In 1849, the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin were also the subject of lively debate in Switzerland. On October 12, 1849, the Zürcher Freitagszeitung not only raised the hopes of its readers by mentioning James Ross` search expedition for Franklin, it also cites the account of a clairvoyant, who saw Franklin and Ross alive in a vision. This clairvoyant was Emma, the “Bolton clairvoyante”. Shane McCorristine has written an excellent piece on her efforts to find Franklin in the blog of the Royal Museum of Greenwich. Emma was not the only clairvoyant in search for Franklin. Russell A. Potter wrote in his blog the strange, but extremely enjoyable story about another Captain Parker Snow and the Weesy Coppin clairvoyant, Anne.
While Emma's visions were widely discussed in England, they also found their way into this Swiss newspaper.
“England. For years there had been no news of the expedition of Sir John Franklin, who was to seek a passage at the North Pole. Several expeditions were prepared to go to find it [the expedition]; but it was generally believed that it [the expedition] was completely doomed, only Franklin's loving wife did not give up hope. At last the English admiralty received the news that Franklin's tracks had been found. His ships seem to have been held by the ice blocks in the Prince Regent's Strait, a strait of the Baffinsbay (Davis Strait); whether the people were able to save themselves is not known, but it may be concluded that the Ross` expedition, in search for Franklin, was at the same time, last March, in the south of the Prince Regent's Strait. A somnambulist was even questioned about the fate of Franklin and Ross, and in noble England [referring to England`s Upper Class], a respected journal gives a detailed account of her vision. The clairvoyant saw both [Ross and Franklin] alive on the Ice Ocean [metaphor, comparable to 'ice desert'] in her dream, and under the snow she saw the bodies of their dead companions rc.”
On the October, 13th, just a day later, the Der Liberale Alpenbote reports Franklin and his crew as having been found alive, relying this time on information given by a Captain Parker, whaling master aboard the Truelove (not to be confused with the Captain Parker Snow already mentioned). Captain Parker heard his news from an Inuit informant on Pond`s Bay, claiming to have been on one of Franklin's ships. He was not able to reach the place the Inuit had indicated to him.
“Great Britain. Varia. Through the ship Truelove, [of] Captain Parker, news arrived that Sir John Franklin's expedition to the northern polar regions, that departed for a discovery voyage, of which no news have been heard for four years, had been found in the Prince Regents Strait last March, and that the whole crew, although surrounded by ice, was still well.”
Interestingly, just a week before on October 5th, 1849, the London Evening Standard printed a letter from the Truelove`s owner, Thos. Ward, addressing the Admiralty with the account of Captain Parker. On the same page, it also published a letter that has been sent to the Manchester Guardian. In it, the Emma`vision is described in detail. It seems likely that both Swiss newspapers relied on the news published by the London Evening Standard. In this case, it took seven or eight days for the news to travel, being translated and printed.
The history of the Zürcher Freitagszeitung is quite remarkable on its own. Once called the Ordinari Wochenzeitung, it was founded by Barbara Schaufelberger (1645-1718) in 1674, and by 1814 it was the most read newspaper in Switzerland. In 2011, a janitor found four editions from 1862 hidden behind a mirror. The carefully hidden and well read pages show not only its former owner's pleasure of reading this newspaper, but also the need to hide it - a remarkable little story. In contrast to the Zürcher Freitagszeitung the Der Liberale Alpenbote was newly founded in 1848 and still a very young newspaper when the reports were published.
It was not unusual for the newspapers to write about clairvoyants. Just two months earlier, the Der Liberale Alpenbote referred to a clairvoyant in Vienna, if in quite a neutral tone. However, they seem to have decided against reporting on Emma's vision, preferring instead the information given by the Inuit informant and Captain Parker, the less esoteric and more reliable source from todays perpective.
On November 10th, 1849, the Eidgenössische Zeitung published the most detailed report about Emma's vision to be published in Switzerland at the time. While the London Evening Standard may have been the source for the other two articles, this one relies clearly on another one, which I could not determine.
“England. It is well known that the fate of the brave navigator Sir John Franklin continues to attract the most curious interest, and the audience clings to any faint hope that his salvation from the Arctic ice masses can somehow be predicted. In order to find out about the fate of the lost man and the admiral Sir James Ross, who was sent from the admiral's office, the highly original idea of using clairvoyance to help the audience was born. Already in the past, a clairvoyant in Bolton has provided strange insights. On 26 October these experiments were continued and produced the following highly interesting results: At the request of Fleet Captain M. the psychic was put back into mesmeric sleep by the magnetister [sic] Mr. Haddock on October 16th in the evening in the presence of several honourable gentlemen and told her to visit Sir John Franklin and Sir James Ross again and tell them how she found them, what time it was with them, what the country looked like. She said yes, and after some time she began to breathe heavily and cried, "O, what wind; I have never seen so much snow. Oh, how cold it is!" Soon after, she jumped with fright and said, "Fie, the nasty people! Do they drink this stuff to keep warm? I'd rather starve than drink that." After a few minutes she found the ships surrounded by high ice, and as if addressing Sir John Franklin, she said, "I have some questions for you to ask," and now she repeated what Mr. Haddock had taught her. As if she was getting answers to her questions, she said: O, then your ship is not under water? It is frozen. That is good. What time is it? "Oh, it must be much later; I've already had my tea." She now described the time on the ship's clocks in a very confused way; Mr Haddock noticed that she didn't really know the Roman numerals. "I want to know," the clairvoyant continued, "when do you expect to come to England? In less than nine months. Have you seen Sir James Ross? O, you have seen his signal, but do not know how to get to him." She then went to Sir James Ross, whom she found farther up the mountain than Franklin. She asked him in surprise if the clocks were receding. She saw two ships sailing home; they would bring good news. She spoke admiringly of the wonderful colours in the sky, bluish-red, like inflamed saltpetre, and of the stars that did not flicker but turned. Then she said, "I want to go home; it's so unhomely here." She described whales, seals, wild men in hides eating raw meat, and said Sir John lived in a house made of thick ice blocks near his ship; he had seen the natives - but Sir James Ross had not seen them. - On the evening of the seventeenth, Haddoch magnetised the clairvoyant anew in order to research more precise time indications from her. Since she could not read Roman numerals completely, he gave her a stationary clock with Arabic numerals in her hand and told her to set the hands in the same way as the hands she saw. She immediately set the hand to 12 o'clock 5 minutes, whereas in Bolton it was 6 o'clock and 30 minutes. For Sir James Ross, she set the clock to 11, which would make Franklin 97,5 degrees, Ross would be 112,5 degrees West. A map was handed to her; she put her finger on Prince Regent's Strait and said, "This is Sir John Franklin." This point is 95 degrees away, but Mr. Haddock didn't care for her accuracy on this point because she doesn't know anything about maps. She was asked if she could get the name of the place from Sir John. She replied that it began with an L. Is it Leopolds Island? No. Was it Lowthers Islands? Yes, Lowthers Islands. This location roughly coincides with the time difference."
While it may seem strange from today's perspective, somnambulism was very popular in 19th century Europe and even considered to warrant serious academic research by some. In 1844, the doctor, professor of philosophy and highly influential (and controversial) politician Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler held a lecture about somnambulism in Bern. Considered today as one of the founding fathers of modern Switzerland, in 1830 Troxler went to the University of Basel as a professor, but was dismissed as early as 1831 because he was suspected of taking part in an uprising. In 1834 he became professor at the University of Bern, where he taught until 1850. His research in somnambulism and what we call today anthroposophy does not seem to have had a bad effect on his career, quite on the contrary.
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