People from the Other Side: The Enigmatic Fox Sisters and the History of Victorian Spiritualism

Kate, Leah and Margaret Fox were three young sisters living in upstate New York in the middle of the nineteenth century who discovered an apparent ability to communicate with spirits. When this became known, they quickly found themselves at the core of an emerging spiritualist movement, and their public seances in New York City were attended by many. the movement gained considerable popularity, although Margaret would later admit to producing rapping noises by cracking her toe joints and both she and Kate eventually died in poverty. Spiritualism nonetheless became something of a Victorian phenomenon, both in America and Britain, with figures such as James Fenimore Cooper and Arthur Conan Doyle amongst its adherents. Maurice Leonard's account of the lives of the Foxes is a fascinating and informative look at the birth and early days of spiritualism, a belief that remains popular to this day.