1945
January 8, 1945
[ Photo of letter to Lillian from Mary Marshall (Dawn) ]
March, 1945.
[Note: Handwritten. No booklet given to Mr. Mitchell.]
[November, 1944. Have learned through Mr. Jim Thompson, McIntosh Avenue, Elmwood, that he has met recently a cousin of Peter Campbell's who is now residing in Winnipeg. This cousin told him that Peter Campbell died a few years ago (August 22, 1942 - L. M. H.]
[P.S. The cousin has since called on me (January, 1946) and given me the above date of Peter Campbell's death. The poet was a deeply religious man, and all his poetry held religious significance. The Skylark typified the soul in its upward struggle toward God.]
[The cousin was not in Winnipeg when the script was written.]
July, 1945
Dear Mrs. Hamilton:
Many times you have asked me to tell you something about my early life. I don't think it will interest you very much I was born in Govan Glasgow on February 29, 1880. My father and mother were very poor I had one brother (7 years) years older than me my mother died when I was 3 years and 8 days old I dont remember anything about her only what my father told me I never saw any of her people both her parents were dead when she was married she was a maid on the same farm where my father was stable man that all I know about my mother ... When my mother died my father took my brother and me over to stay with Grandma and two Aunties (my fathers mother and sisters) my Grandma died soon after I was four years old both my Aunties worked at the mill I might say here my Aunties lived in Ireland and went to work every morning at 6 a.m they came home for breakfast at 8 a.m. my brother used to take me to school which was 3 miles from where we lived in a two roomed cottage I dident learn any lessons at school as there were no other children of my age there were only two teachers one was a lady she brought a doll to play with its clothes all came off and I was very happy with it (it was the only doll I ever had) when I was five years old my Aunts quarreled what about I don't know and I stay with my Aunt Agnes I liked my Aunt Mary Jane better and would rather have stayed with her she was the younger and my Aunt Agnes moved to another village and went to work at another mill my brother stayed with my Aunt Mary Jane we lived in a house with a friend of my Aunts and I was sent to school in the village then my troubles started my Aunt had to pay my fees for the school this was one penny a week the first penny I got to take to school one of the girls told me it was to buy sweets with which I did with her help for this smart action I got a good whipping not only from my aunt but one from the teacher also and this is one thing I'll never forget ...
When I was a bit over six years my father decided to take my brother and me back to Scotland we had a little house so I became his house keeper at the age of 6 ½ I washed the dishes swept the floor my father made the bed when he came in at 8 a m I had the kettle boiling and made the porrage for my brother and father my brother was working at this time ... that went on until after I was 7 I was at school I went there at 9:30 my father and brother didnt come for lunch so I was left to myself all day for the first two years I enjoyed going to school and wouldnt miss it for anything then now and again I began missing lessons then the teachers didnt spar me they sent word to my father then I would get a whipping ... on the Christmas 1888 I decided to have a party as some of the girls beside me had one (but I wasnt asked ) I went to the store where my father traded and got biscuits and cake and cooked ham to make sandwiches the kids were all in when my father returned home early he hunted us all out I ran out with the rest and was afraid to return back my father had to go out again so I slip back in the house and got my coat and hat I went to the grocery store and borrowed five shillings ... Well I took a boat to Ireland I knew where my aunt stayed ... her husband didnt want to keep me my Aunt went to the minster to see if he could advise her about what could be done for me the minister had a sister in Belfast,,, I told the lady I would go ... it was an orphant home 9 miles from Belfast and it was the happiest time of my life After I had been in the home two years or more I got converted we had Moody and Sankey at the home ... then I decided I wanted to go home to my father ... I went home to my Father and kept house for my father and brother I was nearly sixteen years I met my husband after I returned to Govan ... I am glad that I was led by unseen hands for had I remained in Goven the 8 years I was out of it only God knows what would become of me and I thank Him every day for leading friends who were interested enough in a motherless girl to help her along My father was a good man but he had to work from 6 am to 6 pm every day he had no money to pay anyone to look after me I was with him when he died he never did a wrong to any one in his life he never owed any one the value of one penny ... I hope Mrs. Hamilton this will be the information you want ... and I certainly don't want you to print it if there is any one you feel you have to show it to you are at liberty to show it to them.
Sincerely your
(Signed ) Mary A Marshall
P.S. My married life has been different I will be married 46 years on January 1st (New Year day) and if I had to start married life over again I would marry the same man ..."
Some Personal Evidence for the Survival of the Mind and Memory of the Late Dr. T. Glen Hamilton
Evidence for the survival of Dr. T. Glen Hamilton as obtained in my own experiments and the experiments of those associated with me in the work of psychic research, has been mainly of two kinds. First, objective evidence in the form of a number of visible teleplasms revealing his likeness. This was photographed by three cameras in the presence of Mary Marshall, the materializing medium, and one auxiliary medium, a Mrs. Wither; and, second, various mental phenomena, which seemed to reveal that the communicator is striving to do three things - to show that he remembers his past; to show that he is aware of certain events that have taken place in our home of a trivial or non-consequential nature; and to show also that he is aware of certain events that have taken place at points distant from our home in which we might be interested.
The examples presented here have been chosen mainly to indicate these three types of mental activity; all of them based on notes made at the time in each instance with some of these phenomena having occurred recently.
Example A: The medium known as "Faith" (a young girl of 19 who knows nothing of Dr. Hamilton's past and who has developed mediumship since his death.) falls into trance in our living room, and while in this state appears to speak as Dr. Hamilton, the writer the only observer. - L. H.
"Lillian. I am here. I am standing behind this young girl and have placed my hands on her shoulders. I am willing that she shall say certain things to you. It is very difficult, but I hope you will recognize what I'm going to try to pass on to you."
After a little pause, she speaks as follows:
"I see a young man - no, two of them . They are driving a team of ponies. They are on the prairie. My! What a queer looking buggy - it is a regular old rattle-trap. They are very dirty-looking (laughs). Their hair is so long that it makes them look very funny. It is gone. I see another picture coming: I see a large building with lots of windows. I think it is a school: perhaps it is a hospital. I do not know. It has faded; it has gone."
All this was very interesting. Back in 1888 the fifteen year old T. Glen Hamilton and his brother James, several years his senior, left their home in Saskatoon to go to Winnipeg to attend school; and later, if possible, Manitoba University. Unable to travel by train for lack of money they took their ponies and "buckboard", (a sort of open buggy much used in pioneer days) and drove to Winnipeg, a distance of nearly 800 miles, arriving some three weeks later, travel stained, unkempt, and very weary. When telling me of this adventure years later, Dr. Hamilton often remarked on the sorry picture the two of them must have made as they trudged the city streets for the first time, their hair long, trousers baggy and decidedly much the worse for wear, and this general appearance, that of two young tramps fresh in from the west, which was still at this time the "wild and woolly" of later fiction. It scarcely seems likely that the imagery that is presented by the sleeping girl could have so aptly depicted these memories unless back of them had been a mind that had in it an awareness of these original experiences. The question was - was it the mind of Dr. Hamilton?
Example B: Mrs. Wither passes unexpectedly into a light state of trance In our living room following our regular sitting held in another part of the house to sit for teleplasm, and which is just over. She awakens and says she has seen Dr. Hamilton; that he was a young man; that he had a young lady with him; and that they, Dr. Hamilton and this young lady, were in a woods and seemed to be examining a wildflower of some kind. She then went on: "He was quite fond of this young woman, Mrs. Hamilton, and she was not you!"
L. H. (laughing): "That is all right. What else did you see in this picture?"
Mrs. Wither: "Not much else. He had a collar on that came up under his ears and a bowler hat. She was quite pretty, and had a round face. Who she was I don't know."
Mary M., who is sitting beside Mrs.Wither, suddenly speaks:
"Your picture was from Dr. Hamilton. I cannot see him but I can
hear him speaking quite clearly. He says that is right and that the name of the girl was Lucile; that he was engaged to her before he knew Mrs. Hamilton, when he was teaching school in the country; and that you, Mrs. Hamilton, had nothing to do with the breaking of this engagement. He also tells me that she is not in this world but has passed on and that he has seen her on his side."
To say that I was amazed by all of this is to state quite simply the exact truth. Dr. Hamilton had been engaged to a girl of that name before I knew him; he was teaching at the time in the country; they had "botanized" together, I knew; and she was dead, having pre-deceased him by some years. Of all of this the two mediums knew absolutely nothing. A closed and sealed incident of his early manhood, he rarely mentioned this engagement during our married life; and because it was in a way a sort of secret between us, it seems now that he was frankly recalling these facts so that I might know beyond all doubt that it really was he who was thus communicating.
Example C: In the third example which I wish to present, we find that communicator turning to a more humorous and whimsical incident in his past, and one that to me was also definitely of a highly evidential nature.
The medium known as Norman, in a near-normal state of consciousness, spoke to the writer who was present as a guest at a sitting held at the home of Miss Ada Turner, in these words: "I see the doctor, Mrs. Hamilton. He is standing in the center of the circle, and he is trying to show me a picture. Just a minute till I get it more clearly ..."
(continuing):
"I see a farm. You are there and you are young and have a long skirt on and a hat tipped well over your eyes. (a pause). Now I am inside the farm-house. It is a small room and I can see a window with a lot of small panes in it. I see the silliest thing imaginable: a rocking chair rocking away by itself. I don't believe this means anything, but I had better tell you. Now I see a young girl; she is laughing at something; I would call it a giggling. Her hair is down her back in pigtails. (a pause). Now the picture is gone. (Laughs). A curtain has come down and here is the doctor standing in front of the curtain dressed like an old hayseed, straw hat and all with his legs crossed and the silliest expression on his face you ever saw. Now he has gone and all that is left in front of me is an old scythe. It is certainly a farm."
The facts that would seem here to have been indicated by this imagery evidently planned by the communicator as a sort of play of a charade-like character, were, I believe, the following:
Shortly before we were married in 1906, Dr. Hamilton visited my father and mother for the first time; their home at this time being their farm home which was situated in the open prairie. During his first evening with them he was somewhat amused, and not a little embarrassed, to find himself seated on a rocking chair with my mother seated on one side of him and my father on the other, with both doing their best to entertain their to be son-in-law. My little sister, then a girl of fourteen with her hair in pigtails, as the medium stated, saw this and it once took on a severe fit of embarrassed giggles; this whole episode a standing joke between them for many years afterwards, indeed well up to the time of Dr. Hamilton's death 29 years later.
That such a play based on fact as this one seemed to be, should appear at all, was to me significant and at once suggested the mind of my husband as a possible agent; for he was, I knew, in life deeply interested in the R. L. Stevenson phenomena secured in the Elizabeth mediumship, these phenomena disclosing just such enactments, although more complex, based on the past of Stevenson; and, taken as a whole, of a highly ingenious and impressive nature. This use then of the pictorial tableau planned to be evidentially significant, was a matter of which Dr. Hamilton had knowledge prior to his death, and it seemed logical to suppose that such knowledge would now be put to use when he found himself trying to communicate by means of a medium who also had the capacity to receive and describe pictures of a purely hallucinatory character.
Such then, was the nature of the manifestations of a purely subjective type which the alleged Dr. Hamilton passed on to us for examination and interpretation as bearing evidence that he remembered his past in several of its sections. Many other efforts of this nature were witnessed - many of them less successful than those I have outlined; others equally unmistakable in their planned significance and personal evidence for survival.
Turning now to the communicators' work in the second field - those pictures and tableau that gave evidence of awareness of the present, we come to a section of this communicator's work that is, I think, well worthy of attention; for from it we glimpse, if but darkly, some proof that our deceased are not cut off entirely from earthly companionships, but are able at times to see into and know something of our daily lives and everyday activities.
Example D: Norman: "Mrs. Hamilton, I can see the doctor. He is showing me a picture. Did you by any chance have a band of black ribbon around your head today? It seems silly of me to ask you this, but that is what he is showing me."
L. H.: "No, not a black band, but a green one. I wore it for about two hours this afternoon to tie my hair in place after I had washed it. This is very interesting for I do not recall ever before tying my hair back in this way."
Norman: "Did you have a cup of tea in your kitchen this afternoon in a cup with yellow flowers on it?"
L. H.: "I may have; I have such a cup, but I do not remember."
Norman: "Now he is showing me another picture. Were you very cross with Jimmy today? (Laughs). It is very silly but I must tell you. I see a strap hanging up and I feel that you felt very cross with him as if you could strap him or hate him had he been a little boy and not a man grown. Is that correct?"
L. H.(also laughing): "That is very good - excellent indeed. I did feel very cross with him for just a few minutes early this morning when I found that he had carelessly let the furnace fire go out. But I didn't show it nor speak of it to anyone, so how Dr. Hamilton or anyone else found that out, I do not know."
Norman (after an interval in which other phenomena has occurred with a secondary medium present): "Now I see Dr. Hamilton again. He is showing me a manuscript; at least, I think that is what it is. What is this? I cannot understand it. He is holding a photograph up for me to see - it is a photograph of the Gladstone teleplasm. (Norman is familiar with this teleplasm.). Wait a bit till I get this - this is difficult ... I feel (spoken hesitatingly) that you, Mrs. Hamilton, were reading this manuscript before you came over here, and that you stopped reading at the Gladstone chapter. Is that right?"
L. H.: "I was reading Jim's report on his father's work on teleplasm which he is preparing, for a short time around seven o'clock (it was now about 10:00). I may have stopped at this section but I do not remember. I will look when I return home."
(Found to be correct.)
Norman: "Did you, Mrs. Hamilton, just before you came over here tonight, while you are waiting for George to call for you, sit on the Chesterfield in your living room reading something?"
L. H.: "Yes, I did."
Norman: "I can see you sitting under the light. I think you are reading some mail. Now I see you get up and go to the fireplace and throw something in. Is that correct?"
L. H.: "Quite correct. I threw away a lot of advertising matter that came today for Dr. Hamilton, and which did not appear to be of any particular value."
Example E: The same unbelievably direct and clear-cut indications of supernormal cognizance on the part of the communicator was also manifested at other sittings held with this fine clairvoyant at which I was invited to be present. Of these I select the following:
Norman: "Dr. Hamilton has come in and is showing me something. Just a minute - it is not clear yet. He seems to be telling me that you took down a small picture that hung in the stairway lately, and have put it in another place."
L. H.: "Yes, I did; but that was several days ago."
Norman: "Have you a Greek vase - no, a vase from India that is large at the bottom and has a narrow top, in your home? I see you putting a note in it."
L. H.: "Yes, I have a vase that would answer to that description, and I put a rather important address in it a few days ago."
Norman: "Have you painted a door lately?"
L. H.: "No. Why do you ask?"
Norman: "Well, the doctor is showing me a swing door and it seems to be freshly painted."
L. H. (Light beginning to Dawn): "Oh, that's right. The old swinging door between the dining room and kitchen has been freshly painted recently; but I did not do the painting myself - it was done when Dr. Glen Jr. took over the old dining room and had it modernized. I had quite forgotten about it."
Only twice, since Dr. Hamilton died has he, the alleged Dr. Hamilton, managed to convey to us in clear, unmistakable language, proof that he was aware of events that had taken place at points distant from us, and of which we ourselves at the time knew absolutely nothing. Once he was able to reverse this procedure, and through a sensitive in Toronto (Victor, who was formerly one of our sitters in the Mary M. teleplasmic group.) sent me a direct and plainly-worded message that showed he was aware of something that was troubling me, but which was not known to any other person living; and once he was able to tell me what was taking place with the same medium in Toronto and tell me through a medium in Winnipeg; and I think he has, at times, tried out this same class of procedure in various sittings in Glasgow and in New York; but his best work was manifested in the following incident which I have elsewhere called The Strange Case of Kitty A."
Example F. As in example B., the communicator on this occasion used two mediums to put through the facts which he wished to make known to us - the young girl 'Faith" and the older medium, Mary M., who, although a materializing medium of great strength, also manifests at times mental powers of an extraordinarily brilliant nature, as in his careful use of vision-imagery, this procedure was what might be expected, were Dr. Hamilton the communicator as was being claimed, for this
