Slade, Henry (d. 1905)

Controversial American medium, best known for his slate-writing phenomena. He was familiar to the American public for 15 years when the choice fell on him to demonstrate paranormal phenomena in St. Petersburg, Russia, before the investigators of the university of that city. Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and Henry S. Olcott, cofounders of the Theosophical Society, were asked to find a suitable medium and sit with him for weeks. They testified to "messages inside double slates, sometimes tied and sealed together, while they either lay upon the table in full view of all, or were laid upon the heads of members of the committee, or held flat against the under surface of the table-top, or held in a committee man's hand without the medium touching it."

En route to Russia, Slade arrived in England on July 13, 1876. He gave many sittings in London and was examined by both Spiritualists and non-Spiritualists. Besides slate writing he produced partial materializations and strong telekinesis phenomena. Observers reported seeing tables being moved, matter passing through matter, levitation, and musical instruments played by invisible hands. For six weeks all went well, his fame spread, and J. Enmore Jones, the editor of The Spiritual Magazine, declared that he was taking the place vacated by the great medium D. D. Home. The World wrote in a long article on August 30, 1876:

"Then came more and violent knockings at the table, a chair at the farthest corner from Dr. Slade was lifted rapidly in the air and hurled to the ground without visible agency. My coat and trousers were plucked violently, and I was pinched and patted, all with great rapidity, and in quarters which it seemed absolutely impossible Dr. Slade could reach. A hand appeared and disappeared fitfully, but with unmistakable reality, close to me; and when the slate was produced with a similar crumb of pencil, once on it when it was held under the table, and once under it when it was placed on the table, messages of various kinds were inscribed rapidly and in different handwritings. One, the longest, was of a religious character, and inculcated the usual religious lessons. Others were in reply to questions in which I pressed hard for a communication on some subject which could be only known to myself."

The article on the séance at which the reporter was alone with Slade and, presumably from the context, in daylight, concluded: "I had not, and have not, a glimmering of an idea how the effects described had been produced, and I came away in-expressibly puzzled and perplexed."

Slade was visited by men of science who were unable to explain what they saw. Lord Rayleigh stated at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in September 1876 that he had attended a séance with Slade in the company of a professional conjurer, who admitted that he was completely puzzled. Slade convinced Alfred Russel Wallace of his genuine powers and "finally" solved the doubts of skeptic Frank Podmore as to the truth of Spiritualism.

Podmore, author of the skeptical work Modern Spiritualism (1902), preserved silence in his later writings over this stage of his beliefs, but he frankly admitted that he was profoundly impressed by Slade's performance.

Then, early in September 1876, at the peak of his fame, Slade was entangled in a serious controversy with accusations of fraud. Ray Lankester, who was outvoted as a member of the Selecting Committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science when William F. Barrett 's paper on Spiritualism was admitted, intended to strike a deadly blow at this new "superstition" and when Edward William Cox told him of the puzzling slate-writing demonstrations of Slade, he went to Slade with his friend Dr. Donkin determined to unmask the medium at whatever cost.

He paid the usual fee of a pound, and in the second sitting he suddenly seized the slate before the writing was supposed to have taken place. He found a message ready, published his exposure on September 16 in The Times, and brought an action against the medium for obtaining money under false pretenses.

Over this exposure a fierce controversy ensued. Besides Lankester the skeptics were represented by Henry Sidgwick, R. H. Hatton, Edmund Gurney, and W. B. Carpenter. According to Podmore,

"… the Spiritualists were perhaps justified in not accepting the incident as conclusive. Slade defended himself by asserting that, immediately before the slate was snatched from his hand, he heard the spirit writing, and had said so, but that his words were lost in the confusion which followed. If we grant that Slade's testimony was as good as Prof. Lankester's or Dr. Donkin's it was difficult summarily to dismiss this plea."

The case came up for trial at the Bow Street Police Court, London, on October 1, 1876. Evidence in favor of the genuineness of Slade's mediumship was given by Wallace, Cox, and George Wyld. Only four witnesses were allowed. The magistrate overruled their evidence, saying that he must base his decision on "inferences to be drawn from the known course of nature," and, on the ground of the deposition of Lankester and Donkin, he sentenced Slade, under the Vagrancy Act, to three months' imprisonment with hard labor.

In the course of the appeal, the conviction was nullified on technical grounds and Slade quickly left for the Continent before Lankester could obtain a fresh summons. However, Slade wrote from Prague, Czechoslovakia, offering exhaustive private tests to Lankester if he would let him come. To this he received no answer, nor did Slade come to London again until 1878, and later in 1887 under the assumed name of "Dr. Wilson."

Armed with many testimonies of Spiritualists and other people of distinction against the blot of the conviction, Slade spent interesting months on the Continent in the Hague, in Berlin, and in Denmark. In Berlin, Bellachini, the famous conjurer, testified on oath to his powers.

In St. Petersburg the séances were satisfactory, but owing to the disturbed state of Russia the investigation did not assume the character originally intended. A successful sitting was given to the Grand Duke Constantine in the presence of Alexander Aksakof and one Professor Boutlerof. According to an account there had been accidentally two bits of pencil on the slate. When he held it under the table the writing of two pencils was heard at the same time and when he drew out the slate it was found that one pencil had written from left to right, the other from right to left.

In December 1877, the experiments of Johann Zöllner, well-known in psychical literature, commenced in Leipzig. Zöllner hoped to establish his theory of four-dimensional space. Professors Fechner, Scheibner, and Weber participated in the investigation. Writing on sealed slates was produced under the strictest test conditions, knots were tied on an endless string, there were remarkable displays of force, and the apparent penetration of matter through matter was several times demonstrated.

After this brilliant success, Slade went to Paris and placed himself at the disposal of Camille Flammarion, "but I obtained nothing certain," stated Flammarion. He added:

"In the cases that did succeed, there was possible substitution of slates. Tired of so much loss of time, I agreed with Admiral Mouchez, director of the observatory of Paris, to confide to Slade a double slate prepared by ourselves, with the precautions which were necessary in order that we should not be entrapped. The two slates were sealed in such a way with paper of the observatory that if he took them apart he could not conceal the fraud. He accepted the conditions of the experiment. I carried the slates to his apartment. They remained under the influence of the medium, in this apartment, not a quarter of an hour, not a half hour or an hour, but ten consecutive days, and when he sent them back to us there was not the least trace of writing inside."

Charles Richet writes of the same period:

"I saw Slade once with Gibier. Slade handed me a slate and put a small fragment of a slate-pencil on it. I held one end and Slade the other, and we put the slate under the table. In a few moments we heard a noise as of writing. There was some writing and the bit of slate-pencil was worn. But I give this experiment (my only one of the kind) under all reserves: (1) It was long ago; (2) I cannot find the notes I took; (3) Slade's honesty is open to question; and (4) Experiments with slates lend themselves to trickery."

The next stage of Slade's career was his visit to Australia. His activities there were recorded in a book by James Curtis titled Rustlings in the Golden City (1894).

In 1885, he appeared before the Seybert Commission in Philadelphia. He was caught in glaring fraud. On one occasion, the sitters distinctly saw that his foot, before he had time to get it back into its slipper, was the instrument of claimed telekinetic phenomena. Once a slate, resting against the leg of the table, was upset by a sitter. It was seen that it had a message on it prepared in advance.

The writing obtained was generally of two kinds. The general messages were very legible and clearly punctuated, but when the communication came in answer to questions it was clumsy, scarcely legible, abrupt and vague. It bore traces of hasty work under difficult conditions, as these impromptu messages could not be prepared in advance.

According to the Seybert Committee's report, Slade declared that Zöllner watched him closely only during the first three or four sittings, but afterward let him do as he pleased. This was the starting point of Fullerton's trip to Germany to interview Zöllner's surviving colleagues in an attempt to discredit his favorable findings.

The exposure by the Seybert Commission was preceded by J. W. Truesdell's revelations. In Bottom Facts of Spiritualism (1883), he claimed to have caught Slade in cheating and narrates an amusing incident. He had discovered a slate with a prepared message in the séance room. He stealthily added another message of his own: "Henry, look out for this fellow; he is up to snuff—Alcinda." He says that he enjoyed Slade's discomfiture when, at the appropriate moment, the unrehearsed message came to light.

Another highly damaging incident was recorded on February 2, 1886, in the Boston Herald, namely an account of the denunciation of Slade as an impostor in Weston, West Virginia. Both Slade and his business manager were arrested but they were afterward released without prosecution.

During the last years of his life Slade fell victim to alcohol addiction; his moral standing was far from high, and he sank lower and lower. He died penniless and in mental decrepitude in a Michigan sanatorium in 1905.

Sources:

Curtis, James. Rustlings in the Golden City. Ballard, 1894.

Podmore, Frank. Modern Spiritualism. London: Methuen, 1902. Reprinted as Mediums of the Nineteenth Century. New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1963.

Truesdell, J. W. Bottom Facts of Spiritualism. New York, 1883.