WHEN SPIRITUALISM WAS A CRIME.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 20076, 12 October 1920, Page 8

WHEN SPIRITUALISM WAS A CRIME.

, y* ? hear a lot of the good old times, out it is dogbtful if spiritualists would have h.vod to have lived in the sixteenth PcntmW, whew an, Act whs placed on the Statute Rook in the rei<m of Queen Mary, making it a. capital offence for .any person “ to propose to hold communications with the dead ” and later the penalty for such an offence was made burning at the stake. In 1020, too, a man named Edward Harbor, who lived at Onpor. in Essex waa ordered by a local magistrate to bo put in the stocks for threo davs and subsequently to stand for trial for pretending that ho had received mes sages from a dead person, and “for, telling divers persons that he had done so. 1 his luckless spiritualist however was never sent for trial, as on ~’ e hj st night of his confinement'in the stocks 1,0 was burnt to death by some or the : villagers. In tlm reign of James I. fll l>, tcn merchant named Rolen, living hi Lon don. was Kent to the 'lower for alle«mg that during a had illness ho had actually died and that his soul had n.mml for two hours to the world beyond, when it returned to his bodv Kolnp was deprived of all his prol nertv. and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. Tie escanecl from prison however, and m ana ml to make his wav ’?J. to , country, where 1m afterwards published a .book giving ] is exncrmncp'i of Ins visit to the world beyond the grave.