Florence Cook

Florence Cook (1856 - 1904)

The British Master of Materialization.

Florence Cook is said to have begun her career as a psychich medium when she was but fifteen years of age. She was a pretty child and what impressed many of the people who met her was her youth and apparent innocence.

In the writings of her contemporaries the question we seem to find most is this: It has been claimed, as a partial answer to that question, that Florence was not as young as she claimed to be. There is, curiously, no legal resgistration of her birth in any year from 1849 to 1858. The claim that she was born in 1856 rests upon her own testimony.

Although she was to become the British master of materialization, Florence Cook began quite simply. She discovered her psychic mediumistic powers through experiments with table tipping. In 1871, her family brought her to the attention of a local spiritualist organization, the Dalston Association, whose members were most impressed. They soon began to publish accounts of her seances in their paper, THE SPIRITUALIST.

In 1872 Florence Cook became associated with Frank Herne and his partner Charles Williams who were both successful British mediums. Herne had begun his mediumship in 1869 and had joined Williams in 1871. Herne`s spirit control was a long-dead pirate named John King.

During Florence Cook`s period of training with Herne she found a spirit control of her own, John King`s daugther, Katie.

Later, Herne, who seems to have been suspiciously fascinated with pirates, revealed that "John King" was, in reality, the Elizabethan pirate, Sir Henry Morgan. Getting confused??

One of the most famous spiritualist happenings of the nineteenth century took place at a seance held jointly by Herne and williams in june, 1871, when another prominent psychic medium, Mrs. Guppy,was teleported from her own home some three miles away to Herne and Williams` seance. The light was turned up and there, sitting in the center of the seance table, a bit confused, was the very large Mrs. Guppy!

She claimed that she had been home "working on her accounts" and that suddenly there she was with Herne and Williams and their sitters!

Stunts of this sort, while a credit to the imagination of those mediums involved, served a very important purpose, they kept the public talking and curious about spiritualism.

This "teleportation of Mrs. Guppy" is illustrated on the cover of Maskelyne`s MODERN SPIRITUALISM. Mrs. guppy, quill in hand, is being carried over the rooftops by spirit figures clad in transparent garments, accompanied by a small elf-like creature. The banner at the bottom of the illustration amusingly reads: "A moonlight transit of Venus"

In 1878, Williams left Herne to form a new partnership with a medium named Rita who, unfortunately, was later exposed in Amsterdam, when a rude sitter seized a spirit and found that it was Rita herself!

Through the publicity provided by the Dalston Association, Florence came to the attention of a wealthy spiritualist from Manchester, Mr. Charles Blackburn. In 1873 he bacame her patron, providing her family with money so that Florence would not be forced to charge a fee for her sittings. Blackburn remained her patron throughout the period of investigation conducted by Sir William Cookes but withdrew his support in 1874 after Florence`s secret marriage to Edward Corner was made public.

He did not desert the Cook family, however, since he transferred his financial support to Florence`s younger sister Kate, whose seances proceeded very much along the same lines as Florence`s.

When Blackburn died, he generously remembered the entire Cook family...with the exception of Florence! He provided them with two very substantial homes and an impressive income.

Florence Cook, as I have said, became the master of cabinet manifestations. The cabinet was a piece of spiritualist paraphernalia that was introduced during the 1860`s. Sometimes it was actually a free standing structure, but other times it was simply a sheet drawn across the corner of the room making an enclosure.

The medium would enter the cabinet and would very often be tied with ropes to insure that any manifestations really were the work of the spirits.

Almost all of the psychic mediums of the day agreed that materialization simply could not take place outside the cabinet. The cabinet was also said to provide protection for the medium since, it was believed, it was dangerous for a medium even to attempt to effect a materialization. How true!

It must be remembered, of course, that these seances took place in the Cook family home and that the sitters were, therefore, the invited guests of the family. Not surprisingly, everyone present conducted themselves as perfect ladies and gentlemen!

In December one of the guests, mr. William Volckman, (who, curiously, later married the medium, Mrs. Guppy!) grabbed the spirit of Katie King and refused to release her. Volckman was himself jumped by two of the other sitters. One of them was Edward Corner, who later married Florence Cook, and he was forced to to release his hold. Volckman insisted that the spirit was actually Florence Cook herself. THE SPIRITUALIST called the incident a "gross outrage", not the idea of Florence Cook, masquerading as Katie King (that idea they simply refused to believe!) but, rather, the crude and shocking breach of good manners by Volckman who had roughly taken hold of the spirit, and thereby, had questioned the integrity of his hosts!

Those were the days!