In 1869, the mayor of New York City, a prominent figure in the Tweed Ring, arranged to have William H. Mumler charged with two felonies and a misdemeanor for selling a dozen “spirit photographs” for $10. Eminent jurist John Edmonds testified for the defense about spirits. Mumler or his supporters seem to have arranged to have a spirit photograph of Edmonds taken in order to get Edmonds involved in the case.

Edmonds testified carefully about communication with spirits. He was cautious in expressing a definite opinion about spirit photographs:

we spiritualists reason that these pictures are spirit pictures, but we do not know it; I am myself not yet ready to pronounce a judgment on the matter; I believe that in time its truth or falsity will be fully demonstrated, as spiritual intercourse becomes more apparent.^

Edmonds, however, testified forthrightly about his experience only a few days earlier:

I was in a court in Brooklyn, when a suit against a life assurance company for the amount claimed to be due on a certain policy was being heard. Looking toward that part of the court-room occupied by the jury, I saw the spirit of the man whose death was the basis of the suit. The spirit told me the circumstances connected with the death; said that the suit was groundless, that the claimant was not entitled to recover from the Company, and said that he (the man whose spirit was speaking) had committed suicide under certain circumstances; I drew a diagram of the place at which his death occurred, and on showing it to the counsel, was told that it was exact in every particular.

I had never seen the place nor the man, nor had I ever heard his name until I entered that Court-room

The prosecution suggested that Edmonds experienced hallucinations, as, it added, did other intelligent and accomplished persons, such as Ben Jonson, Byron, Cellini, Castlereagh, Goethe, and Cowper.^ The prosecution proposed to call as a witness a physician from the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island to testify the Edmonds was suffering from hallucinations that lead to insanity. The judged responded, “I would suggest not to do it. …I would not like to hear such a witness upon the stand.”^

The closing arguments considered the reasonableness of seeing spirits. The defense argued that seeing spirits was not incredible or unusual:

Spiritualists found their belief on the Bible. Throughout that book we find mention of spirits. Balaam and his ass furnish {a} familiar instance, and counsel thought that the people of these times were possessed of fully as much intelligence as Balaam’s ass, which saw a spirit.^

The prosecution described as hallucinations the spirits that Edmonds and another witness testified to having seen. The prosecution noted, “Let me not be misunderstood. I do not assert that they {Edmonds and other defense witnesses} are insane.” The prosecution described Edmonds thus:

A gentleman who has adorned the Bench, ever kind and obliging to his juniors at the Bar, and who is, perhaps, second to no one in the city of New York as an able jurist, certainly not surpassed by any as a criminal lawyer^

While showing due respect to Edmonds, the prosecution responded sharply to the defense’s invocation of Balaam’s ass:

Equally unfortunate is his {the defense attorney’s} allusion to the case of Balaam’s ass, for he seems to concede that an ass would be more likely than an ordinary man to perceive a spirit, and I concur with him in this view. This present case proves that there are more asses existing at the present day than there were in the days of Balaam.^

Being an ass, was not, of course, the charge at issue in this case.

The judge’s decision turned out to be judicious. The judge prefaced his decision by noting “however I may be morally convinced there may have been trick and deception practiced by the prisoner.”^ Or perhaps the judge said, “however I am morally convinced that there may be fraud and deception practiced by the prisoner.”^ Whatever the judge actually said, he undoubtedly dismissed the charges against Mumler.

A reasonable evaluation of the Mumler case should consider its place in the structure, conduct, and performance of public discourse more generally. The Tweed Ring instigated the Mumler case while it was practicing enormous financial fraud at high political levels in New York City. Public reasoning is costly. The Mumler case wasn’t an efficient use of public reason for improving public governance. The Mumler case was an effective way to provide public entertainment. It perhaps also served to distract the public from perceiving Boss Tweed’s large-scale fraud.