Coombe-Tennant, Winifred Margaret Serocold ("Mrs. Willett") (1874-1956)
Coombe-Tennant, Winifred Margaret Serocold ("Mrs. Willett") (1874-1956)
Winifred Coombe-Tennant was better known by the pseudonym "Mrs. Willett," under which her scripts produced by automatic writing were published. She was born November 1, 1874, and married Charles Coombe-Tennant in 1895. In addition to her mediumship, she was chairman of the arts and crafts section of the National Eisteddfod (a Welsh cultural conference held annually), a justice of the peace, and a delegate to the Assembly of the League of Nations (1922). She was also an associate of the Society for Psychical Research, London.
After the death of her daughter in 1908, Coombe-Tennant corresponded with Margaret Verrall, also known for her automatic writing, and later produced scripts herself. She first went into trance in 1910.
She took part in a cross-correspondence communications study by the Society for Psychical Research in which a group of automatists (Verrall, Helen Salter, Mrs. Holland [Alice Kipling Fleming ] and "Mrs. Willett") produced interlocking scripts that indicated the possibility of a disembodied intelligence.
Coombe-Tennant's mediumship is discussed in an article by G. W. Balfour in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Re-search. After her death in 1956 she supposedly communicated to Geraldine Cummins the scripts later published in the book Swan on a Black Sea (1965).
Sources:
Balfour, G. W. "A Study of the Psychological Aspects of Mrs. Willett's Mediumship." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research 43 (1935): 43.