8. The Spiritualists
Kirsty Logan examines the Spiritualist movement, by telling the story of celebrated medium Florence Cook, and her spirit guide, Katie King.
Illustration by Seonaid Mackay
βHaving seen so much of Katie lately, when she has been illuminated by the electric light, I am enabled to add to the points of difference between her and her medium.
Katie's height varies; in my house I have seen her six inches taller than Miss Cook. Last night, with bare feet and not tip-toeing, she was four and a half inches taller than Miss Cook.
Katie's neck was bare last night; the skin was perfectly smooth both to touch and sight, whilst on Miss Cook's neck is a large blister...
Miss Cook's hair is so dark a brown as almost to appear black; a lock of Katie's, which is now before me, and which she allowed me to cut from her luxuriant tresses,, is a rich golden auburn.β
Kirsty Logan examines the Spiritualist movement, via the life of medium Florence Cook, and her spirit guide, Katie King, and discovers how a career communication with spirits could result in both opportunity and ruin for Victorian women.
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Malcolm Gaskill - The Craft of Mediumship
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A Seance Interrupted
Duration: 01:22
Malcolm Gaskill - Hellish Nell, the medium convicted under the Witchcraft Act
Our Extra Interview today is
Malcolm is Emeritus Professor of Early Modern History, University of East Anglia. His research interests are in British social and cultural history, 1500β1800, particularly the history of mentalities. He has written extensively about the history of witch-beliefs and witchcraft prosecutions, and is also interested in crime and the law, and the supernatural in the twentieth century, especially spiritualism and psychical research, 1920β50. He is currently writing a short history of witchcraft, while researching a book about emotion, mentality and culture in seventeenth-century English America. His most recent work is a history of the East Anglian witch-hunt of 1645-7, Witchfinders: a Seventeenth-Century English Tragedy (2005).
He is also the author of Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches (2001), and he tells us about the life of this 20th century medium, and how her wartime seances lead her to be the final person in Britain convicted under the Witchcraft Act.
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- Wed 28 Oct 2020 13:45ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4
- Fri 29 Oct 2021 14:45ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ Radio 4