William Hope (1863 – 8 March 1933) was a pioneer of so-called "

spirit photography Spirit photography (also called ghost photography) is a type of photography whose primary goal is to capture images of ghosts and other spiritual entities, especially in ghost hunting. It dates back to the late 19th century. The end of the Americ ...

". Based in

Crewe Crewe () is a railway town and civil parish in the unitary authority of Cheshire East in Cheshire, England. The Crewe built-up area had a total population of 75,556 in 2011, which also covers parts of the adjacent civil parishes of Willaston ...

, England, he was a member of the well known

spiritualists Spiritualism is the metaphysics, metaphysical school of thought opposing physicalism and also is the category of all spiritual beliefs/views (in monism and Mind-body dualism, dualism) from ancient to modern. In the long nineteenth century, Spir ...

group, the Crewe Circle. He died in

Salford Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...

hospital on 8 March 1933.

Biography

As a young man Hope was employed as a carpenter, but he quickly came to prominence in paranormal circles after claiming to be able to capture images of spirits on camera. Hope produced his first spirit image in 1905. Soon afterwards he formed the Crewe Circle Spiritualist group, with himself as the leader. In 1916, Hope managed to dupe

William Crookes Sir William Crookes (; 17 June 1832 – 4 April 1919) was a British chemist and physicist who attended the Royal College of Chemistry, now part of Imperial College London, and worked on spectroscopy. He was a pioneer of vacuum tubes, inventing t ...

with a fake spirit photograph of his wife.

Oliver Lodge Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge, (12 June 1851 – 22 August 1940) was a British physicist and writer involved in the development of, and holder of key patents for, radio. He identified electromagnetic radiation independent of Hertz's proof and at his ...

revealed there had been obvious signs of double exposure – the picture of Lady Crookes had been copied from a wedding anniversary photograph. However, Crookes was a convinced spiritualist and claimed it was genuine evidence for spirit photography. Doubts were also raised about his spirit photography in 1908. Hope was first exposed in 1920 by Edward Bush who had caught Hope out by using a trap. He used the fake name "Wood" and sent a letter to Hope with a photograph of a living person which he pretended was his deceased son. He later attended a sitting with Hope. Hope produced a "spirit" extra which was exactly the same as the photograph he had sent Hope and on it were the words "Dear friend Wood". The psychical researcher

Whately Carington Walter Whately Carington (1892 – March 2, 1947) was a British parapsychologist. His name, originally Walter Whately Smith, was changed in 1933.Harry Houdini Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American Escapology, escape artist, Magic (illusion), magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his Escapology, escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to ...

, attended a sitting with Hope. DeVaga found the dark conditions in the room suspicious and suspected that Hope had switched a plate. Houdini, Harry. (2011, originally published in 1924). ''A Magician Among the Spirits''. Cambridge University Press. pp. 123-133.

Price investigation

In February 1922, 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 co ...

and the paranormal investigator

Harry Price Harry Price (17 January 1881 – 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for ...

with James Seymour,

Eric Dingwall Eric John Dingwall (1890–1986) was a British anthropologist, psychical researcher and librarian. Biography Born in British Ceylon, Dingwall moved to England where he was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge (M.A., 1912), and the Univer ...

and William Marriott demonstrated that Hope was fraudulent during tests at the

British College of Psychic Science James Hewat McKenzie (1869–1929) was a British parapsychologist, and the founder of the British College of Psychic Science. McKenzie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 11 November 1869 and died on 29 August 1929, in London.Buckland, Raymond ...

. Price wrote in his report "William Hope has been found guilty of deliberately substituting his own plates for those of a sitter... It implies that the medium brings to the sitting a duplicate slide and faked plates for fraudulent purposes." Polidoro, Massimo. (2011)
"Photos of Ghosts: The Burden of Believing the Unbelievable"
Csicop.org. Retrieved 2014-10-11. Price secretly marked Hope's photographic plates, and provided him with a packet of additional plates that had been covertly etched with the brand image of the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd. in the knowledge that the logo would be transferred to any images created with them. Unaware that Price had tampered with his supplies, Hope then attempted to produce a number of spirit photographs. Although Hope produced several images of spirits, none of his materials contained the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd logo, or the marks that Price had put on Hope's original equipment, showing that he had exchanged prepared materials containing fake spirit images for the provided materials. Price later re-published the Society's experiment in a pamphlet of his own called ''Cold Light on Spiritualistic "Phenomena" - An Experiment with the Crewe Circle.'' Due to the exposure of Hope and other fraudulent spiritualists,

Arthur Conan Doyle Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859 – 7 July 1930) was a British writer and physician. He created the character Sherlock Holmes in 1887 for ''A Study in Scarlet'', the first of four novels and fifty-six short stories about Ho ...

led a mass resignation of eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research, as they believed the Society was opposed to spiritualism. Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from his laboratory and claimed if he persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Harry Houdini. Doyle and other spiritualists attacked Price and tried for years to have Price take his pamphlet out of circulation. Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope." Despite Price's findings, Hope still retained a noted following amongst spiritualists. Doyle refused to accept any evidence that Hope was a fraud and even invoked a

conspiracy A conspiracy, also known as a plot, is a secret plan or agreement between persons (called conspirers or conspirators) for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason, especially with political motivation, while keeping their agr ...

that Price and other researchers had framed Hope. On this,

Massimo Polidoro Massimo Polidoro (born 10 March 1969) is an Italian psychologist, writer, journalist, television personality, and co-founder and executive director of the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences (CICAP). Early lif ...

has written "the case of William Hope and his Crewe Circle deserves to be remembered today because it shows that it is practically impossible (and futile) to try to convince someone who wants to believe even in the face of quite convincing contrary evidence."

Further exposures

Hope's exposures were discussed in detail by James Black in an article for the ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

'' in 1922. He concluded that Hope was a "common cheat who obtains money under false pretenses." Fred Barlow, a former friend and supporter of Hope's work and also the former Secretary of the

Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures The Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures (SSSP) was a short-lived psychical organization that formed in 1918 to investigate claims of spirit photography. It was established as a rival to the Society for Psychical Research. History The ...

, along with Major W. Rampling-Rose, gave a joint lecture to the

to present findings gleaned from an extensive series of tests on the methods Hope used to produce his spirit photographs. They concluded that the spirits that appeared in Hope's photographs were produced fraudulently. In 1933, Hope was discredited when the pair presented their case in depth against him in the Proceedings of the

. The psychical researcher

also noted another exposure. It involved

James Hewat McKenzie James Hewat McKenzie (1869–1929) was a British parapsychologist, and the founder of the British College of Psychic Science. McKenzie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 11 November 1869 and died on 29 August 1929, in London.Buckland, Raymond ( ...

who had discovered fraud but failed to make it public. According to Paul Tabori:

In 1933 the widow of the proprietor of the British College for Psychic Science (where Price's séance with Hope took place) admitted in an article that after the sitting her husband went through Hope's luggage and "found in a suitcase a flash lamp with a bulb attached, some cut-out photographic heads and some hair". These basic facts were suppressed in 1922 and William Hope wasn't "laid-low" conclusively until 1944 when Fred Barlow and W. Rampling-Rose proved finally that during the extensive series of experiments they had conducted with Hope all the "spirit extras" they had obtained could have been fraudulently produced."

During his photography sessions, Hope would sometimes carry out prayers and religious hymns. A 1969 entry for Hope in ''The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography'' described him as "undoubtedly a schizophrenic. On one side of his character was an alert, witty and patently honest North- countryman, whilst on the other hand there was the bogus medium who used prayers and psalm-singing as a cloak for his fraudulent operations."Mannheim, L. A. (1969). ''The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography''. McGraw-Hill. p. 1439. Reprinted in Stroebel, Leslie D; Zakia, Richard D. (1993). ''The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography''. Focal Press. p. 744.

Gallery

Examples of Hope's work. Image:williamhopehoax1.jpg, Mr and Mrs Gibson and the spirit of their deceased son (1919). Image:williamhopehoax3.jpg, Reverend

Charles Lakeman Tweedale Charles Lakeman Tweedale (died 29 June 1944), most well known as Charles L. Tweedale, was a British Anglican minister and spiritualist. Career Tweedale was educated at Durham University. He was the Anglican Vicar of Weston, North Yorkshire. He ...

, his wife, and the spirit of her deceased father (5 September 1919). Image:williamhopehoax4.jpg, Mrs Hortense Leverson and the spirit of her deceased husband, Major Leverson (1931). Image:williamhopehoax5.jpg, The annual meeting of the "Society for the Study of Supernormal Pictures". Including Sir

and his wife (Center, Left) (1922). Image:williamhopehoax6.jpg, Mrs Longcake and the spirit of her deceased sister-in-law.

References

External links

Halloween hauntings: William Hope's spirit photographs
''The Guardian'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Hope, William 1863 births 1933 deaths English fraudsters English spiritual mediums People from Crewe Paranormal investigators