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| D. D. Home | |
|---|---|
| Name | Daniel Dunglas Home |
| Birth date | 20 March 1833 |
| Birth place | Currie, Midlothian, Scotland |
| Death date | 21 June 1886 |
| Death place | Bohemia, Austria-Hungary |
| Occupation | Medium, lecturer |
| Nationality | Scottish |
D. D. Home
Daniel Dunglas Home was a 19th-century Scottish-born medium and public figure noted for séances, alleged levitations, and claims of physical mediumship that attracted wide attention across Europe and North America. His performances and the investigations they provoked involved prominent scientists, aristocrats, clergy, politicians, and journalists of the Victorian and early Edwardian eras, and his career contributed to broader debates about spiritualism, supernatural claims, and scientific methodology.
Home was born in Currie, Midlothian, into a family with connections to the Scottish gentry and to patrons in Edinburgh and London who later facilitated introductions to figures such as Lord Byron, Queen Victoria's circle, and members of the Roxburghe Club. His upbringing overlapped with educational and social institutions including Edinburgh Academy, contacts among Scottish Enlightenment circles, and acquaintances who later intersected with theatrical and literary networks like Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Family correspondences linked him indirectly to legal and clerical milieus represented by figures such as Sir Walter Scott's contemporaries and Glasgow mercantile families tied to British India Company trade. Early patronage and introductions placed him in salons frequented by members of the Royal Society, Royal Society of Edinburgh, and patrons associated with the British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum collections.
Home's public career began with small circle séances and progressed to large demonstrations in drawing rooms and assembly halls in cities including London, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg, New York City, and Boston. He performed before aristocrats such as Napoleon III, members of the Habsburg dynasty, and British peers who were associated with the House of Lords. Newspapers like The Times (London), The New York Times, and periodicals including Quarterly Review and Edinburgh Review reported on his appearances alongside cultural events like readings by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's successors and concerts tied to Giuseppe Verdi and Franz Liszt. Venues ranged from private salons hosted by magnates linked to the East India Company to halls associated with societies such as the Society for Psychical Research and lecture circuits that included proponents like Arthur Conan Doyle's later endorsers and opponents such as James Randi's intellectual predecessors.
Home's demonstrations featured alleged phenomena including levitation, apportation, materializations, raps, and psychokinetic effects involving furniture and instruments associated with performers like Harry Houdini's successors. His methods drew scrutiny and imitation by conjurers rooted in traditions of Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, John Henry Anderson, and Maskelyne and Cooke, and were debated in scientific forums alongside experiments from Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, Thomas Henry Huxley, and later psychical researchers in the Society for Psychical Research. Investigations by committees and critics involved individuals such as Frank Podmore, Henry Sidgwick, William Crookes, and journalists connected to newspapers like The Pall Mall Gazette and Le Figaro. Accusations of trickery referenced techniques practiced by stage magicians in the tradition of Robert-Houdin, and legal challenges echoed cases like libel suits involving figures akin to Oscar Wilde's litigations and parliamentary inquiries reminiscent of debates in the House of Commons.
Home's interactions spanned correspondence and meetings with scientists and intellectuals, bringing him into contact with members of the Royal Society and academic circles drawing on methodologies from Francis Galton and experimental traditions associated with Claude Bernard and Hermann von Helmholtz. Skeptics and critics included journalists from Punch (magazine), investigative reporters from The Daily Telegraph, and scientific skeptics in the mold of Richard Dawkins's antecedents, while defenders included spiritualists and cultural figures like Elizabeth Barrett Browning's admirers and supporters in salons frequented by George Eliot. The press coverage ranged from laudatory profiles in magazines such as Blackwood's Magazine to exposés in newspapers like The Morning Post and Le Temps, producing an enduring public debate comparable to controversies surrounding exhibitions at the Great Exhibition and public disputes over claims in periodicals like Nature.
In later years Home's travels took him across the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where he encountered aristocrats linked to the Hohenlohe and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha houses, and intellectuals associated with universities such as University of Vienna and Charles University in Prague. His social circle included clergy from denominations connected to Church of England figures and Catholic intellectuals tied to networks like Jesuit scholars; personal intimates sometimes overlapped with literary and artistic salons frequented by patrons of Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola. He died in 1886 in what was then Bohemia, during travels that echoed the itinerant careers of contemporaries such as Sir Richard Burton and Henry Morton Stanley, and subsequent obituaries and memoirs appeared in periodicals across Europe and North America.
Category:Spiritualists Category:19th-century people