A Walk to the Night Side of Nature

                  Catherine Crowe (1790-1872)

At the Park Gate by John Atkinson Grimshaw ( 1836-1893) painted 1878, Public domain,courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons

            The Victorian era saw a massive rise in respect of deliberate communication with the Dead. Those who had passed over weren't just spectres who haunted the living, they were being invited to return. And contact with spirits had consequences. But was a seance really to blame for the 1854 breakdown of a prominent author in the mid Victorian era? 

Mrs Catherine Crowe wrote a series of novels published from around 1841  including, The Story of Lilly Dawson ,The Adventures of Susan Hopley  or Circumstancial Evidence ( her most famous work), The Adventures of a Beauty, Linny Lockwood.  The 'Household Words' magazine, whilst edited by Charles Dickens published three short stories by Mrs Crowe in 1850 DICKENS JOURNAL ONLINE

 Mrs Crowe also wrote The Night  Side of Nature or Ghosts and Ghosts Seers, published in 1848. This two volume work is an extensive collection of reports and anecdotes concerning what is broadly categorised as 'paranormal' : Unexplained warnings of imminent death or ruin, apparitions , doppelgangers, trance states, and most significantly a classic chapter about poltergeist activity. In the words of the author herself 

"I refer to what the Germans call the Poltergeist or racketing spectre, for the phenomenon is known in all countries, and has been known in all ages." CROWE

In fact Catherine Crowe had a fluent knowledge of German. In 1845 she had translated The Seeress of Prevorst by German poet Justinus Kerner into English.  The Night Side was reviewed by Charles Dickens in the Examiner magazine in 1848. I have not been able to trace the text of the review. 

The Night Side of Nature  appearing in 1848 now seems significant. Spiritualism is generally dated as having started with Kate and Margaret Fox  using 'rapping' to communicate with spirits with dramatic results from 31st March 1848. One particular entity the Sisters allegedly encountered was the ghost of the pedlar Rosna , who was murdered for his takings, by one John Bell, who had previously occupied the Fox family home LEONARD. Though Mrs Crowe did not foresee Spiritualism at the time of writing The Night Side , she demonstrated an interest in the human soul, and it was not surprising that she embraced the new movement. In 1859 her work 'Spiritualism and The Age We Live In' -credited just to Mrs Crowe- was positive, and like some of her contemporaries, seemed to have been able to reconcile Christianity with Spiritualism, yet it did not sell well ODNB.

Hans Christian Andersen  was already well known in Britain by the time he visited in 1847, and was invited to a social gathering in Edinburgh. His autobiography recalls that 

" The authoress Mrs Crowe brought me also her novel 'Susan Sopley' which has been translated into Danish. We met at Dr Simpson's where at a large party, experiments with ether inhalation were made. It was to my mind not a nice thing to see ladies dreaming under the intoxication, they laughed with open, dead eyes. It made me very uncomfortable."  ANDERSEN

Doctor James Young Simpson was a well known figure in Edinburgh medical circles and used ether for hospital operations, but seemingly also thought that it could also be used for recreational purposes. Doctor Simpson went on to try chloroform in November 1847 on himself and two assistants SECHER.

Charles Dickens wrote to James White on 7th March 1854

"Mrs Crowe has gone stark mad-and stark naked- on the spirit rapping imposition. She was found t'other day in the street, clothed only in her chastity, a pocket handkerchief and a visiting card. She had been informed, it appeared, by the spirits, that is she went out in that trim she would be invisible. She is now in a madhouse and hopelessly insane." HARTLEY

News  of this incident -dated to the 26th February 1854- spread to the extent that Catherine Crowe had a letter published in the Daily News of 29th April 1854 in which she conceded to having suffered from a severe gastric inflammation,which rendered her unconscious for several days. In this state Crowe disclosed that " I talked of spirit rapping, and fancied spirits were directing me" DASH  The Fortean and paranormal investigator Mike Dash began to question Dickens' account on the basis for the lack of evidence but then found corroboration from the papers of Dickens's associate Robert Chambers who knew Catherine Crowe and was living in Edinburgh at the time DASH. 

Ether use continued well into the 20th century. Hunter S Thompson has been quoted as writing in 1972 about his extensive drug use : "The only thing that really worried me was ether. There is nothing in world more helpless, irresponsible, and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge, and I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon...." HAYNES

It is sad to think that Mrs Crowe's life and work can be overshadowed by one breakdown/ or ether binge gone wrong. And it has to be said that she recovered, and carried on writing. Her  work -Ghosts and Family Legends. A Volume for Christmas appeared in 1859, and The Adventures of a Monkey in 1862 suggesting that Mrs Crowe's literary life was far from over. The Night Side of Nature carried on being reprinted until 1904 ODNB.

NOTE Catherine Crowe's dates of birth and death don't seem to be agreed by historians.I have used the 'Catherine Ann Crowe' entry written by Joanne Wilkes in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography -cited ODNB- for these details and for general background information. 

Sources -Books

'The Fairy Tale of My Life ' Hans Christian Andersen, 1855- translated quote from Paddington Press edition 1975. 

'The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens' edited by Jenny Hartley, Oxford University Press, 2012.

'People From The Other Side: The Enigmatic Fox Spirits and the History of Victorian Spiritualism,' Maurice Leonard, The History Press 2008 

Background reading

'A Natural History of Ghosts- 500 Years of Hunting For Proof' , Roger Clarke, Penguin, 2012

Sources -On line 

Dickens Journal Online  Links to Catherine Crowe short stories/ author index listing for 'Catherine Crowe'.

Naked as Nature Intended  Catherine Crowe in Edinburgh February 1854 , by Mike Dash, published in 2010 Charles Fort Institute Archives 

Ethermainiacs   British Columbia Medical Journal article by Sterling Haynes about the use of ether in the 19th century June 2014. 

Hans Andersen and James Young Simpson 1972 article by Ole Secher , British Journal of Anaesthesia 1972

The Night Side of Nature  Project Gutenburg Books online text 

Other active blog from Michael Bully 

A Burnt Ship  17th century war & literature 

I welcome all visitors to this blog and thank you for your interest. Please note that any mistakes or schoolboy howlers in this piece are my responsibility alone and not the fault of any of the writers or other source material that I have cited. 

Michael Bully

27th February 2023 

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