Davenport Brothers (Ian and William)

An Encyclopaedia of Occultism (1920)

Two American mediums who gave séances for physical phenomena in America and Britain during the decade 1860-70. They seem to have attained to a considerable measure of fame, and to have won a great many people to the belief that their performances were genuine spirit manifestations. On their coming to England in 1864 they were accompanied by a chaplain, the Rev. J. B. Ferguson, who helped to inspire confidence in their good faith. The usual plan of their séances was as follows: The Brothers Davenport took their seats vis-à-vis in a small walnut cabinet "made very like a wardrobe or clothes-press." Any two gentlemen from among the audience were requested to bind them firmly to their benches, so as to preclude any possibility of their freeing their hands. Musical instruments were then placed in the cabinet, apparently out of reach of the medium, and the lights were lowered. Soon the musical instruments began to play within the cabinet, dim "spirit hands" were seen in front of it. At the conclusion of the séance, however, the mediums were found tied as securely as ever. They met with a check, however, on their provincial tour, for at Liverpool there were two men among the audience who possessed the secret of a special knot. The "Tom Fool's knot," as it was called, baffled the spirits, and the mediums were mobbed. Later in a séance given before a committee of the Anthropological Society, they shirked nearly all the conditions, and succeeded in accomplishing nothing which could not be done by a skilful conjurer. Tolmagne, Anderson, and other conjurers emulated their feats, and Maskelyne and Cooke so successfully that mediums had no resource butto class themas "fellow-adepts." Davey, S. T.: A member of the Society for Psychical Research who in 1886 gave imitations of the slate-writing performances of Eglinton and Slade, with a view to exposing their fraudulent methods. By simple conjuring he succeeded in emulating all their feats. (See Slate-writing , Spiritualism .)