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.

The spiritualist communication that John Edmonds and others championed gained extensive popularity in mid-nineteenth century America. According to Edmonds, by 1853 several hundred thousand mediums for spiritual communication served the U.S. He also stated that 10-12 newspapers were devoted primarily to reporting about spiritualism. Moreover, about 100 books, some with circulation exceeding 10,000 copies, provided readers with information about spiritualism.^ By 1860, the number of persons in the U.S. who practiced spiritualism was probably at least four million. The number of spiritualists plausibly amounted to more than one third the number of Christians.

Spiritualism had broad social reach. An elite journal in London about this time lamented the mass market for spiritualist communication:

Among the distinguishing differences of classes, none are more characteristic than their pleasures; but now great and little, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, professional and non-professional, cleric and laic, peer and proletaire, were brought to the same level of enjoyment, — all absorbed in one universal pastime.^

A prominent New York City lawyer recorded in 1855 his astonishment at this development:

What would I have said six years ago to anybody who predicted that before the enlightened nineteenth century was ended hundreds of thousands of people in this country would believe themselves able to communicate daily with the ghosts of their grandfathers? – that ex-judges of the Supreme Court, senators, clergymen, professors of physical sciences, should be lecturing and writing books on the new treasures of all this^

John Edmonds similarly described the social scope of spiritualism:

Besides the undistinguished multitude, there are many men of high standing and talent ranked among them—doctors, lawyers and clergymen in great numbers, a Protestant bishop, the learned and reverend president of a college, judges of our higher courts, members of Congress, foreign embassadors, and ex-members of the National Senate.^

Extensive demand for communication with dead ancestors is not surprising. That new media would seek to serve these demands also is not surprising. The surprising feature of nineteenth-century American spiritualism is that it modeled itself as science and made claims to public knowledge.

Compared to spiritual communication with the dead in mid-nineteenth-century America, spiritual communication at the beginning the twenty-first century has thrived with much less emphasis on claims to public knowledge. The New York Times in the year 2000 reported on a growing use of media:

“Without a doubt, visiting spirit mediums is becoming amazingly popular,” said Cathy Cash Spellman, whose novel, “Bless the Child,” about a spiritually gifted little girl, was made into a film with Kim Basinger that was released over the summer. …

Ms. Spellman attributed the heightened interest in mediums – or spiritists, as they like to call themselves – to a spillover from the growing interest in alternative medicine and Eastern spirituality. “We live in a world where many people have an acupuncturist. understand that there is energy and practice the martial arts,” she said. “People are so much more open-minded about the unseen.”

The article highlighted the appeal of communication with the dead to persons associated with film, publishing, and fashion industries:

“Quite a large number of people in the fashion world are paying visits to people they have lost,” said Nadine Johnson, a New York publicist with clients in fashion and publishing. …

“To hear from people I know,” she added, “mediums are a hotter commodity than the Prada bowling bag.”^

The New York Times article included some skeptical views, but on the whole was sympathetically uncritical. It presented seeking to communicate with the dead as an activity with no more consequences for public welfare than seeking to buy a Prada bowling bag. One insightful media critic noted the communication style of modern media:

today’s spirits — whom John Edward and his fellow mediums supposedly contact — seem to have poor memories and difficulty communicating. For example, in one of his on-air séances (on Larry King Live, June 19, 1998), Edward said: “I feel like there’s a J- or G-sounding name attached to this.” He also perceived “Linda or Lindy or Leslie; who’s this L name?” Again, he got a “Maggie or Margie, or some M-G-sounding name,” and yet again heard from “either Ellen or Helen, or Eleanore-it’s like an Ellen-sounding name.” Gone is the clear-speaking eloquence of yore; the dead now seem to mumble.

In the nineteenth century, leading American spiritualist John Edmonds published extensive, verbatim texts from dead authorities. Modern media show much less representational power:

The spirits also seemingly communicate to Edward et al. as if they were engaging in pantomime. As Edward said of one alleged spirit communicant, in a Dateline {performance}, “He’s pointing to his head; something had to affect the mind or the head, from what he’s showing me.” No longer, apparently, can the dead speak in flowing Victorian sentences, but instead are reduced to gestures, as if playing a game of charades.^

Such communication poses no threat to established interests in knowledge and is perceived to have little consequence for public welfare. It thus attracts scant concern in public deliberation.