Hamilton, T(homas) Glen(dinning)(1873-1935)

Medical practitioner of Winnipeg and former president of the Winnipeg Society for Psychical Research. Over a period of 15 years, Hamilton carried on systematic research in his own laboratory under scientific conditions and often in the presence of distinguished guests from across Canada and the United States.

He was born in Agincourt, Ontario, Canada, on November 26, 1873, into a farming family. He studied at Manitoba Medical College, after which he spent a year as house surgeon at Winnipeg General Hospital. In 1904 he established a private medical practice in Elmwood, Winnipeg. He took a great interest in community life, serving as chairman of the Winnipeg Playground Commission and in 1915 serving on the Manitoba Legislative Assembly.

His interest in psychical phenomena dated from his days as a medical student, and through the 1920s he studied Pearl L. Curran, the medium of the entity known as "Patience Worth." In Winnipeg he formed a circle consisting of four medical doctors, a lawyer, a civil engineer, and an electrical engineer. His wife, an experienced nurse, also assisted. He secured the services of several nonprofessional mediums known only as Elizabeth M., Mary M., and Mercedes. Through regularly attending the séances, some of the sitters also developed mediumship and fell occasionally into trance. The supposed spirits of author Robert Louis Stevenson, missionary David Livingstone, Spiritualist medium W. T. Stead, Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon, and psychical researcher Camille Flammarion acted as regular controls.

Many of the phenomena were simultaneously photographed by a large group of cameras, several stereoscopic, and Hamilton obtained a unique collection of photographs of table levitations, telekinetic movements, teleplasmic structures, and materialized hands, faces, and full figures. The success of the circle was credited to the harmonious conditions that prevailed. It allowed Hamilton to make an important contribution to the study of direct voice and psychic lights. Apart from the photographs, the most valuable contribution was a critical analysis of trance that, in the hands of a competent observer, would be invaluable to researchers in eliminating imposition and fraud, whether deliberate or unintentional.

Hamilton died April 7, 1935.

Sources:

Hamilton, Margaret L. Is Survival a Fact? Studies of Deep-Trance Automatic Scripts. London, 1969.

Hamilton, T. Glen. Intention and Survival: Psychical Research Studies and Bearing of Intentional Acts by Trance Personalities on the Problem of Human Survival. Toronto: Macmillan, 1942. Rev. ed. London: Regency Press, 1977.

——. "A Lecture to the British Medical Association." Psychic Science 9, no. 4 (January 1931).

——. "The Mary M. Teleplasm of Oct. 27, 1929." Psychic Science 10, no. 4 (January 1932).

——. "Teleplasmic Phenomena in Winnipeg." Psychic Science 8, no. 3 (1929); 8, no. 4 (January 1930); 9, no. 2 (July 1930).