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Richard Boursell
Richard Boursnell - Spirit Photographer
1832-1909
Richard Boursnell occupied a prominent position in the middle period
of the history of Spirit Photography. He was in partnership with a professional
photographer in Fleet Street, and is said to have had psychic markings, with
occasional hands and faces, on his plates as early as 1851. His partner accused
him of not cleaning the plates properly (those were the days of the wet collodion process), and after an angry dispute Boursnell said he would have
nothing more to do with that side of the business. It was nearly forty years
later before he again got markings, and then extra forms, with his photographs,
much to his annoyance, because it meant injury to his business and the
destruction of many plates. With great difficulty Mr.
W. T. Stead persuaded him
to allow him to have sittings. Under his own conditions, Mr. Stead obtained
repeatedly what the old photographer called "shadow pictures." At first they
were not recognized, but later on several that were thoroughly identified were
obtained. Mr. Stead gives particulars of precautions observed in marking plates,
etc., but says that he attaches little importance to these, considering that the
appearance on the plate of a recognized likeness of an unknown relative of an
unknown sitter a test far superior to precautions which any expert conjurer or
trick photographer might evade. He says:
Again and again I sent friends to Mr. Boursnell giving him no information as to
who they were, or telling him anything as to the identity of the person's
deceased friend or relative whose portrait they wished to secure, and time and
again when the negative was developed, the portrait would appear in the
background, or sometimes in front of the sitter. This occurred so frequently
that I am quite convinced of the impossibility of any fraud. One time it was a
French editor, who, finding the portrait of his deceased wife appear on the
negative when developed, was so transported with delight that he insisted on
kissing the photographer, Mr. B., much to the old man's embarrassment. On
another occasion it was a Lancashire engineer, himself a photographer, who took
marked plates and all possible precautions. He obtained portraits of two of his
relatives and another of an eminent personage with whom he had been in close
relations. Or again, it was a near neighbour who, going as a total stranger to
the studio, obtained the portrait of her deceased daughter.
In 1903 the Spiritualists of London presented this Medium with a purse of gold
and a testimonial signed by over a hundred representative Spiritualists. On this
occasion the walls of the rooms of the Psychological Society in George Street,
Portman Square, were hung with three hundred chosen Spirit Photographs taken by Boursnell.
With regard to Mr. Stead's point about the "recognized likeness," critics
declare that the sitter often imagines the likeness, and that at times two
sitters have claimed the same "extra" as a relative. In answer to this it may be
said that Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, for instance, ought to be the best judge
whether the picture was a likeness of his dead mother. Dr. Cushman (of whom we
shall speak later) submitted the "extra" of his daughter Agnes to a number of
his friends and relations, and all were convinced of the likeness. But
irrespective of any certainty about the likeness, there is overwhelming evidence
that these supernormal portraits really do occur, and in thousands of cases they
have been recognized.
In this silver gelatin photograph is F C Barnes and and the extra is Elizabeth, Empress of Austria taken 1908.
At the time in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richard Boursnell was said to be Britain's busiest Spirit Photographer.
This quiet unassuming old man would often say to his sitters he could see the Spirits coming forth whilst he was taking the photograph.