The Davenport brothers: religious practitioners, entertainers, or frauds? - Special Issue: Science and Religion: Conflict or Conciliation?

They have become legendary in the history of spiritualism and continue to spark interest and controversy. The question persists: Were the Davenport Brothers "probably the greatest mediums of their kind that the world has ever seen," as Sherlock Holmes's creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote (1926, 226), or was magician Harry Houdini (1924, 26) correct in reporting that he had facts "more than sufficient to disprove their having, or even claiming, spiritualistic power"? My research into the recently discovered Davenport scrapbook sheds new light on these claims and the fierce disagreement they provoked between Doyle and Houdini.

The Davenports made their debut as mediums in 1854, six years after two schoolgirls, Maggie and Katie Fox, launched modern spiritualism at Hydesville, New York. No doubt the two Buffalo newsboys - thirteen-year-old William Henry Harrison Davenport (b. February 1, 1841) and his fifteen-year-old brother Ira Erastus (b. September 17, 1839) - had heard how the Fox sisters seemed to communicate with ghosts by means of mysterious rapping noises. The boys' father, Ira D. Davenport, was the first to relate the strange happenings. Dishes and cutlery danced about the family's kitchen table and young Ira - when alone - sometimes claimed the spirits had whisked him to distant spots. At household seances, the boys demonstrated their flying ability. As magician John Mulholland explained in his Beware Familiar Spirits (1938, 51): "That is, at the beginning of the seance Ira Erastus would be sitting on a chair at one side of the room, and when the lights were turned up after it was over, the chair and boy would be on the other side of the room." This transpired in the dark, so credulous spectators simply assumed the youth had flown.

At the seances, the spirits supposedly also rapped out messages in the by-then-familiar way, but soon advanced to "automatic writing" (Bowers n.d., 155) which was supposedly produced by spirits guiding the entranced subject's hand. Then the brothers' spirit guide "George Brown," found he could speak through Ira when the youth was in a "trance state" (Mulholland 1938, 49-50). Another spirit entity was "John King" who decided the boys should take their spirit demonstrations on the road.

In the halls and theaters rented by their father at the direction of "John King," the Davenport Boys (as they were originally styled) began to give demonstrations of "spiritual manifestations." To show that they were not physically responsible for the phenomena, they were tied to chairs placed behind a curtain. Later the curtain was replaced by a specially designed "spirit cabinet" (Mulholland 1938, 52). This resembled a huge armoire with built-in benches on either side to which the boys were secured by lengths of rope (Jay 1987, 229; Houdini 1924, 21).

On the floor of the cabinet were placed musical instruments such as violins, guitars, concertinas, and tambourines. Then the doors were shut and the lights turned down. Soon, the instruments were heard to play, and phantom hands were seen to wave eerily through small diamond-shaped windows in the cabinet doors. When the gas lights were turned up and the cabinet opened, the Davenport boys were still securely tied. Spectators were divided over the manifestations; some believed, while others scoffed - or worse - and still others were simply mystified (Mulholland 1938, 53-54). In time the boys traveled throughout the United States and, as they matured, called themselves the Davenport Brothers. In 1864 they sailed for England where they "took the literati and public of London by storm" (Dawes 1979, 87) and performed throughout Europe.

On July 1, 1877, while the brothers were on tour in Australia, William Davenport, who had long been in ill health, died. Years later when Harry Houdini (1874-1926) was in Australia he visited William's grave and, finding it in poor condition, had the stone work repaired and flowers planted. Houdini subsequently visited Ira at his home in Mayville, New York, where Ira shared with him a lifetime of secrets (Houdini 1924, 17-25).

Ira spoke to Houdini as one magician to another, even revealing how he and his brother had extricated themselves from their bonds in order to produce the "spirit" effects. Houdini stated, "Ira Davenport positively disclaimed Spiritualistic power in his talk with me, saying repeatedly that he and his brother never claimed to be mediums or pretended their work to be Spiritualistic" (Houdini 1924, 26). Ira did admit that they never confessed the truth to their believing parents in order to spare their feelings. Years after Ira's death (on July 8, 1911), Houdini included a chapter on the Davenports and Ira's revelations in his A Magician Among the Spirits (1924, 17-37). Houdini included a facsimile of a letter from Ira claiming in regard to the brothers' performances that "We never in public affirmed our Belief in spiritualism" (28).

By this time, Houdini's friendship with Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was irreparably strained. Houdini had been debunking some of the very mediums Doyle had endorsed, and the latter had written to him: "Our relations are certainly curious and likely to become more so, for as long as you attack what I know from experience to be true I have no alternative but to attack you in turn. How long a private friendship can survive such an ordeal I do not know, but at least I did not create the situation." Houdini did not help matters by publishing this and other excerpts from Sir Arthur's letters (Houdini 1924, 164). [See also Massimo Polidoro, "Houdini and Conan Doyle: The Story of a Strange Friendship," SKEPTICAL INQUIRER, March/April 1998.]