Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism

So, this is an intriguing one. In March 1848, Mary Redfield is walking down the road to her house when she is stopped by the children of the new neighbors and told that there have been strange knocking sounds in their house. And that’s how this all started. There was no explanation for the knocking sounds.

The mid-19th century was ripe for Spiritualism to take hold. Witchcraft was more or less considered a superstition of the past, and religious organizations were moving more towards a loving versus a vengeful, God. So, when Kate and Maggie Fox began communicating with the source of the strange knocking sounds, this became a bit of a sensation.

At first, they were only giving demonstrations at their home. They claimed to be communicating with a peddler, who had been murdered by the previous tenant of their rented home. People who knew the previous tenant, a John Bell, said this was not possible. No one was ever able to really identify the peddler, despite the peddler having spelled out his name as being one Charles Rosna. You may be wondering how a ghost spelled its name. The girls would call out the alphabet, and when the correct letter was reached, the ghost would tap once. This must have been tedious, and I kind of wonder if this is when and how spirit boards were invented, as an easier way to communicate with the dead, then repeatedly singing the alphabet song.

Eventually, the girls, with their older sister Leah, who also seemed to be a medium, hosted a series of very public demonstrations, during which they were repeatedly examined by skeptics. None of the skeptics were able to determine how the girls were doing it. It was suggested that the girls may be stamping their feet. But the examiners would hold their feet down, and the tapping continued. It was suggested that maybe the girls were ventriloquists (which is what I was thinking). But a doctor listened to their breathing through a stethoscope and reported nothing like ventriloquism when the raps continued unabated. They were even examined down to their skivvies by a board of Lady Examiners…yet the knocking continued.

Participants at these demonstrations report furniture moving, but no wires were ever found to assist in the movement. Combs would fly from one lady’s hair to another’s, also without assistance. And always, that continuous rapping. Friends and relatives of the girls who expressed either disbelief, or the wish for the spirits to leave, would find themselves attacked by ghostly hands.

Now, all of this is reported in accounts from the 19th century. And the girls were by no means just accepted. In fact, the initial reaction seems to have been doubt and skepticism. And any such claims in the 21st century would most likely be immediately dismissed as absolute quackery. Pics or it didn’t happen! But in the 19th century, this was a direct communication from the spirits, and we were able to get insight into how heaven worked. That is magical. And comforting, in a time when cholera could still sweep through and kill off entire towns.

And it helps that by all accounts, the girls were legit. The skeptics were never able to conclusively prove a fraud was occurring. And thus, was born modern Spiritualism.  This book being not very long, the posts this week will be fairly succinct. But I am so far very intrigued.

Now, in 1849, science was progressing. Fast. As such, pretty much everything was considered a science: phrenologists, hypnotists (they were called mesmerists back then), inspirational speakers, social and political reformers, healers, doctors…everything was science, until proven it wasn’t.

Maggie Fox was the older of the two girls by about four years, and Kate was considered a great beauty, although both sisters were quite beautiful. Included in the psychic powers of the family was older sister Leah Fish nee Fox. The three women were the core of the Spiritualist movement at first, although others soon realized their own psychic abilities.

It seems like their father John David Fox was largely an absent father, for two very different reasons. He was absent for large parts of Leah’s childhood because he was a bit of a gambler and an alcoholic. So much so, that the girls maternal grandfather directed on his death that Margaret Fox (his daughter, the girls’ mother) share of her inheritance was not to be released directly to her but could only be handled through the estate’s executor. Grandfather did not want his good for nothing son in law to gain access to the monies left for Margaret to upkeep her children.

However, John David Fox eventually saw the error of his ways, got clean and sober, stopped gambling, and found his way to Christ via the new and growing Methodist faith. This is a good thing, and Fox reconciled with his wife Margaret, and they had two late in life daughters, Margaretta (Maggie) and Kate. Then when the girls were 14 and 10, the rapping’s started. And the family realized the girls, Kate especially, was capable of communicating with their ghostly visitors. While John David Fox never officially decried this as evil, he did not approve of the spirit communications, and was again absent from the family home while the girls were growing up.

And here is where author Barbara Weisberg’s scholarship truly shines. Because she not only describes the girls lives and unusual livelihood, but she does an excellent job laying out the scene of what life was like in 19th century upstate New York. Here, the abolitionist movement had solid footing, and so too did the equal rights movement, geared toward getting women the vote. Basically, while it was unusual for women to earn their own way, nor was it entirely unheard of. Prior to making her own debut as a medium, Leah Fish had been a music teacher, a genteelly appropriate way for a woman to make a living, given that her husband had either died or abandoned her, depending on who Leah was telling the story to. Speaking to spirits, however, was not an approved way to earning ones living. Any much like women today will shred each other rather than support each other over their unique talents, women in the 19th century tended to be the girls’ harshest critics. Because their employ required them to be in darkened room, yes with mixed company, but it was the presence of men that earned the scornful talk of the ladies of polite society.

Because obviously the girls were little Lolita’s (before that was a thing), and only interested in stealing all their husbands. Why else would they sit in a darkened room and allow men to hold their hands? I mean yeah, the dead were present, and so were other women, but still! Must be about man stealing.

Leah jumped into the family business with both feet, taking on the role of business manager. Kate and Maggie at various times experimented with normal life. Kate for a time was a foster daughter to former Congressman and now newspaper owner Horace Greeley. Greeley and his wife had become enchanted with the girl when she was able to communicate with their deceased son during one of her sittings. Greeley offered to foster Kate, and educate her in some of the finest schools, enrolling her under an assumed name to combat the infamy of her own. Kate hated it in the Greeley household, because everyone was so gloomy, and I believe she was only with the Greeley’s for one year, before rejoining her mother and sisters.

For Maggie, her likely way out came in the form of another famous 19th century name, Elisha Kent Kane. Kane was a famous Arctic explorer and ladies’ man, who became quite enamored of Maggie. It seems likely they were engaged, although this would not have been approved of, given that Kane was from a wealthy family, and Maggie was earning her own way in a quite scandalous profession. But when Kane set out on his Arctic exploration to look for John Franklin’s missing expedition, he arranged for Maggie to live with friends of his, and enrolled her in finishing schools, that she might become a suitable society wife for him on his return. For two years, Maggie bounced between his friends and her family, although it seems she ceased communicating with the dead during this time. When he returned, he tried to break off their engagement, probably at the insistence of his family, but when he saw Maggie again, apparently changed his mind, and continued to court her.

They last saw each other when he was boarding a boat to England, where he planned to promote his newly written book and talk with John Franklin’s widow. However, he became quite ill on the way over, and when Doctor’s in England were unable to cure him, they sent him to Cuba, in the hopes that the tropical climate would help him to recover. He died in Cuba, having never officially married Maggie. But Maggie and her mother and sisters insisted that prior to his leaving for England, Kane had, before them, taken Maggie’s hand and announced that they were married. Now, while this was no longer the common method of announcing a marriage, it was an accepted method of announcing you were married. At this time, marriage licenses and clergy were not a required part of the ceremony, and the simple announcement was enough to make it so. If they had made it public, versus only in front of her family, Maggie might have inherited something of Kane’s estate. Instead, she was left asking his executor, not for money, but whether he had left any kind word for her in his will.

While Maggie’s world was shattering at the death of her common law husband, Leah’s fortunes took a turn for the considerably better, as the twice married widower found herself proposed to for the third time. Lucky bachelor number three was one Daniel Underhill, and they were married on November 3, 1858. Daniel Underhill was a very successful businessman, who owned his own insurance company, and came from a fairly prominent Quaker family. With her marriage to Underhill, Leah retired from public performances, leaving Maggie and Kate to carry on the Fox family business of talking to the dead.

Only, Maggie had sworn to Kane that she would retire from the profession. And so, she bounced around from friend to friend, living off the small stipends she was able to finagle out of Kane’s brother and estate executor, Robert Kane. Maggie also began her own descent into alcoholism. Katie, for her part, traveled to England, and eventually all the way to Russia, acting as intermediary for the spirits with newly crowned Czar Alexander III, advising him to not be a tyrant and to open his policies towards political prisoners. Not sure how that worked out for him, but it did not end well for his son, Nicholas II. But that’s a different book.

Following her successful tour of Russia, Kate returned to England where she fell in love and married Henry Dietrich Jencken. They had two children together, Ferdinand (Ferdie) and Henry. After ten years of marriage, Jencken died of a stroke, leaving Kate a widow at 44. And like her sister Maggie, Kate also fell to alcoholism.

Apparently, the misfortunes of her younger sisters, and their acceptance of the bottle as a means of literally drowning their sorrows, drew the disapproval, rather than the sympathy, of Leah. While living in New York, an anonymous tip was made to the 19th century version of child protective services, claiming that Kate’s two sons were being neglected. While the boys looked perfectly healthy to the investigators, Kate was undeniably drunk when they showed up, which was an absolute no in the 19th century, when women still did not have the vote, and generally were expected to live under the protection of a man. So, the boys were taken to a home for juveniles while Kate was left to sober up. Kate and Maggie both suspected Leah and believed that she wanted Kate to hand over her sons to Leah for raising, which Kate refused to do. Maggie, pretending to be the boy’s uncle in Australia, contacted the home via telegraph requesting the boy’s release. The ruse worked, and Kate picked the boys up and promptly sailed for England, where they met up with Maggie.

Maggie, having no other options for supporting herself, briefly resumed seances, before doing a complete reversal, and announcing that it was all a fraud, and she was going to reveal to the world how it was done. After giving her speech to a crowd packed with both ardent spiritualists and sincere doubters, with Katie sitting in the front row lending her silent support to the proceedings, Maggie explained how, as young girls, they were led to commit fraud by their much older and controlling sister Leah. And then Maggie showed how she and Kate were able to manipulate the joints in their toes, ankles, and knees, to produce resoundingly loud cracks, which were amplified thanks to the excellent acoustics in the auditorium where her presentation was being given.

Leah, I don’t think, ever commented on this. But she gave presentations and readings at her residence up until her death on November 1, 1890, at the age of 77. Kate and Maggie each died shortly after, of complications caused by a lifetime of alcoholism, Kate on July 2, 1892, at the age of 55 and Maggie on March 8, 1893, at the age of 59.

Now, one interesting thing happened about a decade after the last of the Fox sisters had died. The Hydesville house they had been living in when everything started, the one that they claimed had a peddler buried in the basement: in 1904, some schoolchildren were playing around the “spook” house and wandered down into the basement. The house, having been unoccupied for many years, was not in good repair. A crumbling wall gave way to reveal a skeleton, which was approximately 50 years old.

Whether this is proof of the girls contact with the spirits is really left up to each of us to decide. I tend to agree with the authors assessment. Sometimes the communication was real. And sometimes a fraud to keep the career path moving forward. But for women who did not marry at all or did not marry until well past the time women married in that age, their career options were limited to teacher or governess. Or they could do what thousands of other entrepreneurial Americans had done, albeit male entrepreneurs: They could forge their own career path. Leah managed it successfully. The younger sisters, not so much.

This review of Talking to the Dead: Kate and Maggie Fox and the Rise of Spiritualism by Barbara Weisberg was originally posted as a review on YouTube on October 3, 2021, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.