William Roy (1911-1977) was the pseudonym of William George Holroyd Plowright, a notorious fraudulent medium in the history of British spiritualism. Larsen, Egon. (1966). ''The Deceivers: Lives of the Great Impostors''. John Baker Publishers Ltd. pp. 134-142William Roy
Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology.

Biography

Roy was born in

Cobham, Surrey Cobham () is a large village in the Borough of Elmbridge in Surrey, England, centred south-west of London and northeast of Guildford on the River Mole. It has a commercial/services High Street, a significant number of primary and private s ...

. He married Mary Castle, a nightclub owner, in London when he was seventeen years old. During the 1930s, his wife died and he remarried. He set up in business as a spiritualist medium. Roy's second wife, Dorothy, committed suicide. Three weeks after her death, Roy married Mary Rose Halligan. Roy had rich clients and lived in expensive style. He separated from his third wife in 1956. Several small biographies have been written about Roy, these appear in

Egon Larsen Egon Larsen (13 July 1904 - 17 October 1990) was a German science journalist and writer. Larsen was born in Munich. He was the author of many books, due to persecution from Nazism he moved to live in Prague and to London London is the capit ...

(1966), Simeon Edmunds (1966) and Melvin Harris (2003).Edmunds, Simeon. (1966). ''Spiritualism: A Critical Survey''. Aquarian Press. pp. 118-124Harris, Melvin. (2003). ''Investigating the Unexplained''. Prometheus Books. pp. 27-33.

Fraud

Roy used technical devices for his fraudulent mediumship and employed hidden accomplices. He concealed a microphone and recorded the conversations of the sitters before his séances. Roy was exposed as a fraud in 1955. According to Lewis Spence:

When people wrote to ask if they could attend his séances, Roy researched at the registry of births, deaths, and marriages in order to obtain detailed information about their relatives. When they visited his house for a sitting, they would be asked to leave their bags and coats outside the séance room. These were searched by a confederate for letters, tickets, bills, or other scraps of personal information. All the facts concerning sitters were recorded in a detailed card index system, and cleverly worked into Roy's "psychic" messages during séances.

His " direct voice" mediumship was a clever microphone relaying technique. The "spirit" voices were made in an adjoining room by his accomplice who spoke into a microphone or played tape recordings. The wires from the microphone ran through the wall and under the carpet of the séance room and attached to a hearing aid on Roy's wrist. The hearing aid had been adapted into a miniature speaker. In 1958, Roy published his confessions on how he had tricked his séance sitters and issued photographs of the trick-apparatus that he had used in the ''

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'' newspaper. These appeared in five installments, titled "A Shocking Confession of How William Roy Cheated His Way to Fame as a Spiritualist Medium". He admitted that he had earned over £50,000 from his séance sitters. Despite his confessions Roy continued to operate as a fake medium under the name "Bill Silver" until his death.Couttie, Bob. (1988). ''Forbidden Knowledge: The Paranormal Paradox''. Lutterworth Press. p. 22 Roy's apparatus for his fraudulent mediumship is now contained at

Scotland Yard Scotland Yard (officially New Scotland Yard) is the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the territorial police force responsible for policing Greater London's 32 boroughs, but not the City of London, the square mile that forms London's ...

, in a museum at the Metropolitan Police Detective Training School.

Biography

Fraud

References

Further reading