Note 8 — Chapter I · THE FOUNDERS OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM

I have been warned while writing this book to be careful regarding my statement of the confession of Margaret Fox. I am also fully aware of the fact that Dr. Funk writes in his book, “The Widow’s Mite”:

“Margaret Fox, not long before her death, confessed that she and her sister had duped the public. This unfortunate woman had sunk so low that for five dollars she would have denied her own mother and sworn to anything. At that time her affidavit for or against anything should not be given the slightest weight.”

Mr. W. S. Davis, himself a practicing medium, who knew Margaret Fox Kane personally, wrote me:

“One would think that Margaret Fox got drunk, and in that condition, was induced to confess that she was a fraud, but when she became sober she renounced her confession. That is what we would think to hear some Spiritualists talk. She was sober when the made her confession; she was sober when she appeared in the theatre and gave her exposé. In fact she was usually sober. She drank considerably during the later years of her life, and often drank too much, but usually she was sober. One of her reasons for drinking was that her hypocrisy had become more and more distasteful to her. Living a constant lie got on her nerves, and, when the later years came, she didn’t have the same degree of vital force that she had in her younger days to battle off the dictates of her conscience.”