Francis Ward Monck

Francis Ward Monck

Francis Ward Monck (born 1842) was a British clergyman and spiritualist medium who was exposed as a fraud.[1][2]

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.[3] 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.[4] After a trial Monck was convicted for his fraudulent mediumship and was sentenced to three months in prison.[5]

The physicist 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."[4][6] 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.[7]

References

  1. ↑ Christopher, Milbourne. (1996). The Illustrated History of Magic. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 174
  2. ↑ Melechi, Antonio. (2008). Servants of the Supernatural: The Night Side of the Victorian Mind. Random House. p. 229. ISBN 978-0099478867
  3. ↑ Buckland, Raymond. (2005). The Spirit Book: The Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit Communication. Visible Ink Press. p. 264. ISBN 978-1578591725
  4. 1 2 Spence, Lewis. (1991). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Gale Research Company. p. 1106
  5. ↑ Ballou, Adin. (2001). The Rise of Victorian Spiritualism. Routledge. p. 16
  6. ↑ Slotten, Ross A. (2004). The Heretic in Darwin's Court: The Life of Alfred Russel Wallace. Columbia University Press. p. 472. ISBN 978-0-231-13010-3
  7. ↑ Mann, Walter. (1919). The Follies and Frauds of Spiritualism. London: Watts & Co. pp. 40-41

Further reading

External links

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