A SPIRITUALIST IN PRISON.*

MANY of our readers will probably remember the story of Mrs. Fletcher's trial for fraud, and that the interest it excited was

due to the fact that the fraud supposed to be committed was accomplished by the aid of Spiritualism. There was a certain Mrs. Hart-Davies, a woman by no means young, and by all accounts far from simple-minded, who was led to place a great part of her property in the hands of Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher, then practising as spiritualists in London. She was a woman of erratic impulses, if we may judge from the fact that she was twice divorced, and according to Mrs. Fletcher's somewhat blunt statements, preferred the husbands of other people to her own. One day Mrs. Hart-Davies called on Mrs. Fletcher with a bag of jewels, saying that her mother had appeared to her in a vision, and told her to entrust her property to the keeping of the Fletchers. The writer shall now tell her own story :-

" I said, Come, here is a good chance for a test. Mr. Fletcher knows nothing about them. Let's put the bag away and call for him. If your mamma will come we shall see what she has to say about it.' I sent for Mr. Fletcher. He came, and soon went into a trance ; and Mrs. Hart-Davies recognised her mother as the spirit speaking through him, and said,—' You came to me last night, mamma.'—' Yes, my child.'—' Do you approve of what I wish to do, mamma ?'—' My child, the jewels are your own to do with as you please,—to let your husband have them, to throw them into the street, to give as you wish. They are absolutely yours.'—Mrs. Hart-Davies then brought out the jewels, as she testified at the trial, and laid them on Mr. Fletcher's lap. He, still controlled by the spirit of her mother, took up the jewels one by one, examined them, gave the names of their makers, saying,—` I got this from' such an one ; and gave, in short, a series of marvellous tests which only a spiritualist, or oue who has witnessed such mani- festations, can understand."

Subsequently, by deed of gift, the jewels were presented to Mrs. Fletcher, not, however, before Mrs. Hart-Davies solemnly swore, in the presence of the solicitor, that she had not been influenced by spirits or mortals. Spiritualists and mediums,

though their brotherly and sisterly affection, judging from Mrs. Fletcher's statements, is sometimes carried further than the outer world would approve, are not always free from jealousy and uncharitableness. A long account is given of the way in which, by the aid of Dr. Mack, a medium, Mrs. Hart-Davies was estranged from her friends. This estrangement was, in the first place, exhibited in the United States ; and the writer's version of the story, her admissions as well as her denials, point to a

condition of social life which is far from attractive. With the trial that led to Mrs. Fletcher's incarceration, we need not concern ourselves ; and with the favourable remark that she deliberately

• Twelve Months in an English Plison. By SUPall Willis Fletcher. Boston : Lee and Shelved. London : Trabner and Co. 1884.

returned to England, knowing that she would be immediately arrested, and also that the property of the prosecutor, which she was charged with having stolen, remained intact, we shall pass on to the extraordinary narrative of her life, which Mrs. Fletcher undertakes to tell with the most scrupulous regard to truth.

While yet a child, a medium foretold her future; and even as a school-girl she had frequent communications with spirits, who came and talked to her while floating in the air. Once her body came under the control of an Indian spirit, so that she was stared at in the streets ; but, by way of compensation, her school-exercises were written unconsciously, which was a "great relief." "I do not think," Mrs. Fletcher writes, " all spirits are wise. I only record the fact that they saved me from the labour of study, did my sums, wrote my exercises, and that I got many prizes, and stood at the head of my class." If the child—for such she was—resisted the manifestations, she was treated as the cele- brated Jeffery treated the Wesley family. "My bed was lifted up and violently shaken. A heavy table was drawn across the floor, the clothes violently taken from my bed, and I lifted up and seated upon the table." The whole operation must have been very uncomfortable, and, one would think, rather terrifying. At the mature age of fourteen, Susan Webster—for that was her maiden-name- married Mr. Willis, and for a time the manifestations ceased. Only for a time, however. A boy-baby of two months and eight days was as precocious as his mother. He had been ill, and " put out his little hand—that babe of two months and eight days—patted my cheek, and said,' Mamma, mamma!' and with one little gasp was dead." Wonderful things followed. The mother was ill for weeks, and did not know where her child was buried. Yet she found her way to his grave, scraped away the snow, and talked to her baby. "Then I saw above me a cluster

of little clouds, which gradually came near me,; and then opened, and I saw a beautiful girl holding my baby in her arms, both of them radiant and happy. Do you want him back again ?' the beautiful girl asked me. 0 yes, yes !' I cried. ' Look at him,' she said, and laid him in my arms." She was told the infant had been taken to prepare her for her life's work, and that she must no longer resist the in- fluences of the spirits. "1 gave her back my baby, put my band in hers, and promised there, kneeling in the snow by the grave of my child, to do my appointed work She took my baby back into the clouds from which she had come."

At nineteen, Mrs. Willis was divorced, and before long, in obedience to the spirits, married Mr. Fletcher. Then " an Egyptian spirit, who seemed venerable and wise," told Mr. Fletcher to go to London, and prophesied the troubles they would encounter there. Take this, he said, for your motto :— " To.day, alone amid ruins ;

To-morrow, victory and the people,"—

a saying which will probably strike the unbelieving world as exhibiting more of folly than of wisdom. Mrs. Fletcher's " spirit-control " was called " Dewdrop,"—a discerning spirit, truly ; for when a gentleman called one day who had previously visited the medium in disguise, her first words to him were, " What have you done with that wig and beard ?" " Dewdrop " was rather a tricksy spirit, and on one occasion stole some daisies from the mother to carry them to the daughter. A spirit called "Susie, " daughter of a Dr. Smith, brought her father some moss and a pebble from her grave. " Her grave was a hundred miles away in the State of Maine. On her grave he had formed a large letter S' with pebbles, and filled-in the interstices with moss. He was so impressed with the cir- cumstances of the seance and the message to him that he carried pebble and moss to his daughter's grave, where he found two spaces in the S' which the pebble and moss he carried with him exactly fitted." Sometimes the spirits are said to employ their time more usefully; they bring people money when it is wanted, and they find it when it is lost.

Following the advice of spirits often leads mediums into trouble, and Mrs. Fletcher alleges that it was her spiritualism that brought her within the walls of an English prison. Cer- tainly it is unfortunate that these impish beings should advise the transfer of property, and thus place honest people in cir- cumstances of suspicion. However, the mediums are not with- out compensations ; and one may say, fearless of contradiction, that her Majesty's Prison, Westminster, never received an inmate

so well cared-for as Mrs. Fletcher. Spirits brought her flowers, they brought her pencils, with sheets of note-paper, carried the letters she wrote with them, and conveyed answers back. For example, on November 26th, 1881, at 6 p.m., the spirits were good enough to carry a letter for her to Calcutta ; and before sunrise on the morning of the 28th, a beautiful feminine spirit, who called herself " Violet," accompanied by " Ernest,"—

" Came to my hammock, turned down the clothing, and placed slime square packet over my heart. Read, and be comforted,' she said, and pressed her lips upon my forehead, when both disappeared. It was a letter from the friend to whom I had written the long letter on the evening of the 26th, acknowledging its reception and replying to its contents. My friend, Mr. I. E. Mengens, to whom I had written, was then at his home in Calcutta, India."

This is not all ; the spirits are even capable of abstracting letters from her Majesty's letter-bags, and so hastening their delivery,—a circumstance unknown, probably, to the Postmaster- General. Once the spirits took Mrs. Fletcher on t of her body, and for a while she refused to return to it, which they found an awkward predicament. We shall allow the writer to relate her own story :—

" Instantly, as it seemed to me, I was in my cell, and saw my body lying in my hammock. It seemed bad enough to re-enter my cell, so small, so cold, and dismal ; but the idea of re-entering my body was still more repugnant. It was doubly a prison, a prison in a prison, and I refused to go. No one can understand what I felt who has not had a similar experience, and known how imprisoned a free spirit can be in its tenement of clay.' It was so unpleasant to me that when Ernest' urgently appealed to me to exercise my will to re-enter and re-animate my body, I told him that I had po such inclination, and could not will it. Ernest' seemed disturbed and agitated, and summoned six other spirits to his aid. I recognised one of them as my husband's control," Winona.' These spirits seemed to magnetise my body. Probably only a few seconds elapsed, but it seemed an hour, when I began to feel that I should not be obliged to re-enter my body ; and this feeling was accompanied by such an atmosphere of sweetness and exhilaration, and such a calm placid happiness as I had not felt since I left my husband in America, and came to meet my trial in London. But as my happi- ness increased, so did the trouble of Ernest ;' and he held a little conference with ' Winona,' when she quickly disappeared. Every instant I grew more light, more buoyant. The prison-walls vanished, and I could see sky and moon and stars ; clouds did not impede my vision ; and beyond them were legions of angels, and I felt a strong desire to join them, which seemed very easy to do ; for I felt myself rising, rising, in an ecstacy of freedom, which no one can ever feel whose feet have not been raised from off the earth by this soul eleva- tion. This earth, and all its conditions and relations, seemed anni- hilated, as if the whole quality of my mind had been changed. Even the memory of earthly experiences seemed fading out of my mind. But as I rose in the air I saw myself still connected, by a line of light fine as a silken thread, to my poor body. It became finer and finer, lengthening as I rose. While in this perfect entrancement of free- dom I saw ' Winona,' and with her my husband. He seemed to look at my body, and take it in his arms. He cried, 0 Bertie, Bertie ! come back to me ! Are you really dead ? Has that hideous woman become your murderess ?' He held my poor body closer to his heart, and kissed my face, and I wondered how he could caress so poor a thing as my cast-off body. But, as he continued to implore me to come back, I felt the little line of light tighten, and then it seemed to be pulling at my heart. My inclination to reach him became stronger than my desire to go to the angels ; and so my spirit glided back into my body, and I found myself alone in my cell."

Mrs. Fletcher states that the spirits would have taken her out of prison, and that one of them unlocked her cell; but she declined to accompany them, as the warder and other prison officers would have got into serious trouble. The public would have believed they had been bribed to assist her to escape, and no one but a spiritualist could have believed the contrary. Besides, Mrs. Fletcher "did not come to England to run away again, nor go to prison in order to escape." The decision was a prudent one, and the reader will agree with Mrs. Fletcher when she writes :—" To go ever so far in spirit, leaving my poor body in my cell, did no harm to any one." She is not always so sen- sible, but occasionally writes sheer nonsense, as, for instance, when she states, in allusion to her trial, that the " Government had determined to crush out the heresy of spiritualism, and did not count the cost ;" and again,—" Sir Henry Hawkins had his jury well in hand. The Government expected him to do his work, and I have no doubt that the sentence had been discussed and settled beforehand?' In spite of her eccentricities, Mrs. Fletcher is not a fool. Indeed, the reader of this narrative will be disposed to think that she is a very clever woman ; yet she can commit the absurdity of writing,—" The corridors of the prison are warmed with hot-water pipes ; but this begins late in the season, and is regulated, not by the thermometer, but the almanac and the number of Royal marriages, which, of course, affect Government appropriations." The author writes more for the edification of the unbelieving Gentile world than for spiritualists. We fear her labours will be thrown away, and that the kind of immortality to which her friendly spirits testify is not likely to convert the infidel, or to lessen the materialism of the age.