Chapter Sirth.

DEATH-BED APPARITIONS SEEN BY SEVERAL WITNESSES AT ONCE-DEATH-BED APPARITION SEEN BY FIVE WITNESSES, AND THEIR TRUSTWORTHINESS ATTESTED BY MRS. MARGARET BALFOUR; BY THREE WITNESSES, AND ATTESTED BY MRS. BACKHOUSE; BY THREE WITNESSES, AND ATTESTED BY MR. RICHARD GRATTAN, M.D.; BY TWO OR THREE WITNESSES, INCLUDING PREBENDARY SALTER; BY TWO WITNESSES, SIR JOHN SHERBROKE AND GENERAL WYNYARD; BY FOUR WITNESSES, THE REVD. THOMAS SAVAGE AND RELATIVES; BY TWO WITNESSES, AND ATTESTED BY MR. FREDERICK SINCLAIR; BY TWO WITNESSES, AND ATTESTED BY THE REVD. F. G. LEE; BY THIRTY WITNESSES, AND SWORN TO IN THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH; BY FIVE WITNESSES, AND ATTESTED BY MRS. CROWE-OLD BOOTY'S GHOST AND THE APPEARANCE OF "A GENTLEMAN IN BLACK"-APPARITIONS SOMETIMES SEEN BY PSYCHICAL IMPRESSION BY MORE THAN ONE PERSON AT THE SAME TIME.

FROM the facts already brought forward, it is clear that the reality of the phenomena of death-bed apparitions is sufficiently established by the testimony of many witnesses, who, when alone, have seen them, and in some cases have had their experience verified through the lips of the dying individual. Notwithstanding this, the full strength of the evidence has not yet been brought into notice; for if ever death-bed apparitions are of a materialised nature, it might be assumed that probably no law would interfere with their making themselves visible to several observers at once. And, as a matter of fact, they do sometimes appear before two or more witnesses.

Now for a first example. The Revd. F. G. Lee, D.C.L., vicar of All Saints, Lambeth, in his Glimpses of

AN APPARITION SEEN BY FIVE WITNESSES. 103

the Supernatural (vol. ii., King & Co.: 1875), prints the following document:

May 26, 1876.

A lady and her husband (who held a position of some distinction in India) were returning home (A.D. 1854), after an absence of four years, to join a family of young children, when the former was seized in Egypt with an illness of a most alarming character, and though carefully tended by an English physician, and nursed with the greatest care, grew so weak that little or no hope of her recovery existed. With that true kindness which is sometimes withheld by those about a dying bed, she was properly and plainly informed of her dangerous state, and bidden to prepare for the worst. Of a devout, pious, and reverential mind, she is reported to have made a careful preparation for the latter end. The only point which seemed to disturb her mind after the delirium of fever had passed away was a deepseated desire to see her absent children once again, which she frequently expressed to those who attended upon her. Day after day, for more than a week, she gave utterance to her longings and prayers, remarking that she would die happily if only this one wish could be gratified.

On the morning of the day of her departure hence she fell into a long and heavy sleep, from which her attendants found it difficult to arouse her. During the whole period of it she lay perfectly tranquil. Soon after noon, however, she suddenly awoke, saying, "I have seen them all; I have seen them all. God be praised, for Jesus Christ's sake," and then slept again. Towards evening in perfect peace, and with many devout exclamations, she calmly yielded up her spirit to God who gave it. Her body was brought to England and interred in the family burying-place.

The most remarkable part of this incident remains to be told. The children of the dying lady were being educated at Torquay under the supervision of a friend of the family. At the very time when their mother thus slept they were confined to the house where they lived by a severe storm of thunder and lightning. Two apartments on one floor, perfectly distinct, were then occupied by them as play and

recreation rooms. All were then gathered together. No one of the children was absent. They were amusing themselves with games in company of a nursemaid who had never seen their parents. All of a sudden their mother, as she usually appeared, entered the larger room of the two, pausing, looked for some moments at each and smiled, passed into the next room, and then vanished away. Three of the elder children recognised her at once, but were greatly disturbed and impressed at her appearance, silence, and manner. The younger and nursemaid, each and all, saw a lady in white come into the smaller room, and then slowly glide by and fade away.

The date of this occurrence, Sept. 10, 1854, was carefully noted, and it was afterwards found that the two events above recorded happened almost contemporaneously. A record of the event was committed to paper, and transcribed on a fly-leaf of the Family Bible, from which the above account was taken and given to the editor of this book in the autumn of 1871 by a relation of the lady in question, who is well acquainted with the fact of her spectral appearance at Torquay, and has vouched for the truth of it in the most distinct and formal manner.

The narrative of the spectral appearance of a lady at Torquay, forwarded to Dr. F. G. Lee at his special request, is copied from and compared with that in the Family Bible of H. A. T. Baillie-Hamilton, by the undersigned.

(Witness) J. R. GRANT.

C. MARGARET BALFOUR.
MARY BAILLIE-HAMILTON.

Princes Street, Edinburgh, Oct. 7, 1871.

Every point in the foregoing narrative indicates this to have been a materialised apparition, with the exception of the words "vanished away." But the public believe that spirits of all kinds ought to fade away, consequently, as I have noticed at séances, are loose in their phraseology, and have often spoken of materialisations "fading away" where I saw nothing of the

A SPIRIT SEEN BY THREE WITNESSES.

105

kind. If in the example now before us, the spirit walked behind a curtain or door, and was no more seen, such disappearance must have been loosely described by the words used by the nursemaid. In this very good case, the spirit was unexpectedly seen by five persons, and recognised by three of them.

In the next instance, the spirit of a dying woman was seen by three of her children at the same time. The following document was forwarded to Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood, of 14 Queen Anne Street, Cavendish Square, London, by Mrs. Backhouse, wife of Mr. E. Backhouse, member of Parliament for Darlington; it was communicated to the Psychological Society by Mr. Wedgwood, in April 1876, and read to the Society early in the following month:

In the early part of the last century, a member of the Society of Friends, living at Settle, in Craven, had to take a journey to the borders of Scotland. She left her family under the care of a relation, who, instead of sending frequent letters in those days of slow and expensive communication between distant places, engaged to keep a minute journal, to be transmitted to the mother at any convenient opportunity, of all that concerned her three little children, aged seven, six, and four. After an absence of three weeks, when on her homeward way, she was seized with illness at Cockermouth, and died in a few days, even before her husband at Settle could hear by post of the commencement of her illness. The season was winter, when in the mountainous border-land between the counties the conveyance of letters by postmen on foot was an especially lengthened and difficult process. The friends at whose house the event occurred, seeing the hopeless nature of the attack, made notes of every circumstance attending the last hours of the dying wife and mother, for the satisfaction of her family, so that the accuracy of the several

statements as to time as well as facts was beyond the doubtfulness of mere memory, or of even any unconscious attempt to bring them into agreement with each other. One morning between seven and eight o'clock, on the relation at Settle going into the sleeping-room of the three children, she found them all sitting up in their beds in great excitement and delight, crying out, "Mamma has been here! Mamma has been here!" And the little one said, "She called, 'Come, Esther!"" Nothing could make them doubt the fact, intensely visible as it was to each of them; and it was carefully noted down to entertain the mother on her speedily expected return to her home. That same morning, as she lay on her dying bed at Cockermouth, to those who were watching her tenderly and listening for her latest breath, she said, "I should be ready to go if I could but see my children." She then closed her eyes, they thought to reopen them no more, but after ten minutes of perfect stillness she looked up brightly and said, "I am ready now, I have been with my children," and then at once peacefully passed away. When the notes taken at the two places were compared, the day, hour, and minute were the same. One of the three children was my grandmother, Sarah Birkbeck, (daughter of William Birkbeck, banker, of Settle), afterwards wife of Dr. Fell, of Ulverston, from whom I had the above, almost literally as I have repeated it. The elder was Morris Birkbeck, afterwards of Guildford. Both these lived to old age, and retained to the last so solemn and reverential a remembrance of the circumstance that they rarely would speak of it, or permit any allusion to it, lest it should be treated with doubt or levity. Esther, the youngest of the three, died soon after. Her brother and sister only heard the child say that her mother called her, but could not speak with any certainty of having themselves heard the words, nor did they seem sensible of any communication from her, but simply of her standing there and looking on them. My grandmother and her brother were both persons remarkable for strong matter-of-fact, rather than imaginative, minds, and to whom it was especially difficult to accept anything on faith, or merely