SPIRITUALISM WAS SEXY. The Victorian faith of sittings, mediums, and spirit contact thrilled its practitioners and detractors alike and broke all rules of decency and decorum in spite of the fact that it was nurtured and developed in the drawing rooms of the proprietous middle classes. A faith little known to modern scholars and, perhaps for that reason, one which has not often been recognized for its historical and social importance, Spiritualism became the religion of thousands over the course of the last four decades of the period. In spite of its humble and strange beginnings in 1848–a code of raps developed between a murdered peddler and two young American girls–aristocrats, scholars, and scientists, along with ordinary men and women of all ages, were converted to the belief that death was no barrier to communication. This contact, achieved through the services of mediums, who were sensitive to the sounds and sights of the spirit world, provided many with comfort, peace, and the reassurance of an afterlife in a social and intellectual climate that called those things into doubt.