'Twixt two worlds : a narrative of the life and work of William Eglinton

CHAPTER
EARLY PROFESSIONAL
II.
MEDIUMSHIP.
HE powers of Mr. Eglinton's mediumship having now attracted public attention,
he received numerous applications for seances, but he steadily resisted for a long
time all efforts to induce him to become a professional medium. However, after
having given a large number of seances to his friends, he found the strain in
following his business and giving sittings at the same time was proving too much
for him, and, after a rather severe illness, he resisted the calls of the public no
longer, but entered upon his career as a professional medium. Personally he now regards this step
as an injudicious one, as thereby all his prospects in life have been destroyed. I hope events
will yet falsify Mr. Eglinton's fears on this point.
One of the earliest of these seances is recorded in The Medium for September, 1 875, and again
in October and succeeding months. About this time he became acquainted with Mrs. Catherine
Woodforde, who was then giving " developing " seances, and to her and Mrs. Brewerton he owes
much for their kindly advice and support. In Mrs. Woodforde's rooms he commenced a series
of most successful sittings, and at the same time his equally remarkable professional career. At
the end of the same year (1875) several seances were given to the Dalston Association of
Spiritualists, of which society he was afterwards made an honorary member. Perhaps one of the
earliest sittings on record in England for plaster casts took place with him in January, 1876,
when, at the residence of Mrs. Woodforde, several moulds were obtained, including that of a face.
In January, 1876, another successful series of seances was given, this time to the Brixton
Psychological Society, under the presidency of Mr. Desmond Fitzgerald, M.I.Tel.E., and these
were followed in quick succession by others. The first seance held by him at the house of Mrs.
Macdougal Gregory, whose intimate friendship he enjoyed from that time until she passed from
our midst in May, 1885, took place in February, 1876, and was fully reported in the Spiritualist,
of March 3rd. There were present Sir Garnet (now Viscount) Wolseley, the Hon. Mrs. Cowper-
Temple (now Lady Mount-Temple), Mr. A. Joy, the Viscountess Avonmore, General Brewster,
Captain James, and others. Most striking results were obtained, but as in the matter of evidence
I suffer from an embarras de richesse, I shall have to pass by many cases with only a bare
mention. At this time he first came in contact with Mr. Benjamin Coleman, a long-to-beremembered
pioneer and supporter of Spiritualism in England, and Mr. Charles Blackburn, of
Blackburn Park, Didsbury, Manchester.
It needs no words of mine to emphasise the services so freely and spontaneously rendered to