1. Harry Price was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums.
67 Facts About Harry Price
1. 2.
Harry Price is best known for his well-publicised investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.
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Harry Price was only son and second child of Edward Ditcher Price, then traveller for the paper manufacturing firm of Edward Saunders and Son, and his wife Emma Randall nee Meech.
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Harry Price's father being born at Rodington in Shropshire, Price spent much time in the county in holidays with relatives.
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Harry Price was educated in New Cross, first at Waller Road Infants School and then Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys' School.
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Harry Price completed his education at Goldsmiths College, studying chemistry, photography, electrical and mechanical engineering.
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At 15, Harry Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society and wrote plays, including a drama, about his early experience with a poltergeist which he said took place at a haunted unnamed manor house in Shropshire.
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Harry Price set up a receiver and transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Lewisham and St Peter's Church Brockley and captured a spark on a photographic plate.
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This, though, was nothing more than Harry Price writing a press release saying he had performed the experiment, as nothing was verified.
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The young Harry Price had an avid interest in coin collecting and wrote several articles for The Askean, the magazine for Haberdashers' School.
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Harry Price claimed to have uncovered Roman coins while earlier excavating at the site of Uriconium in Wroxeter, Shropshire, serialised an article on "Shropshire Tokens and Mints" in the Wellington Journal and Shrewsbury News from 1902 to 1904, at age 21 published his first book, on The Coins of Kent, and served as honorary curator of numismatics at Ripon Museum, North Yorkshire, in 1904.
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From around May 1908 Harry Price continued his interest in archaeology at Pulborough, Sussex, where he had moved prior to marrying Constance Mary Knight, only daughter of Robert Hastings Knight, on 1 August that year.
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Harry Price met the purportedly Native American magician when the latter appeared with a troupe in 1889 when Price was aged eight and reportedly cured Price of a toothache.
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Harry Price later became an expert amateur conjurer, joined the Magic Circle in 1922 and maintained a lifelong interest in stage magic and conjuring.
15.
The psychical researcher Eric Dingwall and Harry Price re-published an anonymous work written by a former medium entitled Revelations of a Spirit Medium which exposed the tricks of mediumship and the fraudulent methods of producing "spirit hands".
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Harry Price joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1920.
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Harry Price used his knowledge of conjuring to debunk fraudulent mediums, but unlike other magicians, Price endorsed some mediums that he believed were genuine.
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In 1923, Harry Price exposed the medium Jan Guzyk; according to Harry Price, the "man was clever, especially with his feet, which were almost as useful to him as his hands in producing phenomena".
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Harry Price wrote that the photographs depicting the ectoplasm of the medium Eva Carriere taken with Schrenck-Notzing looked artificial and two-dimensional, as if made from cardboard and newspaper portraits, and that there were no scientific controls as both her hands were free.
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Harry Price was investigated in 1922 and the result of the tests were negative.
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In 1925, Harry Price investigated Maria Silbert and caught her using her feet and toes to move objects in the seance room.
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Harry Price investigated the "direct voice" mediumship of George Valiantine in London.
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Harry Price wrote down every word that was attributed to Arditi and they were found to be word-for-word matches in an Italian phrase-book.
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Harry Price formed an organisation in 1925 called the National Laboratory of Psychical Research as a rival to the Society for Psychical Research.
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Harry Price had a number of disputes with the SPR, most notably over the mediumship of Rudi Schneider.
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Harry Price paid mediums to test them-the SPR criticised Harry Price and disagreed about paying mediums for testing.
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Harry Price made a formal offer to the University of London to equip and endow a Department of Psychical Research, and to loan the equipment of the National Laboratory and its library.
28.
In 1927, Harry Price claimed that he had come into possession of Joanna Southcott's box, and arranged to have it opened in the presence of one reluctant prelate : it was found to contain only a few oddments and unimportant papers, among them a lottery ticket and a horse-pistol.
29.
Harry Price exposed Frederick Tansley Munnings, who claimed to produce the independent "spirit" voices of Julius Caesar, Dan Leno, Hawley Harvey Crippen and King Henry VIII.
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Harry Price invented and used a piece of apparatus known as a voice control recorder and proved that all the voices were those of Munnings.
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Harry Price was involved in the formation of the National Film Library becoming its first chairman and was a founding member of the Shakespeare Film Society.
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Harry Price was the first to admit women to the club.
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Harry Price drafted a Bill for the regulation of psychic practitioners.
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Harry Price was offered by the government of Nazi Germany the Red Cross Medal if he would start a department of parapsychology at the University of Bonn but the project was frustrated by the outbreak of the Second World War and he did not receive the medal or a university doctorate that had been offered over the same project.
35.
On 4 February 1922, Harry Price with James Seymour, Eric Dingwall and William Marriott had proven the spirit photographer William Hope was a fraud during tests at the British College of Psychic Science.
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Harry Price secretly marked Hope's photographic plates, and provided him with a packet of additional plates that had been covertly etched with the brand image of the Imperial Dry Plate Co.
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Unaware that Harry Price had tampered with his supplies, Hope then attempted to produce a number of Spirit photographs.
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Ltd logo, or the marks that Harry Price had put on Hope's original equipment, showing that he had exchanged prepared materials containing fake spirit images for the provided materials.
39.
Doyle threatened to have Harry Price evicted from his laboratory and claimed if he persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Houdini.
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Doyle and other spiritualists attacked Harry Price and tried for years to have Harry Price take his pamphlet out of circulation.
41.
Harry Price did not come to any definite conclusion about Garrett and the seances:.
42.
Harry Price wrote that the findings of the other experiments should be revised due to the evidence showing how Schneider could free himself from the controls.
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In opposition, SPR members who were highly critical of Harry Price, supported Schneider's mediumship and promoted a conspiracy theory that Harry Price had hoaxed the photograph.
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SPR member Anita Gregory claimed Harry Price had deliberately faked the photograph to discredit SPR research and ruin Schneider's reputation.
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Harry Price was sceptical of Duncan and had her perform a number of test seances.
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Harry Price was suspected of swallowing cheesecloth which was then regurgitated as "ectoplasm".
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Harry Price had proven through analysis of a sample of ectoplasm produced by Duncan, that it was made of cheesecloth.
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Harry Price wrote that Duncan had given her fake ectoplasm to her husband to hide.
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Harry Price wrote up the case in Leaves from a Psychist's Case Book in a chapter called "The Cheese-Cloth Worshippers".
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Harry Price suspected the hair belonged to the Irving's sheepdog, Mona.
51.
Harry Price asked Reginald Pocock of the Natural History Museum to evaluate pawprints allegedly made by Gef in plasticine together with an impression of his supposed tooth marks.
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Harry Price did state that none of the markings had been made by a mongoose.
53.
Harry Price was most famous for his investigation into the Borley Rectory, Essex.
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The building became known as "the most haunted house in England" after Harry Price published a book about it in 1940.
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Harry Price documented a series of alleged hauntings from the time the rectory was built in 1863.
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Harry Price lived in the rectory from May 1937 to May 1938 and wrote of his experiences in the book.
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Harry Price himself 'salted the mine' and faked several phenomena while he was at the rectory.
58.
Michael Coleman in an SPR report in 1997 wrote Harry Price's defenders are unable to rebut the criticisms convincingly.
59.
Harry Price claimed to have attended a private seance on 15 December 1937 in which a small six-year-old girl called Rosalie appeared.
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Harry Price wrote he controlled the room by placing starch powder over the floor, locking the door and taping the windows before the seance.
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Harry Price was suspicious that the supposed spirit of the child was no different to a human being but after the seance had finished the starch powder was undisturbed and none of the seals had been removed on the window.
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Harry Price was convinced no one had entered the room via door or window during the seance.
63.
Eric Dingwall and Trevor Hall wrote the Rosalie seance was fictitious and Harry Price had lied about the whole affair but had based some of the details on the description of the house from a sitting he attended at a much earlier time in Brockley, South London where he used to live.
64.
Harry Price experienced a massive heart attack at his home in Pulborough, West Sussex and died almost instantly on 29 March 1948.
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Harry Price was buried in the churchyard of St Mary's, Pulborough.
66.
Harry Price's archives were deposited with the University of London between 1976 and 1978 by his widow.
67.
Harry Price has been depicted in documentary and dramatic works, including the following:.