Francis Ward Monck

Francis Ward Monck

Francis Ward Monck (born 1842) was a British clergyman and spiritualist medium.[1]

Biography

Monck was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire. He claimed to have psychic experiences as a child. He was a clergyman who began his career as a minister of the Baptist Chapel in Earls Barton, he was interested in spiritualism and became a medium.[2] On 3 November 1876 in Huddersfield a sitter H. B. Lodge stopped the séance and demanded that Monck be searched. Monck ran from the room, locked himself in another room and escaped out of a window. A pair of stuffed gloves was found in his room, as well as cheesecloth, reaching rods and other fraudulent devices in his luggage.[3] After a trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison.[4]

William Barrett also caught Monck in fraud with "a piece of white muslin on a wire frame with a black thread attached, being used by the medium to simulate a partially materialised spirit."[5] In his séances Monck placed a musical clock on a table, covered it with a cigar- box, and claimed spirits caused it to play. It was exposed as a trick as Monck had hidden a small music box that he would play in his trousers.[6]

References

  1. Antonio Melechi. (2008). Servants of the Supernatural: The Night Side of the Victorian Mind. Random House. p. 229
  2. Raymond Buckland. (2005). The Spirit Book: The Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit Communication. Visible Ink Press. p. 264
  3. Lewis Spence. (1991). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Gale Research Company. p. 1106
  4. Adin Ballou. (2001). The Rise of Victorian Spiritualism. Routledge. p. 16
  5. Arthur Conan Doyle. (1975). The History of Spiritualism. Arno Press. p. 305
  6. Walter Mann. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. London: Watts & Co. pp. 40-41

Further reading

External links

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