{"id":104555,"date":"2016-11-04T16:11:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T20:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=104555"},"modified":"2016-11-04T17:58:55","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T21:58:55","slug":"in-the-joints-of-their-toes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/11\/04\/in-the-joints-of-their-toes\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Joints of Their Toes"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ruse that gave rise to the spiritualist movement.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a>

The Fox Sisters.<\/p><\/div>\n

Edward White\u2019s The Lives of Others<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0a monthly series\u00a0about unusual, largely forgotten figures from history.<\/em><\/p>\n

On July 13,\u00a01930,\u00a0Arthur\u00a0Conan\u00a0Doyle\u00a0made an appearance\u00a0at London\u2019s Royal Albert Hall\u00a0in the middle of his own memorial service,\u00a0six days\u00a0after his death.\u00a0Nobody saw him, but the spirit medium Estelle Roberts\u00a0assured those present that\u00a0Doyle had kept his deathbed promise:\u00a0he\u2019d\u00a0returned to deliver proof that talking to the dead really is possible.\u00a0In life\u00a0the creator of the arch logician\u00a0Sherlock Holmes\u00a0had been\u00a0as suggestible as those\u00a0ten\u00a0thousand paying guests in South Kensington: he was\u00a0the world\u2019s best-known proponent of spiritualism\u2014the discipline of talking to the dead\u2014and\u00a0an\u00a0adherent\u00a0of just about any wad of mumbo-jumbo going.\u00a0Doyle\u00a0believed not only in\u00a0clairvoyance, but\u00a0telepathy,\u00a0telekinesis, and,\u00a0quite literally,\u00a0fairies at the bottom of the garden.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Throughout the 1910s and \u201920s Doyle\u2019s books, articles,\u00a0and talks\u00a0on these subjects\u00a0helped to furnish spiritualism with mainstream credibility. But the roots of\u00a0the movement were planted\u00a0decades earlier\u00a0in\u00a0a tiny one-bedroom\u00a0cottage in the hamlet of\u00a0Hydesville, New York, the family home of\u00a0Margaret\u00a0and\u00a0John\u00a0Fox and their daughters\u00a0Maggie,\u00a0fourteen, and\u00a0Kate, eleven.\u00a0<\/p>\n

March 1848 was a troubling time for the Foxes. All month long they\u2019d been plagued by thuds and\u00a0cracks\u00a0loud enough to\u00a0awaken\u00a0them in the predawn silence.\u00a0By\u00a0the evening of March 31,\u00a0John and Margaret were at the end of their tethers. The girls were sent to bed early at six o\u2019clock to catch up\u00a0on lost sleep and\u00a0allow\u00a0their parents an evening of quiet to\u00a0still\u00a0their nerves. No sooner had\u00a0Maggie and\u00a0Kate\u00a0slid beneath the sheets\u00a0than\u00a0the noises started reverberating through the cottage. From floorboards, ceilings, bedsteads,\u00a0and doorframes\u00a0came louder and more frenetic\u00a0knocking\u00a0than ever before.\u00a0It seemed that wherever in the cottage the girls went these mysterious sounds followed, as though they were being\u00a0pursued\u00a0by some invisible force.\u00a0Margaret was convinced that something demonic was afoot and\u00a0sent\u00a0her husband\u00a0to rouse the\u00a0neighbors\u00a0for help.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That evening the\u00a0Foxes\u2019\u00a0bedroom\u00a0was crowded with people\u00a0who\u00a0stood awestruck\u00a0in the candlelight\u00a0as\u00a0the cracking sounds echoed around them.\u00a0William\u00a0Duesler, a\u00a0neighbor,\u00a0spoke aloud\u00a0into thin air,\u00a0asking questions\u00a0and receiving\u00a0in reply\u00a0knocking sounds,\u00a0\u201craps,\u201d\u00a0as he\u00a0termed them.\u00a0Slowly,\u00a0it emerged that this disembodied\u00a0spirit\u00a0had an\u00a0earthly identity:\u00a0a thirty-one-year-old\u00a0peddler\u00a0who had been murdered\u00a0for the sum of five\u00a0hundred dollars\u00a0and\u00a0then\u00a0buried beneath the Foxes\u2019 house by a previous tenant.\u00a0At the time, nobody in the room had any idea who the victim might have been, and even though the Foxes\u2019 adult son\u00a0David\u00a0had hit upon the idea of running through the letters of the alphabet to allow the spirit to spell out words, nobody seems to have asked the spirit\u00a0to give\u00a0its\u00a0name. In later weeks,\u00a0locals began to recall\u00a0that\u00a0perhaps\u00a0a young peddler had\u00a0indeed\u00a0passed through one day some years earlier.\u00a0Exactly when,\u00a0they couldn\u2019t say.\u00a0Others would later\u00a0swear\u00a0that\u00a0David,\u00a0digging\u00a0beneath the house\u00a0one\u00a0summer,\u00a0had\u00a0discovered\u00a0bones and a set of human teeth.\u00a0Very quickly fabulous tales\u00a0and half-remembered anecdotes\u00a0congealed\u00a0into a dense tissue of myth\u00a0that made for an alluring alternative to empirical truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In many parts of the world, the spring and summer of\u00a0that year\u00a0was a momentous time. There were revolutions across western Europe; the Mexican-American War\u00a0came to an end; the gold rush was underway in California. In rural New York, things were\u00a0evidently\u00a0a little slower.\u00a0Within a few weeks,\u00a0the story of the\u00a0Hydesville\u00a0haunting scrabbled its way across the state. Leah Fish\u2014the Foxes\u2019 eldest daughter,\u00a0a music teacher in\u00a0nearby Rochester\u2014first heard about it\u00a0when\u00a0an excited pupil read aloud from a newspaper report\u00a0about the case. By the time a perplexed Leah arrived at the family home,\u00a0the Foxes had all decamped to David\u2019s house in\u00a0a\u00a0neighboring\u00a0village\u00a0to escape the crowds of locals hoping to meet the little girls who had\u00a0made contact\u00a0with the dead.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

\"foxsistershouse\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The precise run of\u00a0proceeding\u00a0events is contested, but it\u2019s clear that\u00a0Leah, whose worldliness was in direct proportion to her parents\u2019 naivety,\u00a0quickly\u00a0sussed that her siblings were pulling\u00a0a\u00a0fast one.\u00a0Maggie\u00a0and\u00a0Kate\u00a0admitted\u00a0to her\u00a0that they\u00a0had\u00a0perfected\u00a0the art of cracking their toes\u00a0with no perceptible movement.\u00a0When performed in contact with\u00a0wooden surfaces to amplify\u00a0the noise, the raps sounded as if from the ether. Leah should have been furious\u00a0at their deception; perhaps she was. But she\u00a0also\u00a0realized that Maggie\u00a0and\u00a0Kate\u00a0had,\u00a0in the joints of\u00a0their toes,\u00a0the potential to change the fortunes of the Fox family forever.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

With entrepreneurial sharpness,\u00a0Leah moved\u00a0herself,\u00a0Maggie,\u00a0and\u00a0Kate\u00a0into a house in Rochester\u00a0where, for a dollar each, visitors could attend a s\u00e9ance\u00a0with them.\u00a0It was an instant hit.\u00a0The Fox sisters\u2019\u00a0fame\u00a0as spirit mediums\u00a0spread so quickly that they soon performed\u00a0to packed\u00a0theaters\u00a0in New York, New England,\u00a0and beyond.\u00a0It marked a shift in popular attitudes toward the paranormal. Two\u00a0hundred years earlier, a couple of adolescent females who claimed to be in conversation with\u00a0the dead\u00a0may well have\u00a0been\u00a0burned alive as witches;\u00a0in the mid-nineteenth century\u00a0they became show-business celebrities.\u00a0<\/em>Most\u00a0who came to see them\u00a0were\u00a0happy to believe\u00a0the Fox girls were the real deal, though\u00a0Maggie in particular was subject to some terrifying abuse\u00a0from those who thought her either a fraud or a heretic.\u00a0In Troy, New York,\u00a0she\u00a0was even the victim of an attempted kidnapping by a group of men who seemed\u00a0offended by the sisters\u2019 show.\u00a0For Maggie and\u00a0Kate, children who had started this as a prank to enliven the dullness of their daily routine, it\u00a0was\u00a0too much.\u00a0As early as\u00a0November 1849 they tried to bring the circus to an end, spelling out \u201cwe will now bid you farewell\u201d with their toe joints\u00a0during a s\u00e9ance.\u00a0For two weeks the spirits remained silent; their reappearance was\u00a0testament to\u00a0Leah\u2019s\u00a0unshakable belief that the show must go on,\u00a0and her\u00a0formidable skill at\u00a0ensuring that it would.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even had they stopped,\u00a0it wouldn\u2019t have slowed the juggernaut they had\u00a0set in motion. By 1850,\u00a0\u201crapping\u201d\u00a0had become a nationwide craze.\u00a0That\u00a0October, the\u00a0New Haven Journal\u00a0<\/em>reported that there were forty families in upstate New York who claimed to have the same gifts as the Foxes, and hundreds more\u00a0ranging from Virginia to Ohio. In 1851,\u00a0a writer at the\u00a0Spiritual World\u00a0<\/em>tallied\u00a0more than one hundred spirit mediums in New York City alone.\u00a0From the Fox sisters,\u00a0the phenomenon of spiritualism emerged not as some shadowy occult practice or roadside attraction but\u00a0as\u00a0an exciting way of reconciling the ineffable mysteries of the soul with the complex realities of\u00a0a\u00a0modern, rapidly industrializing\u00a0nation; newly respectable, it could count among its proponents Thomas\u00a0Edison,\u00a0the antislavery leader\u00a0William Lloyd Garrison, and\u00a0many prominent\u00a0women\u2019s rights advocates based in Rochester, the Foxes\u2019 adopted hometown.\u00a0A\u00a0conspicuous number of the\u00a0new adherents were from scientific backgrounds.\u00a0A physician\u00a0from New England\u00a0named\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Phelps\u00a0reported that\u00a0his\u00a0windows\u00a0had\u00a0shattered\u00a0spontaneously,\u00a0his\u00a0clothes\u00a0had been\u00a0torn without human interference, inanimate objects\u00a0had danced\u00a0together on\u00a0his\u00a0floor, and, weirdest of all, turnips inscribed with mysterious hieroglyphs\u00a0had surged\u00a0forth from the\u00a0living room\u00a0carpet.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That men and women of science should have been so captivated by spiritualism isn\u2019t as incongruous as it first appears.\u00a0In the 1840s and \u201950s,\u00a0advances in\u00a0science and technology\u00a0seemed to be eradicating the America of Washington, Jefferson,\u00a0and Jackson in which many of the older generation had grown up.\u00a0The railroads and the telegraph had opened up\u00a0the country, mass\u00a0production and mass immigration were transforming the character of its cities,\u00a0and\u00a0Darwin\u2019s\u00a0theories\u00a0were questioning the most basic assumptions about\u00a0life and death.\u00a0As science challenged all the old sureties, spiritualism offered a way of clinging to the past; far from\u00a0rejecting\u00a0science and rational thinking,\u00a0spiritualists believed they were on the cutting edge,\u00a0using scientific methods to\u00a0prove the existence of God and the afterlife.\u00a0Many ordinary Americans struggled to see that there was anything more outlandish in spiritualism than in the other scientific marvels that were transforming their world.\u00a0The\u00a0very sound of rapping echoed the sound of the new telegraph machines that, seemingly by magic, allowed\u00a0people\u00a0in New York to\u00a0instantaneously\u00a0communicate with\u00a0people\u00a0in Boston, Los Angeles, or even\u00a0on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In the first four years of the Foxes\u2019 fame there was ample evidence that their\u00a0rapping was a fraud.\u00a0Some wryly pointed out the frequency with which\u00a0the ghosts of\u00a0famous figures such as Benjamin Franklin appeared at the Foxes\u2019 s\u00e9ances;\u00a0one observer couldn\u2019t help noting\u00a0that\u00a0the great man\u2019s command of spelling and grammar had diminished\u00a0terribly\u00a0since passing over.\u00a0Then there were times when Franklin and the other stiffs refused to turn up at all:\u00a0conditions weren\u2019t to their liking.\u00a0At\u00a0a\u00a0performance in Buffalo,\u00a0cushions were placed between the girls\u2019 feet and the wooden floorboards.\u00a0Nothing but the sound of strained silence filled the air that night.\u00a0Leah wheeled out her stock\u00a0defense:\u00a0the negative energy of cynics\u00a0polluted the channel between the girls and the spirits; only those of pure heart who believed without question would be able to witness definitive proof of the girls\u2019 powers.\u00a0It was\u00a0the circular logic of magical thinking, and it worked beautifully.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Powered by the turbines of self-delusion, spiritualism\u00a0quickly spread\u00a0to Great Britain, arguably the first American cultural export\u00a0to conquer the old motherland. Kate played a significant part in that,\u00a0staging\u00a0shows\u00a0where\u00a0ghosts appeared not just through rapping but\u00a0in physical form.\u00a0Quite how\u00a0she\u00a0achieved\u00a0that\u00a0is unclear, but\u00a0apparitions were\u00a0said to appear\u00a0in a\u00a0strange\u00a0\u201cpsychic light\u201d\u00a0during\u00a0her\u00a0seances.\u00a0The British were as enthralled by the myth of the Fox sisters\u00a0as\u00a0Americans\u00a0had been,\u00a0and Leah,\u00a0in particular,\u00a0capitalized on the transatlantic fame. Before the\u00a0Hydesville\u00a0rapping she had been a single mother,\u00a0hampered by the\u00a0ubiquitous\u00a0social\u00a0restrictions\u00a0that came with\u00a0being born female.\u00a0In the\u00a0field\u00a0of spirit mediumship\u2014a branch of the entertainment industry\u00a0that\u00a0she more than anyone else\u00a0had\u00a0helped to invent\u2014women dominated.\u00a0She acquired wealth,\u00a0social clout, and opportunities that would never usually have been afforded\u00a0someone of\u00a0her background.\u00a0Over the next decades, she became a venerable society lady and the wife of a Wall Street\u00a0banker.\u00a0Spiritualism\u00a0had become\u00a0so\u00a0mainstream\u00a0that she felt no need to distance herself from the movement\u00a0despite her social elevation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But for Maggie\u2014the sister on whom the greatest burden of performing\u00a0had been\u00a0placed,\u00a0and\u00a0who had been\u00a0troubled from the beginning by her deceit\u2014the rapping phenomenon brought heartache and misery. In 1852,\u00a0at\u00a0seventeen, she met Elisha Kane, a\u00a0famous Arctic\u00a0explorer with whom she entered into\u00a0a strangely fraught long-distance\u00a0romance.\u00a0Kane balanced genuine love with embarrassment\u00a0that his beloved devoted her life to\u00a0sideshow\u00a0quackery.\u00a0He\u00a0promised Maggie that they would be married one day; for years she clung to the prospect of becoming Mrs.\u00a0Elisha Kane and jettisoning her role as prophet of the spiritualist movement.\u00a0But\u00a0the Kane family,\u00a0in\u00a0the snootiest\u00a0echelons\u00a0of Philadelphia society,\u00a0considered Maggie a\u00a0backwoods\u00a0purveyor\u00a0of profane heresy.\u00a0Fearful of the consequences of a proper marriage, Elisha compromised on a ring-exchanging ceremony\u00a0before\u00a0his latest\u00a0foreign\u00a0expedition.\u00a0On his return, he promised,\u00a0would follow\u00a0a full wedding recognized by God and the law. That day never came:\u00a0Elisha fell gravely ill during his travels\u00a0and died\u00a0in Cuba,\u00a0aged just thirty-six.\u00a0Maggie\u2019s despair was compounded by insult when Elisha\u2019s parents forbade her from attending the funeral and refused to acknowledge her as their son\u2019s betrothed and common-law wife,\u00a0thereby\u00a0rejecting\u00a0her claim to a share of his estate.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

She retaliated\u00a0by publishing\u00a0The Love-Life\u00a0of\u00a0Dr.\u00a0Kane<\/em>, a book of his letters to her.\u00a0Her\u00a0savior\u00a0and soulmate ripped away, Maggie\u2019s life veered onto the wrong side of the road.\u00a0She turned to drink to dampen the pain of her loss and\u00a0to\u00a0submerge the shame and self-loathing that spiritualism caused her.\u00a0Yet the more she drank, the more unfit she became for dealing with life, and the\u00a0farther she drifted from\u00a0sense of purpose.\u00a0<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Arthur Conan Doyle.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0In 1888, forty years after the childhood prank that changed her life, Maggie collected herself sufficiently to make a public confession. There were now millions of confirmed spiritualists across the planet, including\u00a0Doyle,\u00a0who published the first Sherlock Holmes book that same year.\u00a0It was hard for Maggie to believe that the cotton reel,\u00a0once dropped,\u00a0could have spun so far from her grasp.\u00a0Her confession\u00a0at\u00a0New York\u2019s Academy of Music\u00a0was fulsome and emotional,\u00a0incorporating\u00a0a full demonstration of how she and her sister had performed their trick.\u00a0Kate,\u00a0now also a widow with a drink problem,\u00a0sat in\u00a0the audience and\u00a0dourly\u00a0confirmed everything Maggie said;\u00a0Leah\u00a0rolled her eyes from afar,\u00a0dismissing\u00a0her sisters as\u00a0wanton\u00a0attention seekers who put their grubby material desires before truth and righteousness. The fact that Maggie had been paid $1,500 for the performance has always been\u00a0cited by defenders of spiritualism as definitive, damning proof that\u00a0she\u00a0was lying through her teeth that evening,\u00a0thinking only of the\u00a0check\u00a0that would\u00a0pay for her next snifter.\u00a0They\u2019re half right about that.\u00a0No sooner had Maggie made the confession than she retracted it, realizing that\u00a0her disavowal would do nothing other than deprive her of her only source of income.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Maggie\u00a0died in 1895, a bitter\u00a0and broken women relying on the kindness of friends and acquaintances to keep a roof over her head.\u00a0She had, in a curious way, been an accidental pioneer. Twenty years before vaudeville\u00a0began to give\u00a0female entertainers a new standing\u00a0in American popular culture,\u00a0she\u00a0and her sisters had\u00a0trod\u00a0out a path\u00a0along\u00a0which dozens of other female spiritualists followed, many\u00a0gaining\u00a0financial independence, social standing, and an outlet for their talents, personalities,\u00a0and ambitions. It\u2019s unlikely that Maggie could ever have taken any pride in that. To her last day she felt tarnished by her involvement in spiritualism and shamed by her\u00a0dependence\u00a0on it. Her death made little impact upon the spiritualist community; there was no memorial s\u00e9ance\u00a0for her as there would\u00a0be for Doyle, and no spirit medium to receive her message from the other side. If it is possible for the dead to reach us from beyond the grave, Maggie has chosen\u00a0to\u00a0withhold her touch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Edward White is the author of\u00a0<\/em>The Tastemaker: Carl Van\u00a0Vechten\u00a0and the Birth of Modern America<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The ruse that gave rise to the spiritualist movement. Edward White\u2019s The Lives of Others\u00a0is\u00a0a monthly series\u00a0about unusual, largely forgotten figures from history. On July 13,\u00a01930,\u00a0Arthur\u00a0Conan\u00a0Doyle\u00a0made an appearance\u00a0at London\u2019s Royal Albert Hall\u00a0in the middle of his own memorial service,\u00a0six days\u00a0after his death.\u00a0Nobody saw him, but the spirit medium Estelle Roberts\u00a0assured those present that\u00a0Doyle had kept […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":695,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22423],"tags":[3965,8618,25571,6696,25574,25572,25577,25573,124,1758,25579,11846,25578,1786,16000,7355,13802,6857,25575,25576],"class_list":["post-104555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-lives-of-others","tag-arthur-conan-doyle","tag-christianity","tag-fox-sisters","tag-ghosts","tag-hydesville","tag-kate-fox","tag-knocking","tag-maggie-fox","tag-new-york","tag-performance","tag-pseudoscience","tag-quackery","tag-rapping","tag-religion","tag-rochester","tag-science","tag-seances","tag-spiritualism","tag-toes","tag-william-lloyd-garrison"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nHow the Fox Sisters\u2019 Hoax Gave Birth to Spiritualism<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Edward White on the ruse that gave rise to a movement.\" 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