Daniel Dunglas Home

Daniel Dunglas Home
Daniel Dunglas Home
Born	(1833-03-20)20 March 1833 Currie, Scotland
Died	21 June 1886(1886-06-21) (aged 53)
Occupation(s)	clairvoyant, medium, psychic
Spouse(s)	Alexandria de Kroll ​ ​ (m. 1858⁠–⁠1862)​ Julie de Gloumeline ​ (m. 1871)​
Children	Gregoire
Parent(s)	William and Elizabeth Home (née McNeill)

Daniel Dunglas Home (pronounced 'Hume') (20 March 1833 – 21 June 1886) was a Scottish physical medium with the reported ability to levitate to a variety of heights, speak with the dead, and to produce rapping and knocks in houses at will. His biographer Peter Lamont opines that he was one of the most famous men of his era. Harry Houdini described him as "one of the most conspicuous and lauded of his type and generation" and "the forerunner of the mediums whose forte is fleecing by presuming on the credulity of the public." Home conducted hundreds of séances, which were attended by many eminent Victorians.

There have been eyewitness accounts by séance sitters describing conjuring methods and fraud that Home may have employed.

Family

Daniel Home's mother, Elizabeth ("Betsy") Home (née McNeill) was known as a seer in Scotland, as were many of her predecessors, like her great uncle Colin Uruqhart, and her uncle Mr. McKenzie. The gift of second sight was often seen as a curse, as it foretold instances of tragedy and death. Home's father, William Home, was the illegitimate son of Alexander, the 10th Earl of Home. Evidence supports the elder Home's illegitimacy, as various payments meant for William were made by the 10th Earl. Elizabeth and William were married when he was 19-years old, and found employment at the Balerno paper mill. The Homes moved into one of small houses built in the mill for the workforce, in Currie (six miles south-west of Edinburgh). William was described as a "bitter, morose and unhappy man" who drank, and was often aggressive towards his wife. Elizabeth had eight children while living in the mill house: six sons and two daughters, although their lives were not fully recorded. The eldest, John, later worked in the Balerno mill and eventually managed a paper mill in Philadelphia, Mary drowned in a stream at 12-years old in 1846, and Adam died at sea at the age of 17 while en route to Greenland, which Home says he saw in a vision and reportedly confirmed five months later.

Early life

Daniel Home was Elizabeth's third child, and was born on 20 March 1833. He was baptised by the Reverend Mr. Somerville three weeks after his birth at Currie Parish Church on 14 April 1833. The one-year old Home was deemed a delicate child, having a "nervous temperament", and was passed to Elizabeth's childless sister, Mary Cook. She lived with her husband in the coastal town of Portobello, 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Edinburgh. According to Home, his cradle rocked by itself at the Cooks' house, and he had a vision of a cousin's death, who lived in Linlithgow, to the west of Edinburgh.

America

Home pondering a skull. A staged studio photograph typical of the era.

Sometime between 1838 and 1841, Home's aunt and uncle decided to emigrate to the United States with their adopted son, sailing in the cheapest class of steerage as they could not afford a cabin. After landing in New York, the Cooks travelled to Greeneville, near Norwich, Connecticut. The red-haired and freckled Home attended school in Greeneville, where he was known as "Scotchy" by the other students. The 13-year old Home did not join in sports games with other boys, preferring to take walks in the local woods with a friend called Edwin. The two boys read the Bible to each other and told stories, and made a pact stating that if one or the other were to die, they would try and make contact after death. Home and his aunt soon moved to Troy, NY, which is about 155 miles (249 km) from Greeneville, although Home in his own book stated it was 300 miles (480 km) away. Home lost contact with Edwin until one night when Home, according to Lamont, saw a brightly lit vision of him standing at the foot of the bed, which gave Home the feeling that his friend was dead. Edwin made three circles in the air before disappearing, and a few days later a letter arrived stating that Edwin had died of malignant dysentery, which was three days before Home's vision.

A few years later Home and his aunt returned to Greeneville, and Elizabeth Home emigrated from Scotland to America with the surviving members of the family to live in Waterford, Connecticut, which was 12 miles (19 km) away from the Cook's house. Home and his mother's reunion was short-lived, as Elizabeth appeared to foretell her own death in 1850. Home said he saw his mother in a vision saying, "Dan, 12 o'clock", which was the time of her death. After Elizabeth's death Home turned to religion. His aunt was a Presbyterian, and held the Calvinist view that one's fate has been decided, so Home embraced the Wesleyan faith, which believed that every soul can be saved. Home's aunt resented Wesleyans so much that she forced Home to change to Congregationalist, which was not to her liking, either, but was more in line with her own religion. The house was reportedly disturbed by rappings and knocking similar to those that occurred two years earlier at the home of the Fox sisters. Ministers were called to the Cooks' house: a Baptist, a Congregationalist, and even a Wesleyan minister, who all believed that Home was possessed by the Devil, although Home believed it was a gift from God. According to Home, the knocking did not stop, and a table started to move by itself, even though Home's aunt put a bible on it and then placed her full body weight on it. According to Lamont, the noises did not stop and were attracting the unwanted attention of Cook's neighbours, so Home was told to leave the house.

Fame

William Cullen Bryant, a poet, and editor of the New York Evening Post, who witnessed one of Home's séances.

The 18-year old Home stayed with a friend in Willimantic, Connecticut, and later Lebanon, Connecticut. Home held his first séance in March 1851, which was reported in a Hartford newspaper managed by W. R. Hayden, who wrote that the table moved without anyone touching it, and kept moving when Hayden physically tried to stop it. After the newspaper report, Home became well known in New England, travelling around healing the sick and communicating with the dead, although he wrote that he was not prepared for this sudden change in his life because of his supposed shyness.

Home never directly asked for money, although he lived very well on gifts, donations and lodging from wealthy admirers. He felt that he was on a "mission to demonstrate immortality", and wished to interact with his clients as one gentleman to another, rather than as an employee. In 1852, Home was a guest at the house of Rufus Elmer in Springfield, Massachusetts, giving séances six or seven times a day, which were visited by crowds of people, including a Harvard professor, David Wells, and the poet and editor of the New York Evening Post, William Cullen Bryant. They were all convinced of Home's credibility and wrote to the Springfield Republican newspaper stating that the room was well lit, full inspections were allowed, and said, "We know that we were not imposed upon nor deceived". It was also reported that at one of Home's demonstrations five men of heavy build (with a combined weight of 850 pounds) sat on a table, but it still moved, and others saw "a tremulous phosphorescent light gleam over the walls". Home was investigated by numerous people, such as Professor Robert Hare, the inventor of the oxy-hydrogen blowpipe, and John Worth Edmonds, a Supreme Court judge, who were sceptical, but later said they believed Home was not fraudulent.

In his book, "Incidents in My Life", Home claims that on August 1852, in South Manchester, Connecticut, at the house of Ward Cheney, a successful silk manufacturer, he was reportedly seen to levitate twice and then rise to up to the ceiling, with louder rappings and knocking than ever before, more aggressive table movements and the sounds of a ship at sea in a storm, although persons present said that the room was badly lit so as to see the spirit lights.

The reported levitation at Ward Cheney's house interpreted in a lithograph from Louis Figuier, Les Mystères de la science 1887.

New York was now interested in Home's abilities, so he moved to an apartment at Bryant Park on 42nd street. His most verbal critic in New York was William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair. Thackeray dismissed Home's abilities as "dire humbug", and "dreary and foolish superstition", although Thackeray had been impressed when he saw a table turning. Home thought that Thackeray was "the most sceptical inquirer" he had ever met, and as Thackeray made his thoughts public, Home faced public scepticism and further scrutiny. Home travelled between Hartford, Springfield, and Boston during the next few months, and settled in Newburgh by the Hudson River in the summer of 1853. He resided at the Theological Institute, but took no part in any of the theological discussions held there, as he wanted to take a course in medicine. Dr. Hull funded Home's studies, and offered to pay Home five dollars a day for his séances, but Home refused, as always. His idea was to fund his work with a legitimate salary by practicing medicine, but he became ill in early 1854, and stopped his studies. Home was diagnosed with Tuberculosis, and his doctors recommended recuperation in Europe. His last séance in America was in March 1855, in Hartford, Connecticut, before he travelled to Boston and sailed to England on board the Africa, at the end of March.

Europe

Home's name was originally Daniel Home, but by the time he arrived in Europe he had lengthened it to Daniel Dunglas Home, in reference to the Scottish house of Home, of which his father claimed to be a part. In London Home found a believer in spiritualism, William Cox, who owned a large hotel at 53, 54 and 55 Jermyn Street, London. As Cox was so enamoured of Home's abilities, he let him stay at the hotel without payment. Robert Owen, an 83-year-old social reformer, was also staying at the hotel, and introduced Home to many of his friends in London society. At the time Home was described as "tall and thin, with blue eyes and auburn hair, fastidiously dressed but seriously ill with consumption". Nevertheless, he held sittings for notable people in full daylight, moving objects that were some distance away.

Robert Browning, who wrote "Sludge the Medium" about Home.

Some early guests at Home's sittings included the scientist Sir David Brewster (who remained unconvinced), the novelists Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton and Thomas Adolphus Trollope, and the Swedenborgian James John Garth Wilkinson. As well as Brewster, fellow scientists Michael Faraday and Thomas Huxley were prominent contemporary critics of Home's claims. It was the poet Robert Browning however, who proved to be one of Home's most adamant critics. After attending a séance of Home's, Browning wrote in a letter to The Times that: 'the whole display of hands, spirit utterances etc., was a cheat and imposture'. Browning gave his unflattering impression of Home in the poem, "Sludge the Medium" (1864). His wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, was convinced that the phenomena she witnessed were genuine and their discussions about Home were a constant source of disagreement. Frank Podmore writes of a Mr Merrifield's first-hand account of experiencing Home's fraudulence during a séance.

Home's fame grew, fuelled by his ostensible feats of levitation. William Crookes claimed Home could levitate five to seven feet above the floor. Crookes wrote "We all saw him rise from the ground slowly to a height of about six inches, remain there for about ten seconds, and then slowly descend."

Home was investigated at the house of Crookes in a laboratory at Mornington Road, north London in 1871. In an experiment that involved a board and spring balance apparatus both Crookes and Edward William Cox attributed the phenomena of Home not to spirits but to a "psychic force". The experiment was not repeatable and sometimes failed to produce any phenomena. The experiment was rejected and ridiculed by the scientific community for lack of scientific controls. In the experiment Home refused for Crookes to be near him and would draw attention to something on the other side of the room, or make conversation for diversionary signals. In another experiment Home sat at a table, with Crookes and another observer on either side of him, each with a foot on one of Home's feet. Home inserted his hand inside a wire cage that was pushed under the table. One of Home's hands was placed on the top of the table, and the other inside the cage which held an accordion on the non-key side, so the keyed end was hanging downwards. The accordion was reported to have played musical sounds. However, the amount of light in the room was not stated, and the accordion was not observed in good light. There was no evidence the accordion played at all, as the keys were not observed to have moved. Frank Podmore wrote the musical sounds could have come from an automatic instrument that Home had concealed.

In the following years Home travelled across continental Europe, and always as a guest of wealthy patrons. In Paris, he was summoned to the Tuileries to perform a séance for Napoleon III. He also performed for Queen Sophia of the Netherlands, who wrote: "I saw him four times...I felt a hand tipping my finger; I saw a heavy golden bell moving alone from one person to another; I saw my handkerchief move alone and return to me with a knot... He himself is a pale, sickly, rather handsome young man but without a look or anything which would either fascinate or frighten you. It is wonderful. I am so glad I have seen it..."

In 1866, Mrs Jane Lyon, a wealthy widow, adopted Home as her son, giving him £60,000 in an attempt to gain introduction into high society. Finding that the adoption did not change her social situation, Lyon changed her mind, and brought a suit for the return of her money from Home on the grounds that it had been obtained by spiritual influence. Under British law, the defendant bears the burden of proof in such a case, and proof was impossible since there was no physical evidence. The case was decided against Home, Mrs Lyon's money was returned, and the press pilloried Home's reputation. Home's high society acquaintances thought that he behaved like a complete gentleman throughout the ordeal, and he did not lose a single important friend.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle a spiritualist who supported the mediumship of Home stated that he was unusual in that he had four different types of mediumship: direct voice (the ability to let spirits audibly speak); trance speaker (the ability to let spirits speak through oneself); clairvoyant (ability to see things that are out of view); and physical medium (moving objects at a distance, levitation, etc., which was the type of mediumship in which he had no equal).

Alleged levitation

Home met one of his future closest friends in 1867; the young Lord Adare (later the 4th Earl of Dunraven). Adare was fascinated by Home, and began documenting the seances they held. The following year, Home was said to have levitated out of the third storey window of one room, and back in through the window of the adjoining room in front of three witnesses (Adare, Captain Wynne, and Lord Lindsay).

Lord Adare stated that Home "swung out and in" of a window in a horizontal position. However, according to Joseph McCabe who wrote about the alleged levitation:

No one professes to have seen Home carried from window to window. Home told the three men who were present that he was going to be wafted, and he thus set up a state of very nervous expectation... Both Lord Crawford and Lord Adare say that they were warned. Then Lord Crawford says that he saw the shadow on the wall of Home entering the room horizontally; and as the moon, by whose light he professes to have seen the shadow, was at the most only three days old, his testimony is absolutely worthless. Lord Adare claims only that he saw Home, in the dark, "standing upright outside our window." In the dark—it was an almost moonless December night—one could not, as a matter of fact, say very positively whether Home was outside or inside; but, in any case, he acknowledges that there was a nineteen-inch window-sill outside the window, and Home could stand on that.

Outside the house there is an extending ledge connecting the 19 inch balconies of each described window. A few days earlier, scaring Lord Lindsay, Home had opened the same window, stepped out and stood on the outside ledge in the presence of two witnesses.

Although it should be noted that, in his own written record, Lord Adare states that both windows were 'seven feet four inches apart' and that only 'a string-course, four inches wide, runs between the windows'

Personal life

Home married twice. In 1858, he married Alexandria de Kroll ("Sacha"), the 17-year-old daughter of a noble Russian family, in Saint Petersburg, his Best Man was the writer Alexandre Dumas. They had a son, Gregoire ("Grisha"), but Alexandria fell ill with tuberculosis, and died in 1862. In October 1871, Home married for the second, and last time, to Julie de Gloumeline, a wealthy Russian, whom he also met in St Petersburg. In the process, he converted to the Greek Orthodox faith.

In 1869 Lord Adare revealed in his diaries under the title Experiences in Spiritualism with D. D. Home that he had slept in the same bed with Home. Many of the diary entries contain erotic homosexual overtones between Adare and Home.

Death

At the age of 38, Home retired due to ill health; the tuberculosis, from which he had suffered for much of his life, was advancing and he said his powers were failing. He died on 21 June 1886 and was buried in the Russian cemetery of St. Germain-en-Laye, in Paris.

Critical reception

Frank Podmore, a skeptic of Home's mediumship.

The psychologist Andrew Neher has written the spiritualist claim that Home was never caught in fraud does not hold up to scrutiny as he was caught utilizing tricks by at least four people on different occasions.

At a séance in the house of the solicitor John Snaith Rymer in Ealing on July 1855, a sitter (Frederick Merrifield) observed that a "spirit-hand" was in fact a false limb attached on the end of Home's arm. Merrifield also claimed to have observed Home use his foot in the séance room.

The poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth attended a séance on 23, July 1855 in Ealing with the Rymers. During the séance a spirit face materialized which Home claimed was the son of Browning who had died in infancy. Browning seized the "materialization" and discovered it to be the bare foot of Home. To make the deception worse, Browning had never lost a son in infancy. Browning's son Robert in a letter to the London Times, December 5, 1902 referred to the incident: "Home was detected in a vulgar fraud."

Writing in the journal for the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Count Petrovsky Petrovo-Solovo described séances in which Home was caught using his feet to create supposed spirit effects. Home wore thin shoes, easy to take off and draw on, and also cut socks that left the toes free. "At the appropriate moment he takes off one of his shoes and with his foot pulls a dress here, a dress there, rings a bell, knocks one way and another, and, the thing done, quickly puts his shoe on again." Home held a séance for Eugénie de Montijo, and positioned himself between Montijo and Napoleon III. One of the séance sitters known as General Felury suspected Home was utilizing trickery and asked to leave but returned unobserved to watch from another door behind Home. He saw Home slip his foot from his shoe and touch the arm of the Empress, who believed it to be one of her dead children. The observer stepped forward and revealed the fraud, and Home was conducted out of the country: "The order was to keep the incident secret."

The psychical researcher Guy William Lambert has written Home was a fraud who chose to host his séances in houses where disturbances caused by underground streams or railways were common. Donald Serrell Thomas wrote Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, the French stage magician, was refused admission to Home's séances as were other magicians and skeptics. Home was never searched before or after his séances. Science historian Sherrie Lynne Lyons wrote that the glowing or light-emitting hands in his séances could easily be explained by the rubbing of oil of phosphorus on his hands. The journalist Delia Logan who attended a séance with Home in London claimed Home had used the phosphorus trick. During the séance luminous hands were seen and Logan noticed that Home placed a small bottle upon a mantle piece and then slipped the bottle into his pocket-upon examination the bottle was found to contain phosphorus oil.

The researchers Frank Podmore (1910), Milbourne Christopher (1970), Trevor Hall (1984) and Gordon Stein (1993) were convinced that Home was a fraud and have provided a source of speculation on the ways in which he could have duped his sitters.

According to Eric Dingwall a lady acted as a medium and used to help Home during the séances attended by Henrietta Ada Ward. In 1870 at a séance in the house of Home it was reported by the sitters that Home picked up a hot piece of coal from the fire, held it in his hand and placed it in the hands of others to then return it into the fire where it came from. The magician Henry Evans wrote that the coal handling was a juggling trick:

The "coal" is a piece of spongy platinum which bears a close resemblance to a lump of half burnt coal, and is palmed in the hand, as a prestidigitateur conceals a coin, a pack of cards, an egg, or a small lemon. The medium or magician advances to the grate and pretends to take a genuine lump of coal from the fire but brings up instead at the tops of his fingers, the piece of platinum.

Between 1870 and 1873, chemist and physicist William Crookes conducted experiments to determine the validity of the phenomena produced by three mediums: Florence Cook, Kate Fox, and Home. Crookes' final report in 1874 concluded that the phenomena produced by all three mediums were genuine, a result which was roundly derided by the scientific establishment. Crookes recorded that he controlled and secured Home by placing his feet on the top of Home's feet. Crooke's method of foot control later proved inadequate when used with Eusapia Palladino, as she merely slipped her foot out and into her sturdy shoe. In addition, Crookes' motives, methods, and conclusions with regard to Florence Cook were called into question, both at the time and subsequently, casting doubt on his conclusions about Home.

Home performing the accordion experiment.

In a series of experiments in London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875, the medium Anna Eva Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had genuine psychic powers. Fay later confessed to her fraud and revealed the tricks she had used.

When Crookes published his report on the experiments with Home in the Quarterly Journal of Science in 1871 he did not mention the names of the other observers present in the room, four of whom were female. He also did not refer to any "spirits" in his report. Many years later in 1889 Crookes revealed in his Notes of séances with D. D. Home the names of the observers and claimed Home was in communication with spirits during the experiments.

In 1871, William Benjamin Carpenter wrote a critical evaluation of the Crookes experiments with Home in the Quarterly Review. Carpenter noted that although Crookes, his assistant and Sergeant Cox claimed to have observed the accordion float in the cage; Dr. Huggins did not testify to this, and no information was given to whether the keys and bellows were seen to move. According to Carpenter no solid explanation could be given until the experiment is repeated, however, he suggested that the accordion feat that Home performed may have been a conjuring trick achieved with one hand. Carpenter concluded that Crookes should repeat the experiment in open daylight without the cage in the presence of other witnesses.

The experiments with Home took place in Crookes' self-built laboratory at the rear of his house. No plans of the laboratory have been found and there is no contemporary description of it. Crookes wrote the board and spring balance experiment was a success with Home and had proven "beyond doubt" the existence of a "psychic force." However, the experiment could be easily dismissed as the result of vibrations caused by the passage of Euston trains in the large railway cutting near his house in London.

Edward Clodd wrote that Home chose his séance sitters and "if test experiments were suggested, he imposed the conditions."

Joseph McCabe criticized the Crookes experiments for lack of scientific controls and wrote Home was "daily in and out of Crookes's laboratory, and it appears that he closely watched the development of the tests and was prepared in advance."

The séances of Home never took place in full light. Home and his followers claimed that some of the séances took place in "light" but this was nothing more than a candle, or some glow from a fireplace. Home would adjust the lighting to his needs with no objections from his séance sitters. For example, there is this report from a witness: "The room was very dark...Home's hands were visible only as a faint white heap". The light conditions during Home's most famous feat of levitation were disputed, but some witnesses recorded that it was dark.

Regarding William Crookes, the magician Harry Houdini wrote:

There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that this brainy man was hoodwinked, and that his confidence was betrayed by the so-called mediums that he tested. His powers of observation were blinded and his reasoning faculties so blunted by his prejudice in favor of anything psychic or occult that he could not, or would not, resist the influence.

Gordon Stein speculated on the deception of Crookes' testing devices (with diagrams) and gave an account of Home being caught with a vial of oil of phosphorus. During a Crookes test when Home "is not touching with his hands" there are objects just lying beneath his hands that his fingertips are touching, a small match box and a small bell. The measuring arm of Crookes' gauge does not exactly "move". It trembles.

Barry Wiley wrote that Crookes' reports are unreliable as Home refused for Crookes to sit near him during the board and spring balance experiment and Crookes was occupied with writing notes. Wiley suggested that Home used resin on his finger tips to tamper with the apparatus in the experiment which managed to fool Crookes into believing a psychic force was being displayed.

Before the accordion experiment with Crookes, Home had performed the accordion feat for over fifteen years under various conditions but always under his control. The psychologist Millais Culpin wrote the experiments of Crookes with Home were not scientific and questioned why the accordion experiment was done under the table instead of in a more convenient position on top of it. It was reported by sitters and Crookes that Home's accordion played only two pieces, Home Sweet Home and The Last Rose of Summer. Both contain only one-octave. Home held his accordion with only one hand beneath a table. The fraud medium Henry Slade also played an accordion while held with one hand under a table. Hereward Carrington was unconvinced that Home played the accordion in a similar way to Slade from reading Crookes' reports.

The magician Carlos María de Heredia claimed to have replicated the accordion trick of Home and suggested the secret to the trick was an accomplice playing a hidden accordion.

Sketch showing how Home held the accordion.

Researcher Ronald Pearsall in his book The Table-Rappers (1972) suggested some different explanations for the accordion trick:

The two most prominent instruments at séances were probably the guitar and the accordion. The latter was one of Home's favourite props: his special instrument was ornately-decorated, with a very short keyboard. Its shape was dumpy and squat more like a concertina than an accordion. Except when it was playing by itself away from everyone, he held it beneath a table, his hands away from the keys. Stage conjurors, the most damaging witnesses against séance tricks, explained how it could be done. The accordion was on a loop of catgut, by which means Home could turn the accordion round. There was also on the market a self-playing accordion.

Regarding the accordion songs Ruth Brandon considered the possibility of an accomplice playing a concertina, or Home playing a hidden music box. The 19th century British medium Francis Ward Monck was caught using a music box in his séances that he had hidden in his trousers. The British medium William Eglinton claimed to perform many of the same feats as Home such as levitations, movement of objects and materializations. All of his mediumship feats were exposed as tricks.

Henry Evans suggested the accordion feat was Home playing a musical box, attached to his leg. Joseph McCabe suggested that Home used a musical box in his pocket or placed on the floor. According to McCabe "the opening and shutting of the accordion could be done by hooks, or loops of black silk. So with the crowning miracle, when Home withdrew his hand, and the accordion was seen suspended in the air, moving about in the cage (under the dark table). It was probably hooked on to the table."

It has been suggested that the "spirit hands" in the séances of Home were made of gloves stuffed with a substance. Robert Browning believed they were attached to Home's feet.

Simon During wrote the levitation of Home was a magic trick and suggested that he borrowed it from the magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin.

Skeptic James Randi stated that Home was caught cheating on a few occasions, but the episodes were never made public, and that the so-called spirit accordion was a one-octave mouth organ that Home concealed under his large moustache. Randi writes that one-octave mouth organs were found in Home's belongings after his death. According to Randi 'around 1960' William Lindsay Gresham told Randi he had seen these mouth organs in the Home collection at the Society for Psychical Research.

Gordon Stein wrote:

Home could easily have produced the sound of the accordion (concertina) by the use of a small harmonica concealed in his mouth. The up and down movement of the accordion could easily have been produced by catching the bottom of the accordion in a loop of black thread, or on a hook.

The claim that the accordion feat was performed by Home using a small harmonica was originally suggested by J. M. Robertson in 1891. The psychical researcher Eric Dingwall who catalogued Home's collection on its arrival at the SPR did not record the presence of the mouth organs, and Lamont speculates that it is unlikely Dingwall would have missed these or not made them public. The accordion in the SPR collection is not the actual one Home used; a duplicate is displayed.

References

• Adare, Viscount (1976). Experiences in Spiritualism With Mr D D Home. Ayer Co Pub. ISBN 978-0-405-07937-5.
• Christiansen, Rupert (2000). "The psychic cloud: Yankee spirit-rappers". The Victorian Visitors. Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 130–158. ISBN 0-87113-790-9.
• Christopher, Milbourne (1971) ESP,Seer & Psychics: What the Occult Really Is. Thomas Y. Crowell Company ASIN: B000O8Z6AC
• Crookes, William (1874), "Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritual during the Years 1870-1873", Quarterly Journal of Science
• Doyle, Arthur Conan (1926). The History of Spiritualism, Volume 1 Volume 2. New York: G.H. Doran. ISBN 1-4101-0243-2. {{cite book}}: External link in |title= (help)
• Home, Daniel Dunglas (2005). Incidents in My Life. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 978-1-4021-5929-9.
• Home, Daniel Dunglas (2007). Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism. Cosimo Classics. ISBN 978-1-60206-817-9.
• Lamont, Peter (2005). The First Psychic: The Extraordinary Mystery of a Notorious Victorian Wizard. Abacus. ISBN 0-349-11825-6.
• Oppenheim, Janet (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and physical research in England, 1850-1914. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-34767-9.
• Podmore, Frank (2003). Mediums of the Nineteenth Century, Part 1. Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7661-2853-8.
• Podmore, Frank (2003). The Newer Spiritualism (reprint of 1910 ed.). Kessinger Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7661-6336-2.

Further reading

• Ruth Brandon. (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Alfred E. Knopf. ISBN 978-0394527406
• Milbourne Christopher. (1975). Mediums, Mystics and the Occult. Thomas Crowell. ISBN 978-0690004762
• Edward Clodd. (1917). The Question: A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism. Grant Richards, London.
• Henry Evans. (1897). Hours With the Ghosts Or Nineteenth Century Witchcraft. Chicago: Laird & Lee.
• Trevor Hall. (1984). The Enigma of Daniel Home: Medium Or Fraud?. Prometheus Books.
• Guy William Lambert. (1976). D. D. Home and the Physical World. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. Volume 48. pp. 298–314.
• Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London: Watts & Co.
• Georgess McHargue. (1972). Facts, Frauds, and Phantasms: A Survey of the Spiritualist Movement. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0385053051
• Walter Mann. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. Rationalist Association. London: Watts & Co.
• Frank Podmore. (1911). The Newer Spiritualism. Henry Holt and Company.
• Harry Price and Eric Dingwall. (1975). Revelations of a Spirit Medium. Arno Press. Reprint of 1891 edition by Charles F. Pidgeon. This rare, overlooked, and forgotten, book gives the "insider's knowledge" of 19th century deceptions.
• Gordon Stein. (1993). The Sorcerer of Kings. Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-0879758639

External links

• Experiences In Spiritualism with D. D. Home - Lord Adare's report of Home's seances, sadly incomplete, PDF format
• Home, Daniel Dunglas - An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural James Randi
• The Strange Case of Daniel Dunglas Home Andrew Lang, Chapter 8 of Historical Mysteries (1904)
• Daniel D. Home, the Celebrated Medium
• Map location of Currie and Balerno, near Edinburgh
• Herbert Thurston. (1933). Church and Spiritualism. Chapter 9. The Accordion Playing of D.D. Home. pp. 167–187