You’re Having A Laugh – Part Thirty Three
William Mumler and the Spirit Photographs
There is a thin line between a hoax, a fraud and an innocent
mistake that gets out of hand. Into which category the curious case of William
Mumler and his spirit photographs falls, I will leave you to decide.
William was working as a jeweller in Boston, dabbling in
photography as a hobby. In 1861, after printing off a portrait of himself, he
noticed what seemed to be the shadowy figure of a young girl behind him. He
thought it must have been an accident, the vestiges of an image of an earlier
photo that was still on the plate, but friends, when he showed them the
picture, identified the wraith as Mumler’s dead cousin.
Word of the remarkable photograph soon got around and was pounced
upon by the spiritualist community. The tragic death toll of the Civil War
meant that interest in the paranormal was never greater, grieving relatives
wanting to get in touch with their lost loved ones. Spiritualists in the Boston
area quickly proclaimed Mumler’s photograph as the first ever taken of a
spirit.
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Mumler set up
shop as the world’s first spirit photographer and did a roaring trade. During
the course of the 1860s he took thousands of photographs, all with a
characteristic grainy wraith in the background. The greatest showman, PT
Barnum, never one to miss a trick, displayed several of Mumler’s photographs in
his American Museum.
As Mumler amassed his fortune, more conventional
photographers poured scorn on his work, accusing him of blackening the
reputation of the nascent profession. Even the spiritualist community was
divided, some claiming that the photographs were frauds, even suggesting that
some of the so-called spirits were not only still alive but also bore a
remarkable similarity to some of the subjects of Mumler’s earlier photographs. Nevertheless,
there were still enough people desperate enough to try to contact loved ones
from beyond the grave to give him a healthy income.
Mumler’s troubles, though, began in 1869 when he moved to
New York. Despite moving he couldn’t shake off the allegations of fraud and
after the local Police Department sent an undercover agent to have his portrait
taken. Sure enough, a wraith appeared in the background. The Police launched a
case against Mumler for fraud.
The trial pitted supporters of spiritualism and sceptics
against each other and caused a minor sensation. Some photographers testified
that what Mumler was doing using a technique called double exposure,
superimposing one image on top of another. The photographer, Abraham Bogardus
even produced an example, a portrait of PT Barnum with the gjostly image of
Abraham Lincoln behind him.
But for every naysayer, there was a believer prepared to
speak out on behalf of Mumler. In a rather touching testimony Paul Bremond, who
lost his daughter in August 1863, told the court that “she told me when she
died that if I were permitted she would return to me from the spirit land. By
this photograph I see that she has returned”. The court were prepared to
give Mumler the benefit of the doubt and acquitted him. He continued his
business, producing perhaps his most famous photograph, in 1871, of Mary Todd
Lincoln with the ghostly image of her dead husband, Abraham, embracing her. It
is claimed that she introduced herself to the photographer as Mrs Lindall.
Mumler’s business never really recovered from the court case and he gave up spirit photography in 1879. He did, however, invent the Mumler process which allowed the first photographs to be printed on newsprint, revolutionising the look and feel of journalism for ever. But by the time he took his own place in the spirit world in 1884 he was penniless.
[image error]
If you enjoyed this, try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin
Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
