Duguid, David (1832-1907)

Scottish medium, chiefly famous for his automatic and direct drawings. Duguid was born in Glasgow and became a cabinetmaker by trade.

His two brothers, Robert, of Glasgow, and Alexander, of Kirkcaldy, also claimed psychic powers, but David eclipsed them both with phenomena comprising the whole scale of séance-room manifestations. Above and beyond the more common raps, he supposedly moved objects without contact; heavy music boxes sailed about in the room in the dark and invisible hands wound them up when they ran down. Sitters reported hearing direct voices, usually in husky whispers but sometimes in thunderous tones. Reportedly on one occasion, the medium was levitated, placed on the table in his chair, to which he was bound, and a coat was put on him without disturbing the knots. Often objects were brought out from closed rooms, psychic lights were seen, phantom hands touched the sitters, redolent perfumes were produced, and, according to the testimony of Thomas S. Garriock, as quoted in E. T. Bennett's Direct Phenomena of Spiritualism (1908), "On one occasion Mr. Duguid put his hand into the blazing stove, took out a large piece of coal and walked round the room with it for five minutes."

The beginnings of all these marvels dated from 1865, when, out of curiosity, he took part in table-sitting experiments at the house of H. Nisbet, a publisher of Glasgow. At one of these sittings he felt his arm shake and a cold current ran down his spine. When Nisbet's daughter, who was an automatic writer, placed her right hand on his left it at once began to move and drew rough sketches of vases and flowers, and then the section of an archway. Duguid began to sit in his home for automatic painting. The influence that manifested claimed to feel Duguid hampered by absolute lack of artistic education. On his suggestion Duguid took lessons at a government school of arts for four months.

Later the influence suggested that after his usual work on large pictures Duguid should draw or paint on little cards in the presence of onlookers. In eight to ten minutes he turned out complete pictures. Working in total darkness, sitters reported that the "spirits" would arrive in less than a minute and, independently of the medium's hands, produce a new picture in as short a time as 35 seconds. They were tiny and sometimes so fine in execution that their merit was enhanced if viewed under a magnifying glass. Now and then, many of these little oil paintings were found on a single card. The noise of the brushes and paper, prepared in light, would be heard by those present as coming from well above the table. When the paintings were completed, everything was dropped. Invariably the paper would be found with painted side up, wet and sticky. As a rule these little paintings were then freely distributed among the sitters.

To ensure control, Duguid allowed himself to be held or tied. When the light was put on, the bindings were often found exchanged. If the medium was too tightly bound he was liberated in a few seconds in the darkness and the ligatures were quietly dropped into the lap of one of the sitters. On several occasions the little cards were found missing. As soon as the darkness was restored they were heard to drop onto the table from above.

To prevent substitution, the cards were usually signed at the back with the initials of the sitters. Later, a better method of identification was employed. A corner of the card was torn off and handed to a sitter before the painting began. For several years, Duguid took no fee for his séances.

In August 1878 Frank Podmore attended a sitting at which this method of control was already employed and discerned the method of its subversion. Describing how he placed the fragments of the cards securely in his pocket and how the medium was fastened with silk handkerchiefs, with adhesive paper on the ends, he writes in Modern Spiritualism (2 vols., 1902):

"After a quarter of an hour the lights were turned up and two small oil paintings, one circular, about the size of a penny, the other oval and slightly larger, were found on the two cards. The colours were still moist and the fragments in my pocket fitted the torn corners of the cards. The two pictures, which lie before me as I write, represent respectively a small upland stream dashing over rocks, and a mountain lake with its shores bathed in a sunset glow. The paintings, though obviously executed with some haste, were hardly such as one can imagine to have been done in such a short interval and in almost complete darkness. For many years I was quite at a loss to understand how the feat could have been accomplished by normal means. The explanation, which I have now no doubt to be correct, is an extremely simple one. Duguid, it has been seen, would not suffer profane hands to touch the cards; and, when he had torn off the corner of a card, he no doubt dropped into the sitter's hand not the piece torn from the blank card on the table, but a piece previously torn from a card on which a picture had already been painted."

Podmore's explanation also suggests other methods that could have been employed in the dark and often were employed by mediums such as Duguid.

The first extended publicity to David Duguid's mediumship was given by the North British Daily Mail in 1873 in a series of articles entitled A Few Nights with the Glasgow Spiritualists. It was later followed by the report of a subcommittee of the Psychological Society of Edinburgh. They claimed to witness 11 distinctly different forms of manifestation that they could not explain as normal. Direct writing that began to alternate with direct painting and drawing was among the phenomena observed. Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and German scripts were produced, sometimes on a folded sheet of paper enclosed in a sealed envelope.

(It was by this method that the frontispieces of three volumes of William Oxley's Angelic Revelations were allegedly illustrated.) Thomas Power was quoted by Bennett as saying:

"The plain paper was put into an envelope. The three gentlemen placed their fingers on the sealed envelope and turned off the gas. In three minutes the gas was turned on, the envelope cut open and the drawing was found in its complete state."

The control who worked through Duguid did not disclose his identity for a long time. He called himself "Marcus Baker." Eventually he promised a copy of one of his masterpieces. The medium worked for four days, four hours at a time, on a large painting. It was initialed "J.R.," and from Cassell's Art Treasures Exhibition it was recognized as "The Waterfall," by Jakob Ruysdael. The copy was not exact, however; some figures were omitted. The control, when questioned, said those figures were added later by Bergheim. When they consulted Ruysdael's biography this was found to be true.

The second of Duguid's painting controls also claimed a famous name, that of Jan van Steen. Apparently neither of them had taken the trouble to always produce original compositions. Great inconvenience arose from this for the medium after the arrival on the scene, in August 1869, of "Hafed," the third of Duguid's famous guides.

From the book that he dictated in 46 sittings between 1870 and 1871 it appears that Hafed lived nearly 2,000 years ago as a warrior-prince of Persia. At an early age he fought against an invading Arabian army, was later admitted to the order of the Magi, and was ultimately chosen arch magus. He described the creeds and social life of ancient Persia, Tyre, Greece, Egypt, Judea, Babylon, and many other long perished civilizations that he studied in travels.

The climax of his story was reached when he revealed that he conducted the expedition of the Three Wise Men to Judea to the cradle of Jesus. He was summoned by his guardian spirit to go on the journey with two brother magi and take rich gifts to the babe. He described the youthful years of Jesus that are not chronicled in the Gospels. According to his story, he traveled with Jesus in Persia, India, and many other countries and marveled at the miracles the young child performed. After the martyrdom of Jesus he became a Christian himself, met Paul in Athens, preached the gospel in Venice and Alexandria, and finally perished at age 100 in the arena at Rome.

The book, as taken down in notes by Hay Nisbet, was published in 1876 under the title Hafed, Prince of Persia: His Experiences in Earth Life, being Spirit Communications Received Through Mr. David Duguid, the Glasgow Trance Speaking Medium, with an Appendix, containing Communications from the Spirit Artists Ruisdael and Steen, illustrated by Facsimiles of Forty-Five Drawings and Writings, the Direct Work of the Spirits. Reportedly the book was produced in trance. Trouble arose, however, over the illustrations, and the first edition of the book had to be withdrawn as some of the sketches were discovered to be copies from Cassell's Family Bible. In the second edition, published in the same year, eight full-page plates had been withdrawn, although Cassell's protest only applied to three full-page and one half-page plates.

Suspicion of the rest of the expunged drawings appears to be justified. E. T. Bennett submitted an Arabic doorway inscription that supposedly came in direct writing but is also visible in an illustration in the Family Bible according to the expert examination of Stanley Lane-Pool. He found the text to read, "There is no conqueror but God," the characteristic motto of the Moorish kings of Granada, which occurs on all their coins and all over the Alhambra. "But the writer of the direct card," he says, "evidently had not the Alhambra nor the Syrian Gateway in his mind, but Cassell's Family Bible. The engraver of the cut in the Bible, which you sent me, made a muddle of the lower line of inscription under the lintel, not knowing Arabic, and the direct card exactly reproduces the engraver's blunders."

There was a sequel to Hafed, titled Hermes, a Disciple of Jesus: His Life and Missionary Work; also the Evangelistic Travels of Anah and Zitha, two Persian Evangelists, sent out by Hafed; together with Incidents in the Life of Jesus given by a Disciple through Hafed (1887). Thomas Garrioch, a member of Duguid's circle, acted as recorder. According to Hay Nisbet's preface, this book was only one-third finished by 1887. The remainder was composed of the life and missionary work of a Brahmin priest who was raised from the dead by Jesus, the autobiographies of an ancient Mexican priest and a red Indian chief, and various other spirit autobiographies, tales, addresses, and answers to questions.

Hermes —after the lesson learned from the publication of Hafed —was not illustrated. Supposedly, the misadventure of the Hafed illustrations was brought to the attention of the controls. They defended themselves by saying that the memory of these pictures was retained in Duguid's subconscious mind. If so, these impressions were apparently subject to elaboration in the reproduction as, for instance, a ruined church nave of the Family Bible appears in a restored condition in Duguid's book. A similar incident occurred in Duguid's demonstrations of spirit photography. His Cyprian priestess, a recurring spirit photograph, was found to be the exact copy of a German picture, Night.