Spiritualism quickly became embedded within English life. It gained committed followers and offered flamboyant mediums and the hint of scandal, as well as strange, even indescribable phenomena. At the same time, and importantly, the language and ideas of spiritualism became familiar in the homes, meeting halls, newspapers and workplaces of many more people than would have acknowledged themselves as ‘spiritualists’. The central claim to communicate with the dead became widely known to men and women, adults and children alike, who came into contact with the language and ideas of spiritualism regardless of whether or not they believed its claims or witnessed the phenomena.

Experimentation at home

It is difficult to establish how many people experimented privately with spiritualism, as home séances tended to remain private affairs unless they were reported by either a convinced participant or a committed spiritualist. Throughout the period spiritualist writers were quick to boast about what they saw as widespread experimentation across the country. Thus the more impressive evidence comes from reports in non-spiritualist newspapers, and the comments of critical observers, who suggested that extensive experimentation with séances did indeed occur throughout the whole of the period. The American spiritualist Maria Hayden introduced modern spiritualism to London in 1852 and it soon became something of a ‘craze’. Another American, Mrs Roberts, soon followed, but then English mediums quickly began to discover their own talents and, within a couple of years, these home-grown talents became well known. Mediums of note were Mrs Thomas Everitt, the wife of a Pentonville tailor who began her mediumship in 1855, followed in 1858 by Mrs Mary Marshall and her niece Mary Brodie, who offered séances that included tricks with handkerchiefs. Two male mediums, David Richmond, mentioned earlier, and Daniel Dunglas Home, also appeared on the scene. Home was a flamboyant medium, originally from Scotland, who had conducted séances in the fashionable salons of Europe before travelling to London in 1859.

The sceptical Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, in an 1853 article, was horrified to note that ‘many men’ seemed to have ‘taken leave of their senses. We have gone back to the old trash of King James's witchcraft.’ Spiritualism was fashionable very quickly, and so some assumed that it would disappear as speedily as it had arrived.