Stuart Cumberland (1857–1922) was an English

mentalist Mentalism is a performing art in which its practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precogniti ...

known for his demonstrations of "thought reading". Cumberland was famous for performing

blindfold A blindfold (from Middle English ') is a garment, usually of cloth, tied to one's head to cover the human eye, eyes to disable the wearer's visual perception, sight. While a properly fitted blindfold prevents sight even if the eyes are open, a ...

ed feats such as identifying a hidden object in a room that a person had picked out or asking someone to imagine a murder scene and then attempt to read the subject's thoughts and identify the victim and re-enact the crime. Cumberland claimed to possess no genuine psychic ability and his thought reading performances could only be demonstrated by holding the hand of his subject to read their muscular movements. He came into dispute with psychical researchers associated with the

Society for Psychical Research The Society for Psychical Research (SPR) is a nonprofit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal. It describes itself as the "first society to condu ...

who were searching for genuine cases of

telepathy Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic W ...

. Cumberland argued that both telepathy and communication with the dead were impossible and that the mind of man can not be read through telepathy, only by

muscle reading Muscle reading, also known as " Hellstromism", "Cumberlandism" or "contact mind reading", is a technique used by mentalists to determine the thoughts or knowledge of a subject, the effect of which tends to be perceived as a form of mind reading. ...

. An opponent of

spiritualism Spiritualism is the metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spiritualism (when not lowercase) ...

, Cumberland would attribute all mediumship phenomena to muscle reading and trickery.Barry Wiley. (2012). ''The Thought Reader Craze: Victorian Science at the Enchanted Boundary''. McFarland. pp. 102-106.

Publications

*''A Thought Reader's Thoughts'' (1888) *''People I Have Read'' (1905) *''That Other World'' (1918) *''Spiritualism: The Inside Truth'' (1919)

References

1857 births 1922 deaths English magicians Mentalists {{UK-entertainer-stub