SEANCES IN SYDNEY

Southland Times, Issue 25334, 10 April 1944, Page 4

SEANCES IN SYDNEY

Fortune-Tellers Booked Up (Special Australian Correspondent, ■ N.Z.P.A.) (Rec. 7 p.m.) SYDNEY, April 9. The police report a war-time revival in palmistry and other occult jiggerypokery, says The Daily Telegraph, which- declares that attendances at spiritualistic seances' are six times greater than they were before the war. Many fortune-tellers are stated to be booked up months ahead. In the past six days there have been more than 90 _ publicly advertised spiritualistic meetings in Sydney, the attendances ranging from 25 to 130. Scores of other seances are believed to have been held' in private homes. Some mediums and fortune-tellers have admitted dealing almost exclusively with women relations of servicemen abroad. Demanding “drastic action to undertake a vigorous purge among these charlatans,” .The Daily Telegraph says in an editorial: “People whose hearts are broken by the tragedies of war naturally grasp at any straw of comfort and cannot be blamed if they are a little overcredulous of the sources from which the comfort comes. But the exploitation of beliefs for profit and by fraudulent promises and assertions is quite another thing. Who could sufficiently despise those who trade on this eagerness for some contact with lost husbands, sons and lovers by reading messages in tea-cups,, table rappings and other such hocus-pocus.”