Welcome to the sixth installment of the In A Sense series. These blogposts are linked with the In A Sense tactile exhibit currently on display in the Dalnavert Museum Visitor’s Center. For additional resources, follow the links at the bottom of this post. To see the full exhibit, drop by the museum or book a tour through our website.
While many of us learned from a young age that there are 5 human senses, scientists and philosophers agree that the number is likely higher. A neurologist may say there are 9 or 21, while some psychologists argue up to 53. The final two blog posts of this series are a nod toward these other senses including the spiritual/mental senses encapsulated by the “supernatural” category and the spatial/self-aware senses encapsulated by the “space” category.
Transference of Thoughts 1885, Charles Richet
Victorians were fascinated with ghosts, death, and other-worldly phenomena. In a time so defined by new scientific discoveries it may seem odd that this surge of spiritualist beliefs would come upon the people. However, the rise of science and technology went hand-in-hand with the supernatural, creating a unique time when machinery and electricity could be synonymous with fairies and ghosts. Popular frameworks for these beliefs spanned the religious and secular including Spiritualism, Mesmerism, and theism.
The doctor, having discarded his wig and cloak hypnotises the woman in the guise of Bottom from ‘Midsummer Might’s Dream’. Image from Wikimedia Commons.
Mesmerism was a popular movement in the 1830s-1840s defined as an exchange of energy wherein an entranced individual could be “charged” with supernatural energy resulting in powers such as healing or seeing the future. Famous Mesmerists include medical professor John Elliotson and the writer Charles Dickens. This movement influenced the more prevalent supernatural development of the Victorian era: Spiritualism. Spiritualists believed in an afterlife wherein the dead could interact with the living through certain objects and people. Mediums could communicate with the dead through technologies like photography, typewriters, and paintings, used by practitioners such as spirit photographer David Mumler or painter Georgiana Houghton. Spiritualism is where techniques and images such as ectoplasm, Ouija boards, and table-tipping were made common. Famous Spiritualists include writer Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Thomas Glendenning Hamilton who is famous in Winnipeg for his seances through the medium Elizabeth Poole, the Hamilton family nanny.
Photograph taken by David Mumler
What all these characters have in common, despite differences in specific beliefs, is their ability to sense different energies. Ecopsychologist Michael J. Cohen would label these abilities as senses unto themselves, ones that are inherent to humans and therefore can connect a person with the natural world. (Cohen is a famous scientist who coined a list of 53 senses which, when utilized, can help people reconnect with nature). Supernatural beliefs were not a departure from the natural world but a form of acceptance where one could take something strange like electricity and put it into a framework that not only made sense but could help someone in their daily life. Victorians did not need to be scared of their soul being stolen by a camera if that same device could help them grieve their departed child. Likewise, one did not need to be apprehensive about the immediacy of a telephone if they understood that the same technology could record birdsong. This, of course, led to fraudulent mediums and practitioners who conned their way through Spiritualist and scientific circles but these spiritually-based movements also led to some of the most iconic literature and scientific discoveries of the 19th century.
In a roundabout way, Spiritualism also promoted the rights of women. Women were seen as more spiritual and were therefore popular choices as mediums, especially for house-calls. However, a selection of English Spiritualist women broke out of the house-bound séance scene and took on the art world, headed by the aforementioned Georgiana Houghton. Beginning in the 1860s Houghton created over 155 paintings in her career, claiming to be aided by dead painters and Archangels. She mounted a solo exhibition of her spirit art in May-September of 1871 at the New British Gallery in London. Although the exhibit was a flop financially, it paved the way for other female mediums and artists such as Anna Howitt Watts, Elizabeth Wilkinson, Barbara Honywood, Catherine Berry and Alice Pery, women who had been banned from artistic guilds but welcomed into supernatural spaces.
Album XVI by Barbara Honywood, courtesy of Bethlem Museum of the Mind, The Glory of the Lord by Georgiana Houghton, Untitled by Alice Pery, Courtesy of Raw Vision Magazine
It is human nature to try to understand a changing world, and Victorians had plenty to contend with. High death rates, new belief structures, and rapidly progressing technologies coalesced into movements which connected mechanics, art, nature, and the human spirit. Whether one believes in an after life or not does not change the fact that there are aspects of the human experience which are hard to interpret and explain. Mediums, art, science, and photography are just a few ways Victorians tried to navigate the senses which go beyond the famous five.
Articles and Books
Diniejko, Dr Andrzej. Victorian Spiritualism: https://victorianweb.org/victorian/religion/spirit.html
Geary, Aidan, “Ectoplasm on the Praries” CBC: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform/ectoplasm-on-the-prairies
http://www.ecopsych.com/insight53senses.html
Georgiana Houghton: https://georgianahoughton.com/ and https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/15/georgiana-houghton-spirit-drawings-review-courtauld
https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/The-Fairies-of-Cottingley/
https://historydetectives.nyhistory.org/2018/08/parlor-tricks-for-kids-in-the-golden-age-of-magic/
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=cpo
Link, Terry, Reconnecting With Nature : a Restoration of the Missing Link in Western Thinking https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4gz96719
Luckhurst, Roger. The Victorian Supernatural: https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/the-victorian-supernatural
Sensory Trust: https://www.sensorytrust.org.uk/blog/how-many-senses-do-we-have
Victorians Live: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/victorian-literature-and-culture/article/victorians-live/9A43DBA1274803E4EE8835FA5B557943
Videos
Ask a Mortician, “Girl Talk with the Dead!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPMJin0BTqE and “The 19th Century Spirit Photography Grift” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNuV6bRStXU&t=1790s
Vox, “The (mostly) true story of “ghost photography”” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsx6xqi0vzU&t=1s
For more go to https://www.friendsofdalnavert.ca/supernatural