I have read books that talked about Arthur Conan’s Doyle non-author life, like The Man Who Would Be Sherlock, but I never realised how deeply important spiritualism was to him until I read The Witch of Lime Street. And he’s just one of the three main “characters”.

The Witch of Lime Street is a detailed look at how Spiritualism became popular, with a focus on three famous people connected to the movement: Arthur Conan Doyle (as mentioned before), Margery/Mina Crandon (the medium/”witch” of Lime Street), and Houdini (the sceptic who discredits mediums). I have to say, the last name threw me for a loop because I only know of Houdini as an escape artist and somehow thought Arthur Conan Doyle lived in an earlier time period from him.

This is a pretty long book – it starts with how Arthur Conan Doyle got into spiritualism, his friendship with Houdini, and then gradually shifts to Margery and Houdini’s efforts to disprove her claims of mediumship and how his efforts against spiritualism wrecked his friendship with Doyle. A large portion of the book is dedicated to describing Margery’s seances and how credible they were, to the point where I paused the book to google and confirm that this book was not going to argue that she was a real medium.

While the book does make it clear that Margery relied on a combination of seducing the judges who were supposed to determine if she was a fake and incredible skill at faking psychic occurrences (dead brother’s voice, fingerprints, even ectoplasm), it never really comes out and explains how it was done. There are some theories put forth, but if you want a clearer debunking of Margery, I find that her Wikipedia page provides a lot more information. In fact, if you’re just looking for information on Margery, I’d say that her Wikipedia page should provide enough – despite its title, this book is not focused solely on her. There is a lot of content about Doyle and Houdini.

In fact, of the three people discussed in this book, Houdini made the biggest impression on me. Some of his actions seemed contradictory, like whether he truly believed his mother had returned when participating in a seance with Doyle and his wife, or if he was being polite in the moment, but I thought it was sweet that despite the dissolution of his friendship with Doyle, he refused to sell the book of sketches by Doyle’s father and had the book passed to him after his death. If Spiritualism wasn’t such a dear cause to Doyle’s heart, I daresay that the two men could have overcome this difference in opinion and remained friends.

While this was a fascinating history of spiritualism, it is a really long book. Jaher goes into detail about Margery’s seances, multiple times, and for me, that caused the book to lag a bit. I suppose I was looking forward to a great reveal about how she did it, but the truth is, Margery kind of faded away. Yes, there were exposes, but the big showdown between her and Houdini didn’t lead to much. It was a death by thousand cuts that discredited her and pushed her out of the public eye.

Overall, this is a fascinating and detailed look at one of the most famous mediums of her age, and the two men who fought a battle over the validity of spiritualism using her as a proxy. If you’re thinking of digging into this topic, this would probably be a good book to read!

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