Real-Life X-Files (5 page)

More evidential are penciled “spirit” writings that appear on some of the early pages. These writings are scrawled, smeared, overwritten, stained, and otherwise difficult to read. There seems little of interest, but one phrase declares, “connected with/with [
sic
] spirit manifesting.” The writing may be an early form of Iras handwriting. It is very likely from the 1850s, at which time Ira was practicing “automatic” writing (Bowers n.d., 155).

In addition, there is a suggestive annotation that Ira signed with his initials. It follows a brief, undated clipping about the Davenport Brothers’ impending trial at Centerville, Indiana. The charge was unstated but may have been “showing without a license,” which (as demonstrated by another clipping) they were charged with at Ionia, Michigan, in September 1860. To the Indiana journalist’s sarcastic comment, “the spirits will help them out of their difficulties, of course,” Ira responded by writing, “And they did. I.E.D.” The comment is ambiguous. Taken literally it suggests that Ira believed he received spirit aid. Or he might have meant that spirits became a mitigating religious issue, which actually happened at Ionia spiritualists there testified “that the demonstrations given by the Davenport boys were some of the methods which Spiritualists use for disseminating their religious belief.”

The Ionia trial provides still additional evidence that bears on Ira’s relationship to spiritualism. The brothers had given what one journalist disparaged as “an exhibition of their skill in hemp handling” (i.e. rope
tricks) on each of eight successive evenings at a spiritualist assemblage held at nearby Lyons. The article mentioned that “the Spiritualists which number many of our most substantial citizens, felt much aggrieved because of the prosecution.” The Davenport Brothers’ participation in the “Lyons Spiritual Convention” suggests they were—or were pretending to be—practicing spiritualists.

A clipping from the
Brighton Herald
(England) of December 17,1864, confirms what is known from other sources, that the Davenport Brothers were accompanied during the early part of their overseas tour by the Reverend J.B. Ferguson, a Presbyterian who became an ardent and eloquent proponent of spirit manifestations and who served as a lecturer with the Davenports’ show. By all accounts he had a “minister’s simple faith” in the genuineness of the brothers’ mediumship (Mulholland 1938, 56,62). Doyle’s insistence that the Davenports were actually spiritualists was based in part on Ferguson. Doyle stated that if Ira claimed otherwise, then he was “not only a liar, but a blasphemer as he went around with Mr. Ferguson, a clergyman, and mixed it all up with religion” (quoted in Houdini 1924,148).

Even the fact that the scrapbook was discovered at Lily Dale, where it had obviously been for many years, is highly suggestive of Ira’s ties to spiritualism. In fact, at an 1885 spiritualist “Camp Meeting” of the Cassadaga Lake Free Association (which became the Lily Dale Assembly in 1906 [Lajudice and Vogt 1984]), Ira Davenport was one of two featured “physical mediums” (those who produced physical phenomena). In reporting on the event,
The Banner of Light
(August 29, 1885) stated that Ira’s “fame in this phase of mediumship is world wide.” Ira may have had even further involvement in Lily Dale; he lived in the same county, Chautauqua, only a few miles from the scenic spiritualist village.

All of this evidence from the scrapbook indicates that Ira Davenport identified himself as a spiritualist, as Doyle insisted. (So did Ira’s obituary in the July 9,1911,
New York Times
, which specifically referred to him as a “spiritualist.” And his tombstone has a religious, compatibly spiritualistic, message, depicting a rising sun with the words, “There never was night that had no morn.”)

On the other hand, it is Houdini whom the scrapbook vindicates regarding the Davenport Brothers’ demonstrations. In clipping after clipping there is evidence that supports his claim that—as he said Ira admitted to him—the brothers secretly performed the “spirit” effects by slipping
free of their bonds. For example, according to an unidentified clipping, circa 1857–1858:

[A] printer of this city visited the boys and taking along a little printer’s ink, after seeing that the boys were firmly tied, placed it on the neck of the violin. He placed quite a quantity there, and the result was that soon the spirit “John” [“John King”], called through the old tin trumpet for a light, as he had been daubing the boys all over with paint! When the light was brought it was found that one of the boys, sure enough, had his shoulder pretty well besmeared. Of course the manager stoutly contended that it was placed there by the spirit, but our printer friend was of the opinion that “John” was rather an ignorant spirit if he did not know
printers ink
from paint!

The newspaper continued, saying of the Davenports’ performance, “The whole thing is a trick; but it is a clever one.”

A similar exposé occurred in Indiana in 1863, as reported in the May 22 issue of the
Richmond (Indiana) Palladium
in an article titled, “The Celebrated Davenport Boys Brought to Grief.” A Dr. Henry Davis “applied oil of kreosote [sic] to the handle of the [violin] bow, and as soon as the musical part of the manifestations was over, the hands of the ’mediums’ were examined and the odor of the oil was found quite perceptible on the right hand” of one of the brothers. It was therefore he, said the paper, “who had been making the ’spirit music’ with which the audience had been edified,” and the brothers were thus “convicted … of that part of the swindle.” They refused to be tested further, whereupon “a crowd of one or two hundred persons rushed upon the stage” and demanded a refund from the Davenports. “Their box, horns, violins, banjoes, etc., were pretty roughly kicked about the stage.” When patrons were promised a refund from the ticket office but found it closed, “A large crowd now assembled in the street and demanded to know the whereabouts of the swindlers.” Peace was only restored by an appeal to law and order. The brothers and their two associates were arrested and charged with “obtaining money under false pretenses.” After posting bond, “the swindlers,” said the paper, were “turned loose to prosecute still further their nefarious thieving operations.”

Another clipping reported that at the previously mentioned 1860 trial at Ionia, Michigan, a committeeman had been placed with the brothers in the spirit cabinet. He testified that in the dark, “he secured be
tween his knees one of the instruments the spirits were said to play on, and … after jerking it several times and finding it fast, one of them [the brothers] said in a low voice, ‘don’t hold it so fast.’” As well, “several witnesses testified to what appeared to them signs of humbuggery” which were “such that darkness was required to do them in.”

Two clippings (one from the
Detroit Free Press
, the other from the
Clearwater [Michigan] Democratic Union
) describe a revealing exposé of November 1860. On a Sunday afternoon, the brothers gave one of their exhibitions where, as usual, “permission was given for any person who wished to do so to examine the ’boys’ and satisfy themselves that there was no deception about the matter.” Thereupon (continued the
Free Press
), “One or two persons took advantage of the permission given, and commencing the search, discovered some of their implements of trade concealed in the boot of one of the performers.” The brothers announced that no further searching would be permitted, but when the searchers persisted, “a general
melee
ensued, during which one of the Davenports drew a bowie–knife or dirk and threatened to kill any person who should lay hands on him.” This ended the exhibition and resulted in charges being placed against the brothers. “The one arrested for assault,” reported the
Democratic Union
, was subsequently acquitted, after which “the whole were tried” for “exhibiting on the Sabbath” and convicted. Rather than pay a $25 fine each, they elected to serve a thirty–day jail term.

Still another scrapbook clipping (unidentified but dated March 24, 1865) tells how two aggressive English skeptics, a Mr. Hulley and Mr. Cummins, “took an active part… in baffling the spiritualistic pretensions of the Brothers.” Details are not given in this particular article, although in similar instances reported elsewhere (McHargue 1972,131–33), the Davenports were stymied when they were tied especially securely. As a result, several persons sought to recover their five–shilling admission fee on the grounds that the brothers failed to perform what their sponsors had promised in their advertisements.

Taken as a whole, the evidence of the scrapbook does indicate that Ira Davenport was a practicing spiritualist, or at least pretended to be, although he and his brother used trickery to accomplish the effects they attributed to spirits. Clearly they were career deceivers who (according to Ira’s obituary) “made a fortune of $600,000” before William’s untimely death and Ira’s subsequent retirement. In his old age, Ira’s qualms about their dishonesty probably prompted him to make some atonement by
confessing their secrets to Houdini while, at the same time, trying to present their actions in the most favorable light.

References

Bowers, Edwin E [n.d.]
The Phenomena of the Séance–Room.
London: Rider.

Christopher, Milbourne. 1962.
Panorama of Magic
. New York: Dover.

Dawes, Edwin A. 1979.
The Great Illusionists
. Secaucus, N.J.: Chartwell.

Doyle, Arthur Conan, 1926.
The History of Spiritualism
, vols. I and II. Reprinted New York: Arno, 1975.

———. 1930.
The Edge of the Unknown
. Reprinted Alexandria, Va.: Time–Life, n.d.

Houdini, Harry. 1924.
A Magician Among the Spirits
. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Jay, Ricky. 1987.
Learned Pigs & Fireproof Women
. London: Robert Hale.

Lajudice, Joyce, and Paula M. Vogt. 1984.
Lily Dale: Proud Beginnings
, n.p. [Lily Dale, N.Y.], 5, 27–28.

McHargue, Georgess. 1972.
Facts, Frauds, and Phantasms
. New York: Doubleday.

Mulholland, John. 1938.
Beware Familiar Spirits
. Reprinted New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979.

Nickell, Joe. 1990.
Pen, Ink and Evidence: A Study of Writing and Writing Materials for the Penman, Collector and Document Detective
. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky.

———. 1996.
Detecting Forgery: Forensic Investigation of Documents
. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky.

———. 1999.
Crime Science: Methods of Forensic Detection
. Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky.

Chapter 4

Like Count Dracula, the mythical specter of “spontaneous human combustion” (SHC) refuses to die. The latest book to fan the flames of belief, so to speak, is
Ablaze
! by Larry E. Arnold. The dust jacket blurb states that the author “redirected a background in mechanical and electrical engineering to explore the Unconventional.” Indeed, Arnold is a Pennsylvania school bus driver who has written a truly bizarre book—one that takes seriously such pseudoscientific nonsense as poltergeists and ley lines (362—66), and that suggests that the Shroud of Turin’s image was produced by “flash photolysis” from a body transformed by SHC “into a higher energy state” (463).

As if he were a trained physicist on par with any Nobel laureate, Arnold blithely posits a subatomic “pyrotron” as the mechanism for SHC (99-106), and he casually opines that “extreme stress could be the trigger that sets a human being ablaze” (163). In the many cases in which the alleged SHC victim had been a careless cigarette smoker or in which thevictim’s body was found lying on a hearth, Arnold dodges the issue of spontaneous human combustion by invoking “preternatural combustibility,” an imagined state in which a body’s cells reach a heightened susceptibility to ignition by an outside spark. To understand Arnold’s approach, we can look at a few of his major examples—those cases which are treated at chapter length in
Ablaze
!

The Death of Dr. Bentley

Arnold leads off with the 1966 case of Dr. John Irving Bentley, who was consumed by fire in the bathroom of his home in Coudersport, Pennsyl
vania. About all that was left of him—in recognizable form—was his lower leg, which had burned off at the knee it was lying at the edge of a hole about two and a half by four feet that had burned into the basement.

Spontaneous human combustion? Actually, the infirm ninety-year- old physician had a habit of dropping matches and hot ashes from his pipe upon his robes, which were spotted with burns from earlier occasions. He also kept wooden matches in both pockets of his day robe—a situation that could transform an ember into a fatal blaze. Apparently waking to find his clothing on fire, Dr. Bentley made his way into the bathroom with the aid of his aluminum walker—probably at an accelerated pace—where he vainly attempted to extinguish the flames. Broken remains of what was evidently a water pitcher were found in the toilet. Once the victim fell on the floor, his burning clothing could ignite the flammable linoleum; beneath that was hardwood flooring and wooden beams—wood for a funeral pyre. Cool air drawn from the basement in what is known as the “chimney effect” could have kept the fire burning hotly (Arnold 1995,1-12 Nickell and Fischer 1984).