(299) "The steamship' Robert Lowe ' returned to the Thames on Tuesday, October nth, 1870, from St. Pierre, Newfoundland, where she had been repairing one of the French Atlantic Telegraph Company's cables. An engineer on board, Mr. W. H. Pearce, of 37, Augusta Street, East India Road, Poplar, was taken ill with the typhus fever, and on the 4th of October last he died. One of his mates, Mr. D. Brown, of 1, Edward Street, Hudson's Road, Canning Town, Plaistow, a strong, healthy man, a stoker, not likely to be led astray by imagination, attended him till the day before he died. [Brown, it appears, bore the best of characters, and had a strong friendship for Pearce.] On the afternoon before his death, at 3 o'clock, in broad daylight, Brown was attending the sick man, who wanted to get out of bed, but his companion prevented him. And this is what the witness says he saw: -

"'I was standing on one side of the bunk, and while trying to prevent Pearce from rising, I saw on the other side of the bunk, the wife, two children, and the mother of the dying man, all of whom I knew very well, and they are all still living. They appeared to be very sorrowful, but in all other respects were the same as ordinary human beings. I could not see through them; they were not at all transparent. They had on their ordinary clothes, and, perhaps, looked rather paler than usual. The mother said to me in a clearly audible voice, "He will be buried on Thursday, at 12 o'clock, in about fourteen hundred fathoms of water." They all then vanished instantly, and I saw them no more. Pearce did not see them, as he was delirious, and had been so for two days previously. I ran out of the berth in a state of great excitement, and did not enter it again while he was alive. He died on Tuesday, not Thursday, and was buried at 4 o'clock, not 12.1 It was a sudden surprise to me to see the apparitions. I expected nothing of the kind, and when I saw them I was perfectly cool and collected. I had never before seen anything of the kind in my life, and my health is, and always has been, good.

About five minutes afterwards I told Captain Blacklock I would stop with the sick man no longer, but would not tell him why, thinking that if I did, nobody else would take my place. About an hour later, I told Captain Blacklock and Mr. Dunbar, the chief engineer, whose address is Old Mill, near Port William, Wigtownshire, Scotland'.

"The other sailors on board say that they saw that Mr. Brown was greatly agitated from some cause, and they gradually drew this narrative out of him." Captain Blacklock says: -

"Brown came down into the cabin, looking very pale and frightened, and declared in a strong and decided way that he would not attend the sick man any more on any conditions - not for a thousand pounds. I told him that he ought to attend a sick and dying comrade, especially as a storm was raging, and he needed kind and considerate help, such as any of us might need one day. I pressed him all the more, as I wanted a strong steady man to attend the delirious invalid; besides, it being bad weather, the other men were fagged and over-worked. Brown would not go back, and he left the cabin, as I think, crying, so I sent him out a glass of brandy. Shortly after that, I heard he was very ill, and that his mates had some trouble in soothing and calming him.

"We the undersigned, officials on board the 'Robert Lowe,' declare the above statements to be true, so far as each of the circumstances came under our personal notice, but we none of us commit ourselves to any opinion as to the cause of the phenomenon. We give the statement simply because we have been requested to do so, rumours of the occurrence having gone abroad and caused inquiries to be made.

(Signed) "J. Blacklock, Commander".

"Andrew Dunbar, First Engineer.

(Signatures of six other members of the crew.) "Witness, W. H. Harrison.

"October 20th, 1870".

[Captain Blacklock is dead. The "Robert Lowe" was lost in 1872, and only one or two of the crew escaped. The account included a description of some distressing experiences of Mrs. Pearce's, which had occurred in London during the few days before her husband's death, and filled her with anxiety on his account; but this anxiety cannot be safely assumed to have been in any way a condition of Brown's experience].

1 This markedly illustrates the absence, from first-hand and immediate accounts, of the spurious marvels which have done so much to mask the facts of telepathy. It would be a tolerably safe prophecy that in any third-hand version of this occurrence the great point would be that the death and burial took place on the day and at the hour predicted.

It cannot, of course, be proved that this was not a case of purely subjective hallucination, as Brown knew the Pearce family by sight. But the vision, both in its character and its effects, was unlike any of those which were treated above (Chapter XI (Transient Hallucinations Of The Sane: Ambiguous Cases)) as due to expectancy or anxiety. And we at any rate have the coincidence that a healthy man experienced the one hallucination of his life - and an extremely vivid and highly developed specimen - in broad daylight, at a time when the friend in whose beclouded mind the very scene evoked may well have been dominant, was dying in close proximity to him.1

The following is another nautical case, as to which it is not easy to form an opinion. The points against it are that it is from an uneducated witness; and that it contains an account of an experience which in one respect - the length of its duration - has scarcely a parallel, as far as I know, among hallucinations of sane and healthy persons. Nevertheless, unless the account is an absolute fabrication, which seems very unlikely, the reasonable conclusion, I think, would be that a telepathic hallucination was produced, though its details may have been exaggerated. Mr. Louis Lyons, of 3, Bouverie Square, Folkestone, wrote, on October 21st, 1882: -

(300) "Some time ago, my son told me that a friend of his, a rough and simple-minded fellow, had returned from Shields, and told him a curious tale. The man is a sailor, and had served with his father ever since he was a boy, in a collier which trades between this port and the North. The youth, having become very proficient in his calling, went on his voyages, leaving his father, now an elderly man, at home. During a stormy voyage, and not far off the Humber, the young sailor saw his father, whom he had left in excellent health, pacing the deck, and calling out several times, as he was wont to do, 'Mind your helm, Joe! ' The young man wished to speak to his father, but could not; some occult power prevented him. At the end of the voyage a letter awaited the young sailor, announcing the death of the father at the precise time when he appeared to his son; but please to remark (a matter of some importance, I think) that the apparition remained on deck some three hours, until the vessel got to Grimsby. [This differs from the first-hand account].

"I disbelieved my son's story, and requested him to ask his friend to come and take tea with me, that I might hear the account from his own mouth. He came. The simplicity of his manner, his plain, open-hearted account, and I may even say his stupidity, manifested in his peculiar diction, imparted an impress to his tale".

At our request Mr. Lyons interrogated Edward Sings more formally, the next time that the latter visited Folkestone. The following is Sings' own account: -

"Folkestone.

"December 29th, 1882. "I left my father last about six years ago, on a Good Friday, He was in good health when I left him. We were in a gale of wind, and we were running in the Humber: we carried the main gaff away; I was at the wheel steering her in. He came to me 3 or 4 times, tapped me on the shoulder, and told me to mind the helm, and I told the captain my father was drowned, or something happened to him. After we got in, when it was my watch, he was walking to and fro with me, and I went down below and told my mate I could not stop up, and I did not like to. My mate took my watch. I never could speak to my father, for something kept me from doing so. I heard of my father's death a week afterwards. No one else saw my father's spirit.1 My father stopped on deck with me an hour, and as I could not stand it any longer I went below, and my mate took my place. We cast both anchors, and were towed into Grimsby. My mother and sister were at my father's death-bed, and they told me that my father asked several times whether I was in the harbour.

1 As regards the supposition that the agent was the sick man himself, cf. case 30, pp. 156-8. As to the appearance of more figures than one, see the remarks on case 202.

"I certify this to be a true account. "Edward Sings "

We find from the Register of Deaths that E. Sings' father died on April 7,1877, aged 53. Good Friday fell on March 30; and this, it will be seen, corresponds very well with the above statement.

Mr. Lyons has kindly visited Sings' mother and sister, at 67, Tontine Street, Folkestone, and received a similar account from them.

[Cases 301 and 302 are here omitted].

1 See p. 176, note 2.