The Fox Sisters were not a vaudeville sister act, nor were they related to vaudeville/stage performers like Harry Fox, George L. Fox, Will H. Fox, Imro Fox, Joe Fox, Della Fox, or The Foxy Grandpa. But their influence did find its way to vaudeville by way of the Davenport Brothers and Anna Eva Fay and others. The Fox Sisters were the ones who started the craze for Spiritualism that began in the mid-19th century and has never entirely dissipated.
It all started in Hydesville, New York in 1848.
The initiators of the phenomenon were the two youngest sisters, Margaretta or Maggie (1833-1893, aged 14 at the time), and Catherine, or Kate (1837-1892, then 11). March 27 is Kate's birthday. The context for what happened is the Second Great Awakening, the massive evangelical religious revival that occurred in what was then America's western frontier, an area that we nowadays don't think of as very far west at all, stretching from Western New York in the North to places like Kentucky and Tennessee in the South. (I think it not irrelevant that the famous "Bell Witch" phenomenon in rural Tennessee had happened a few years earlier).
Hydesville was located in a region that came to be known as the "Burned Over District" on account of the heat of the imaginative religious passion there, largely driven by Methodists. In point of fact, Palmyra, where Joseph Smith claimed to have discovered the golden plates that founded Mormonism, is only about 8 miles away. The fervor also gave birth to political and social movements. Seneca Falls, birthplace of Feminism is about 20 minutes away. (In related news. March 27 is also the birthday of Maude Gage Baum, wife of L. Frank Baum, and the daughter of the important feminist Matilda Gage we mentioned in this post on her birthday just three days ago. The Gages lived in Fayettesville New York, also nearby). And the Temperance Movement and Abolitionism also flourished in this same region. These movements all intertwined and informed one another in one roiling, hot stew. Adding to this, the houses the Foxes lived in was rumored to be haunted.
In 1848, the girls confounded their parents by communicating with a spirit they nicknamed "Mr. Splitfoot" (i.e., the Devil). When they asked the spirit questions, it would respond with sharp, audible raps for answers. They eventually worked out numerical codes for the answers. There were also noises in the attic when the girls were in full view of the parents. Neighbors were called in and they witnessed it too. Alarmed, the girls were split up and sent away for a time, one staying with her sister named Leah (1813-1890) was about 20 years older, and the other with a Quaker family. But the phenomenon followed each of them, seemingly confirming the lore about poltergeists, that they are attached, like familiars, to troubled adolescents. This activity, now having manifested in three separate locations, allowed for news of the Fox Sisters' ability to communicate with the dead to spread still further. By the following year they were booked to give a paying demonstration in Rochester. The Fox Sisters had become the first professional Mediums.
By the next year, 1850, they played New York City, where they were witnessed by the celebrity likes of William Cullen Bryant, James Fenimore Cooper, and Horace Greeley. They began to be regularly in demand for seances, and were well-paid for contacting those who had "passed on" at table sittings. From 1852 to 1857, Margaretta was married to Arctic explorer Elisha Kane, during which time she converted to Roman Catholicism and retired, only to return to her career when Kane passed away. Kate, meanwhile lived and practiced her trade for many years in England, where Arthur Conan Doyle (who later fell for the Cottingley Fairies as well) became one her defenders. By the mid 1850s, the practice of holding seances had exploded into a widespread racket. We've written about some of the folks who engaged in it, including Paschal Beverly Randolph, and the Davenport Brothers, who introduced all manner of gimcracks and gewgaws like spirit cabinets, and literals bells and whistles, which led to its connection to stage magic. And their older sister Leah also became an important medium.
It also came crashing down (for the Foxes, anyway) 40 years after it began. Division grew between Leah and the younger two sisters, both of whom had taken seriously to drink. Somewhat down and out, they accepted a large cash reward from a newspaper for spilling their secrets and making a public demonstration of it, serving the duel purpose of acquiring ready cash while harming their sister. It turns out that, as many suspected, the rapping sounds had been made by cracking their toes (similar to cracking one's knuckles). I don't know how they got that sound -- believe me, I've tried, but they figured it out. Never underestimated what devilry can be worked by children with endless free time on their hand (or feet, in this case). And it turns out the sisters had also faked those mysterious ghostly attic sounds when they were children, by tying a string to an apple and passing it through a hole in the ceiling. When they pulled the string behind their backs it would drag the apple around in the attic above, making all manner of thumping and bumping sounds.
But this expedient revelation on the part of the sisters backfired. They hurt themselves of course by doing this. Now they had the support of neither skeptics nor believers. They all died, destitute, in rapid succession: Leah in 1890, Kate in 1892, Maggie in 1983. I find the timing interesting. Just yesterday, we wrote of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, which tied in heavily with the Theosophy Movement. Anna Eva Fay brought her act to vaudeville shortly thereafter. And in spire of the efforts of Houdini and the Amazing Randi and others to expose mediums they flourish down to the present day.
By the way, all of the Fox Sisters are buried in Brooklyn. If you think I won't visit their graves to try to communicate with them sometime, you're greatly mistaken.
For more on the magic arts as used and misused for fun and profit, please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.
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