a purely scientific viewpoint. He was positively satisfied that many of the mediums were genuine. It was a kind of human faculty, he said, which was not understood, hut which the London Spiritualist Alliance was striving to investigate. The mediums were instruments for that purpose. Doctor Hector Munro declared that one month before the war. a medium foretold the catastrophe in his presence. -Miss Phillimore (Secretary of the Alliance), gave evidence that she had always told people that tlite mediums were not engaged in fortune telling. If a medium proved unable to get a trance, the sitting would l>e cancelled, and the money paid would be refunded. She stated that Airs Caution had been since dismissed from the Alliance because of incidents that had arisen since the case.

The Magistrate said that his mind had been changed as the result of the evidence given. He therefore decidetl to give Airs Caution the benefit of the doubt in his mind. He assumed that on the occasion of the policewomen’s visit, Airs C'anlton believed that she was under the control of the Rig White Chief, his black dog and his white rabbits, but the Magistrate added that he strongly advised Airs Cantlon to rid herself of the disembodied spirit “who wants to know the time for luncheon and (?«.’'