The Fox Sisters

The world today is divided as to whether the Fox sisters were true psychics or mere fraudsters. Whatever your belief, they were successful in becoming the founders of the spiritualist movement.

The three Fox sisters, Margaret, 1833-93, Leah, 1811-90, and Katherine, 1836-92, became the most famous seers of 19^th-century American Spiritualism, which by 1855, claimed 1 million followers.

Margaret Fox

Kate Fox

Leah Fox

The disturbing events began in spring, 1848, when the two younger sisters, Kate and Margaret, aged twelve and fifteen, became frightened by unexplained sounds (knocking) and the moving of furniture. Their house in Hydesville (which is no longer there) Rochester, New York, had been reported as haunted by the previous owner, Michael Weakman. But it still shocked the young girls when the encounters occurred.

On the evening of March 31^st, Kate challenged the spirit to repeat the clicks of her fingers. It obliged, later excelling itself by tapping out their ages.

The entity claimed to be the spirit of a pedlar named Charles B. Rosma, aged 31, who had been murdered five years earlier and his body buried in the cellar.

The sympathetic neighbours (who had also witnessed un-natural events) helped dig up the cellar only to find a few pieces of bone and hair. But it wasn’t until 1904, that the skeleton was eventually found. The spirit had been correct about his burial, but had neglected to tell the girls that he was hidden in the cellar wall. The grim discovery proved beyond doubt that the sisters were telling the truth about their spirit abilities.

Kate was sent away to stay with her elder sister Leah, in Rochester; whilst Margaret went to her brother David. However, the rapping’s followed them.

The Fox girls then became famous for their mediumistic powers, and by 1849, began giving public performances, managed by their elder sister Leah. People flocked from around the country to see them, all paying for the privilege.

Their séances became hugely popular, also more elaborate with objects moving about, spirits appearing and table levitation.

The Fox sisters were routinely exposed by sceptics as fakes, but no trickery was ever discovered. One test had both girls tightly bound around the ankles, which proved them both innocent of pretence. Their under garments were also inspected for props. Finding nothing to reproduce the sounds, the sceptics were forced to admit the girls were not committing fraud.

Unfortunately, lacking in parental supervision both girls began drinking quite heavily; which in turn affected their performance.

Kate moved to England in 1871. The following year she married a London barrister and enthusiastic spiritualist. Jenken died in 1881, leaving Kate to bring up two sons on her own. Margaret had followed Kate to England in 1876.

Kate Fox was considered a powerful medium, capable of producing, raps, spirit lights, direct writing, appearance of materialized hands and movement of objects at distance.

In time the sisters developed serious drinking problems. Kate was arrested for drunkenness and people worried for her two sons welfare.

For some reason, only known to themselves, in 1888, the two sisters appeared before an audience of 2,000 declaring themselves frauds. Margaret demonstrated that the raps had been produced by cracking her toe joints. Later, in writing Margaret recanted her confession.

Kate continued her life begging and borrowing, and within five years, a few months apart, both sisters died in poverty, shunned by former friends and buried in paupers’ graves.

The conclusion to this story is that the public confession had done nothing to destroy the belief in the Fox sisters, or the movement they founded. Believers felt the sisters had been forced into lying. And spiritualism continued to develop as if the confessions of the sisters had never happened.