Agnes Guppy-Volckman

Mrs Tebb (left), Georgiana Houghton (middle), Agnes Guppy-Volckman (right).

Agnes Guppy-Volckman (1838-1917) was a British spiritualist medium.[1]

Career

She was born Agnes Elisabeth White in Regent's Park, London.[2] She was known as Miss Agnes Nichol, later becoming the second wife of the spiritualist Samuel Guppy in 1867. After the death of Guppy in 1875, she married William Volckman.[3]

Guppy-Volckman was discovered by Alfred Russel Wallace in 1866 and managed to dupe him into believing she could communicate with spirits.[4] Volckman was associated with the fraudulent spirit photographer Frederick Hudson.[5][6][7] She was known for producing apports and materializations. Researcher Ronald Pearsall described the fraudulent techniques that Guppy-Volckman used in her séances.[5]

John Grant has written that she "was a clever charlatan; her stunts bear all the hallmarks of extravagant stage conjuring tricks."[8]

Molly Whittington-Egan has written a biography of Guppy-Volckman.[9]

Alleged levitation

On June 3rd, 1871 it was alleged that Volckman had levitated out of her own house in Highbury three miles away to a séance room table in Lamb's Conduit Street. Although this incident was considered genuine by spiritualists such as Arthur Conan Doyle and A. Campbell Holms, it was dismissed by skeptics as a hoax.[10][11][12][13][14]

References

  1. ↑ Anderson, Rodger. (2006). Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules: A Biographical Dictionary with Bibliographies. McFarland. p. 75. ISBN 978-0786427703
  2. ↑ Noakes, Richard John. (2004). Guppy [formerly Nicholl; other married name Guppy-Volckman], (Agnes) Elisabeth (1838-1917), medium. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
  3. ↑ Podmore, Frank. (2011, reprint edition). Modern Spiritualism: A History and a Criticism, Volume 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 63-95. ISBN 978-1-108-07258-8
  4. ↑ "Alfred Russel Wallace And The Medium". James Randi Educational Foundation.
  5. 1 2 Pearsall, Ronald. (1972). The Table-Rappers. Book Club Associates. pp. 82-122. ISBN 978-0750936842
  6. ↑ Slotten, Ross A. (2004). The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace. Columbia University Press. p. 316. ISBN 978-0-231-13010-3
  7. ↑ Nickell, Joe. (2012). The Science of Ghosts: Searching for Spirits of the Dead. Prometheus Books. pp. 301-302. ISBN 978-1-61614-585-9
  8. ↑ Grant, John. (2015). Spooky Science: Debunking the Pseudoscience of the Afterlife. Sterling Publishing. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-4549-1654-3
  9. ↑ Whittington-Egan, Molly. (2015). Mrs Guppy Takes A Flight: A Scandal of Victorian Spiritualism. Neil Wilson Publishing. ISBN 978-1-906000-87-5
  10. ↑ Doyle, Arthur Conan. (1930). The Edge of the Unknown. New York, Putnam's. p. 32
  11. ↑ McCabe, Joseph. (1920). Spiritualism: A Popular History From 1847. Dodd, Mead & Company. p. 144. McCabe described the case as a "piece of collusive trickery."
  12. ↑ Price, Harry. (1942). Search for Truth: My Life for Psychical Research. Collins. p. 246. Price suggests the séance sitters "were probably in the plot."
  13. ↑ Edmunds, Simeon. (1966). Spiritualism: A Critical Survey. Aquarian Press. p. 104
  14. ↑ Brandon, Ruth. (1983). The Spiritualists: The Passion for the Occult in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 105. ISBN 0-297-78249-5

Further reading

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