Rosina Thompson

Rosina Thompson (born, 1868) was a British trance medium.

Rosina Thompson

Thompson worked as a medium at Hertford Lodge in Battersea, London. She came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research and performed séance experiments for them from 1898 onward.[1] Thompson was originally a physical medium, however as physical mediumship was exposed as fraudulent the psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers persuaded Thompson to take up trance mediumship.[2] Some psychical researchers were not impressed with her mediumship as it was discovered that her trances were not genuine.[3] Richard Hodgson had six sittings with Thompson and came to the conclusion she was a fraud. Hodgson claimed that Thompson had access to documents and information about her séance sitters.[4]

The medium Leonora Piper was described as an American counterpart to Thompson.[5] According to William James after the death of Frederic Myers, Piper claimed to receive messages from Myers for his widow. The messages were warnings that Thompson was a fraudulent medium.[6]

In spiritualist literature, Thompson has been referred to by other aliases such as Rosalie Thompson and Mrs. Edmund Thompson.

References
  1. J. Gordon Melton. (1996). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Gale Research Inc. p. 1311. ISBN 978-0810394872
  2. Alex Owen. (2004). The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. University Of Chicago Press. p. 237. ISBN 978-0226642055
  3. Raymond Buckland. (2005). The Spirit Book: The Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit Communication. Visible Ink Press. p. 410. ISBN 978-1578592135
  4. Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London Watts & Co. p. 138. "Dr. Hodgson, that quint mixture of blunt criticism and occasional credulity, had six sittings with her, and roundly stated that she was a fraud. The correct information which she gave him was, he said, taken from letters to which she had access, or from works of references like Who's Who. In one case, which made a great impression, she gave some remarkably abstruse and correct information. It was afterwards found that the facts were stated in an old diary which had belonged to her husband."
  5. Bonnie G. Smith. (2008). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Oxford University Press. p. 132. ISBN 978-0195148909
  6. William James. (1986). Essays in Psychical Research. Harvard University Press. p. 423. ISBN 978-0674267084
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