Summary: This interdisciplinary research project is the first scholarly exploration of the ‘Crandon case’: the testing of the notorious Boston-based spiritualist medium ‘Margery’ Crandon in the years c.1920–35 by a transatlantic team of researchers with medical and scientific pedigree. During séances, ‘Margery’ seemingly produced mysterious physical emanations such as ‘ectoplasm’ from her bodily orifices. Spiritualists like herself believed these to be materialisations of deceased souls.
She drew the attention of serious researchers, keen to debunk or verify these extraordinary biological phenomena and so test the empirical reality of her spiritualist claims. This project aims to establish the precise nature of the relationship between biomedicine and heterodox belief in the Crandon case — an important study in the history of the intersections between science and popular belief systems like spiritualism lying outside traditional religion — and assess scope for a future project on medicine and occultic belief. Its research questions are: What precise role did observation, visual documentation, and eye-witness testimony play in testing Margery? What was the relationship between proof and trust (‘faith’)? And what can this tell us about the broader relationship between medicine and heterodox beliefs at this time, especially in relation to validation practices surrounding the extraordinary? In exploring such interconnections, this project aligns with INSBS’s aim of supporting nuanced research into the relationship between science and belief in international sociocultural contexts. This project offers a much-needed intervention by shifting focus from traditional religion to heterodox occult beliefs.
The documentary photographs taken by Margery’s investigators (housed at Senate House) — at once technical objects, scientific controls, and visual artefacts — serve as entry-point into these issues, offering key insights into the continuities and conflicts between spiritualist belief and the nascent field of biomedicine in relation to Margery’s extraordinary body. With institutional support from the Courtauld Institute of Art, a world-leading centre for the study of visual culture in society, this project’s activities include: scoping the Senate House archives and collecting research data, and analysing and writing-up this material into two outputs: an online public talk for delivery during the grant period, and an article for submission to a peer-reviewed journal. The third output is an assessment of the viability of extending this material towards a larger project on medicine and occultic belief. Anticipated impact includes changing scholarly and non-academic perceptions of the relationship between biomedicine and heterodox faith. Funding would cover salary and minor costs at the Courtauld for 6 months (15h per week).
