Douglas Blackburn

Douglas Blackburn (6 August 1857, Southwark – 28 March 1929, Tonbridge) was an English journalist and novelist, who worked in the Transvaal and Natal between 1892 and 1908. He has been called "the great chronicler of the last days of the Boer republic."[1]

Douglas Blackburn
Born6 August 1857
Southwark
Died28 March 1929
Tonbridge
OccupationJournalist, writer

Telepathy experiments

During 1882-1883, Blackburn with George Albert Smith took part in a series of experiments that were claimed to be genuine evidence for telepathy by members of the Society for Psychical Research. Blackburn later made a public confession of fraud, stating that the results had been obtained by use of a code.[2][3]

Blackburn's Confessions of a Telepathist: Thirty-Year Hoax Exposed appeared in The Daily News and the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1911. It was re-printed in A Skeptics Handbook of Parapsychology, 1985.[4]

Works
Novels
  • Prinsloo of Prinsloosdorp: A Tale of Transvaal Officialdom, 1899
  • A Burgher Quixote, 1903
  • Richard Hartley, Prospector, 1904
  • I Came and Saw, 1908
  • Leaven, 1908
  • Love Muti, Everett's, 1915
Non-fiction
  • Thought-Reading, or, Modern Mysteries Explained: Being Chapters on Thought-Reading, Occultism, Mesmerism, &c., Forming a Key to the Psychological Puzzles of the Day, 1884
  • (with W. C. Caddell) The Detection of Forgery: A Practical Handbook For the Use of Bankers, Solicitors, Magistrates' Clerks, and All Handling Suspected Documents, 1909
  • Confessions of a Telepathist, 1911
  • (with W. C. Caddell) Secret Service in South Africa, 1911
  • The Martyr Nurse: The Death and Achievement of Edith Cavell, 1915

References
  1. Gray, Stephen (1999). "Douglas Blackburn". Free-Lancers and Literary Biography in South Africa. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 13–58. ISBN 90-420-0666-8.
  2. Polidoro, Massimo. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Paranormal Claims. Prometheus Books. p. 43. ISBN 978-1591020868
  3. Anderson, Rodger. (2006). Psychics, Sensitives and Somnambules: A Biographical Dictionary with Bibliographies. McFarland & Company. p. 161. ISBN 978-0786427703
  4. Blackburn, Douglas. Confessions of a Telepathist: Thirty-Year Hoax Exposed. In Paul Kurtz. A Skeptics Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. pp. 235-239. ISBN 0-87975-300-5

Further reading
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