Frank Podmore

Frank Podmore
Born	Frank Podmore February 5, 1856 Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England
Died	August 14, 1910 (age 54) Malvern, Worcestershire, England

Frank Podmore (1856–1910) was an English author, and founding member of the Fabian Society. He is best known as an influential member of the Society for Psychical Research and for his sceptical writings on Spiritualism.

Biography

Born at Elstree, Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, he was educated at Haileybury and Pembroke College, Oxford (where he first became interested in Spiritualism and joined the Society for Psychical Research – this interest remained with him throughout his life).

He was a member of the Oxford Phasmatological Society which dissolved in 1885.

Podmore who considered most mediums fraudulent, was open minded about the telepathic hypothesis for Leonora Piper's séances. Podmore was critical of Helena Blavatsky and her claims of Theosophy. He evaluated poltergeist cases and concluded they are best explained by deception and trickery.

Podmore did defend the validity of telepathy and ghosts, the latter of which he believed to be "telepathic hallucinations."

Bibliography

Books

• Phantasms of the Living (1886, written with Frederick Myers and Edmund Gurney).
• The Government Organisation of Unemployed Labour (1886).
• Apparitions and Thought-Transference (1892).
• Studies in Psychical Research (1897).
• Modern Spiritualism (1902). Reprinted as Mediums of the 19th Century, vols. 1 & 2.
• The Naturalisation of the Supernatural (1908).
• Mesmerism and Christian Science (1909).
• Telepathic Hallucinations: The New View of Ghosts (1909).
• The Newer Spiritualism (1910).

References

This page incorporated content from Frank Podmore, a page hosted on Wikipedia. Please consult the history of the original page to see a list of its authors. Therefor, this article is also available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License

• Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology, Vol. 2, (M-Z), Podmore, Frank (1856-1910), page 1223
• http://spartacus-educational.com/TUpodmore.htm