RT Journal Article T1 Photographic plates and spirit fakes A1 Efram Sera-Shriar YR 2022 VO 17 IS Spring 2022 K1 spiritualism K1 spirit photography K1 Harry Price K1 William Hope K1 psychical research K1 mediumship K1 scientific testimony AB During the opening decades of the twentieth century, William Hope was a well-respected medium amongst the spiritualist community in Britain, with positive endorsements from major scientific figures such as the chemist William Crookes and the author and physician Arthur Conan Doyle. Hope was often seen as one of the few mediums to be able to produce authentic spirit photographs. However, all that changed in late February 1922 when the magician-turned-psychical researcher Harry Price claimed to have caught Hope cheating during a sitting, by discovering that he was swapping blank photographic plates for ones with supposed spirit ‘extras’ already on them. Hope was publicly exposed as a fraud, and what ensued was a major debate between believers and sceptics over the legitimacy of the medium’s alleged spirit photography. The Hope-Price affair became a media sensation in the months that ensued, with a series of articles about the investigation and its aftermath appearing in the major spiritualist magazine Light. While much has been written about the Hope-Price affair as a key example of fake mediumship, most of these accounts tend to prioritise the sceptic’s perspective, with little attention paid to spiritualist responses. This paper will provide a more balanced narrative, focusing on one of the main criticisms of Hope’s defenders at the time: the credibility of Price’s testimony. Because Price actively misled Hope and his associates in a bid to catch the medium cheating, his trustworthiness as an objective observer and investigator of extraordinary phenomena was questioned. Key to this analysis is the essential role material evidence played in this case, with particular emphasis on the photographic technologies and processes used. PB The Science Museum Group SN 2054-5770 LA eng DO 10.15180/221707 UL http://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/browse/issue-17/photographic-plates-and-spirit-fakes/ CR Adair, B, Filene, B and Koloski, L (eds), 2011, Letting Go?: Sharing Historical Authority in a User-Generated World (Philadelphia: Pew Centre for Arts and Heritage) CR Barfield, T (ed), 1997, The Dictionary of Anthropology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing) CR Buckland, R, 2005, The Spirit Book: The Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit Communication (Canton: Visible Ink Press) CR Chéroux, C, et al (eds), 2005, The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (New Haven: Yale University Press) CR Clifford, J, 2010, ‘Introduction: Partial Truths’, in Clifford, J and Marcus, G E, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp 1–16 CR Clodd, E, 1917, The Question: A Brief History and Examination of Modern Spiritualism (London: Grant Richards) CR Daston, L and Galison, P, 2007, Objectivity (New York: Zone Books) CR Doyle, A C, 1923, The Case for Spirit Photography (New York: George H. Doran Company) CR Fischer, A, 2004, ‘The Most Disreputable Camera: Spirit Photography in the United Kingdom in the Early Twentieth Century’, in Chéroux, C, et al (eds), The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult (New Haven: Yale University Press), pp 72–91 CR Franklin, J J, 2018, Spirit Matters: Occult Beliefs, Alternative Religions, and the Crisis of Faith in Victorian England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press) CR Frisch, M, 1990, A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral and Public History (Albany: SUNY Press) CR Geertz, C, 1973, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books) CR Golan, T, 2004, Laws of Men and Laws of Nature: The History of Scientific Expert Testimony in England and America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press) CR Hall, T H, 1978, Search for Harry Price (London: Duckworth) CR Hall, T H, 1962, The Spiritualists: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes (London: Duckworth) CR Harvey, J, 2007, Photography and Spirit (London: Reaktion Books) CR Houdini, H, 1924, A Magician Among the Spirits (London: Harper & Brothers) CR ‘Investigator’, 1922, ‘A Critical Examination of the Alleged Fraud with the Crewe Circle’, Light, 42, pp 484–486 CR Jolly, M, 2006, Faces of the Living Dead (London: Mark Batty Publisher) CR Josephson-Storm, J, 2017, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) CR Kaplan, L, 2008, The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press) CR Kaplan, L, 2003, ‘Where the Paranoid Meets the Paranormal: Speculations on Spirit Photography’, Art Journal, 62, pp 18–27 CR Lamont, P, 2013, Extraordinary Beliefs: A Historical Approach to a Psychological Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) CR Lamont, P, 2004, ‘Spiritualism and a Mid-Victorian Crisis of Evidence’, The Historical Journal, 47, pp 897–920 CR Lane, C, 2011, The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty (New Haven: Yale University Press) CR Larsen, T, 2006, Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press) CR Lester, J, 1995, E. Ray Lankester and the Making of Modern Biology (Farringdon: British Society for the History of Science) CR Lewis, A, 1876, Professor Hoffman’s Modern Magic (London: George Routledge and Sons) CR Lodge, O, 1916, Raymond or Life and Death: With Examples of the Evidence for Survival of Memory and Affection after Death (London: Methuen & Co) CR Lonetree, A, 2012, Decolonizing Museums: Representing Native America in National and Tribal Museums (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press) CR Luckhurst, R, 2002, The Invention of Telepathy (Oxford: Oxford University Press) CR McCorristine, S, 2010, Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750–1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) CR McKenzie, J H, 1922, ‘Total Collapse of the Price-Hope Case: A Brief Summary of the Whole Matter’, Light, 42, pp 740–741 CR McKenzie, J H, 1917, Spirit Intercourse: Its Theory and Practice (New York: M. Kennerley) CR Mitchell, B D, 2014, ‘Capturing the Will: Imposture, Delusion, and Exposure in Alfred Russel Wallace’s Defence of Spirit Photography’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 46, pp 15–24 CR Morris, R, 2006, Harry Price: The Psychic Detective (Stroud: Sutton Publishing) CR Natale, S, 2016, Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press) CR Natale, S, 2012, ‘A short history of superimposition: From spirit photography to early cinema’, Early Popular Visual Culture, 10, pp 125–145 CR Nelson, G K, 2013, Spiritualism and Society (Abingdon: Routledge) CR Noakes, R, 2019, Physics and Psychics: The Occult and the Sciences in Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) CR Oppenheim, J, 1985, The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) CR Polidoro, M, 2011, ‘Photos of Ghosts: The Burden of Believing the Unbelievable’, Skeptical Inquirer, 20, pp 20–22 CR Price, H, 1922, ‘A Case of Fraud with the Crewe Circle', Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 20, pp 271–283 CR Raia, C, 2019, The New Prometheans: Faith, Science, and the Supernatural Mind in the Victorian Fin de Siècle (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) CR Sera-Shriar, E, 2020, ‘Credible Witnessing: A. R. Wallace, Spiritualism, and a “New Branch of Anthropology”’, Modern Intellectual History, 17, pp 357–384 CR Steinmeyer, J, 2005, Hiding the Elephant: How Magicians Invented the Impossible (London: Arrow) CR Tabori, P, 1950, Harry Price: The Biography of a Ghost-Hunter (London: Athenaeum Press) CR Tuck, E and Yang, K W, 2012, ‘Decolonization is not a Metaphor’, Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, pp 1–40 CR Tucker, J, 1997, ‘Photography as Witness, Detective, and Imposter: Visual Representation in Victorian Science’, in Lightman, B (ed), Victorian Science in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp 378–408 CR Tucker, J, 2005, Nature Exposed: Photography as Eyewitness in Victorian Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press) CR Visvanathan, S, 2006, Alternative Science’, Theory, Culture, and Society 23, pp 164–169 CR Wallace, A R, 1875, Miracles and Modern Spiritualism: Three Essays (London: James Burns) WT Science Museum Group Journal OL 30