Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick

Portrait of Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick painted by Sir James Jebusa Shannon, 1889

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick, (born in Balfour; 11 March 1845 – 10 February 1936), known as Nora to her family and friends, was an activist for the higher education of women, Principal of Newnham College of the University of Cambridge, and a leading figure in the Society for Psychical Research.

Biography

Eleanor Mildred Balfour was born in East Lothian, daughter of James Maitland Balfour and Lady Blanche Harriet. She was born into perhaps the most prominent political clan in 19th-century Britain, the 'Hotel Cecil': her brother Arthur would eventually himself become prime minister. Another brother, Frank, a biologist, died young in a climbing accident.

One of the first students at Newnham College in Cambridge, in 1876 she married (and became converted to feminism by) the philosopher Henry Sidgwick. In 1880 she became Vice-Principal of Newnham under the founding Principal Anne Clough, succeeding as principal on Clough's death in 1892. She and her husband resided there until 1900, the year of Henry Sidgwick's death. In 1894 Sidgwick was one of the first three women to serve on a royal commission, the Bryce commission on Secondary Education.

As a young woman, Eleanor had helped Rayleigh improve the accuracy of experimental measurement of electrical resistance; she subsequently turned her careful experimental mind to the question of testing the veracity of claims for psychical phenomena. She was elected President of the Society for Psychical Research in 1908 and named President of Honour in 1932.[1]

She was a member of the Ladies Dining Society in Cambridge, with 11 other members.

In 1916 Sidgwick left Cambridge to live with one of her brothers near Woking, where she remained until her death in 1936.

She was awarded honorary degrees by the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Birmingham.[2]

Psychical research

Most of her writings related to psychical research, and are contained in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. However, some related to educational matters, and a couple of essays dealt with the morality of international affairs.

Sidgwick was highly critical of physical mediumship. In 1886 and 1887 a series of publications by S. J. Davey, Richard Hodgson and Sidgwick in the Journal for the Society for Psychical Research exposed the slate writing tricks of the medium William Eglinton.[3] Sidgwick regarded Eglinton to be nothing more than a clever conjurer.[4] Due to the critical papers, Stainton Moses and other prominent spiritualist members resigned from the Society for Psychical Research.[5][6]

In 1891, Alfred Russel Wallace requested for the Society to properly investigate spirit photography.[7] Wallace had endorsed various spirit photographs as genuine.[8] Sidgwick responded with her paper On Spirit Photographs (1891) which cast doubt on the subject and revealed the fraudulent methods that spirit photographers such as Édouard Isidore Buguet, Frederic Hudson and William H. Mumler had utilized.[9][10]

Selected publications

References

  1. ↑ Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. (1992). The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. Facts On File. pp. 302-303. ISBN 0-8160-2140-6
  2. ↑ "Sidgwick [née Balfour], Eleanor Mildred". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. Retrieved 25 October 2013. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  3. ↑ Oppenheim, Janet. (1988). The Other World: Spiritualism and Psychical Research in England, 1850–1914. Cambridge University Press. pp. 139–140. ISBN 978-0521347679
  4. ↑ Owen, Alex. (1989). The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. University of Chicago Press. p. 261. ISBN 0-226-64205-4
  5. ↑ Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. (1992). The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits. Facts On File. p. 224. ISBN 0-8160-2140-6 "Following Eleanor sidgwick's comments on the fraudulent slate-writing medium William Eglinton in 1886, Moses withdrew from the SPR's council and resigned from the society. Several others left with him or shortly thereafter."
  6. ↑ Luckhurst, Roger. (2002). The Invention of Telepathy, 1870–1901. Oxford University Press. p. 57. ISBN 978-0199249626
  7. ↑ "The Belief in Spirit Photography". Martyn Jolly.
  8. ↑ Warner, Marina. (2006). Phantasmagoria: Spirit Visions, Metaphors, and Media into the Twenty-first Century. Oxford University Press. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-19-929994-2
  9. ↑ Carrington, Hereward. (1907). The Physical Phenomena of Spiritualism. Herbert B. Turner & Co. pp. 208-209
  10. ↑ Edmunds, Simeon. (1966). Spiritualism: A Critical Survey. Aquarian Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0850300130 "The early history of spirit photography was reviewed by Mrs Henry Sidgwick in the Proceedings of the SPR in 1891. She showed clearly not only that Mumler, Hudson, Buguet and their ilk were fraudulent, but the way in which those who believed in them were deceived."

Further reading

Academic offices
Preceded by
Anne Clough		 Principal of Newnham College, Cambridge
1892–1910 		Succeeded by
Katharine Stephen
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