862. Mr. Wedgwood gave us also another case of a somewhat similar character, which I cite in 862 A.

Finally, a few months before his death, I received from him a third retrocognitive case, which is printed in full in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. ix. pp. 99-104. It relates to the execution of Alice Grimbold - a maidservant at an inn at Leicester - who was condemned to be burnt alive for complicity in the murder of her mistress in 1605. A number of names and details were given, all of which were afterwards verified in a History of Leicester. The automatists were confident that they had never heard of any of the facts before.

863. I have given these cases in succession, so that the reader may see the kind of growing difficulty which the theory of forgotten memories here involves. It will be seen that with each automatist of good faith the question may with patience be capable of definite solution. Were Mrs. R. willing and able - which at present she is not - to find some other partner with whom she can write, now that Mr. Wedgwood and her sister have been removed by death, and to record a long series of communications, we might gradually obtain a conviction that the matters therein narrated either could or could not all of them have been previously seen and forgotten. Similar records kept by many other automatists might help to some general conclusion as to the source from which these retrocognitive facts come, if in any cases forgotten memory fails to explain them. One of the most important data for such a decision consists in the account - absolutely trustworthy, as I believe - given by Mr. Stainton Moses in "Spirit Identity," of a series of messages from musical composers, giving the principal dates of their respective lives, as they may be found in any Biographical Dictionary, with hardly anything more.

Now were such messages offered to us as coming through an alleged automatist not of known probity or who could bring no proof of other messages not capable of being got up beforehand, we should naturally set them aside. But with Mr. Moses, as with Mrs. R. above - and in a still higher degree - there was so considerable an independent history of provably supernormal phenomena that we are bound to consider these musical biographies in their place as a part of that series. Their peculiar nature excited the surprise of Mr. Moses and his friends, who were informed by the "guides" that these were in fact messages from the spirits in question, but that these spirits had refreshed their memory of their earth-lives by consulting printed sources of information. It is obvious that this is to drop the supposed proof of identity altogether. If any given spirit can consult his own printed life, so also presumably can other spirits; and so perhaps can the still incarnated spirit of the automatist himself. This was of course felt by Mr. Moses, who told me that subjectively also the feeling which accompanied these biographical writings was very different from that which came when, as he held, some spirit was entering with him into real and direct communication.

864. From these remote historical narratives I go on to certain messages avowedly coming from persons more recently departed, and into which something more of definite personality seems to enter. One element of this kind is handwriting; and in the next case it will be seen that resemblance of handwriting is one of the evidential points alleged. Now proof of identity from resemblance of handwriting may conceivably be very strong. But in estimating it we must bear two points in mind. The first is that (like the resemblances of so-called "spirit-photographs" to deceased friends) it is often very loosely asserted. One needs, if not an expert's opinion, at least a careful personal scrutiny of the three scripts - the automatist's voluntary and his automatic script, and the deceased person's script - before one can feel sure that the resemblance is in more than some general scrawliness. This refers to the cases where the automatist has provably never seen the deceased person's handwriting. Where he has seen that handwriting, we have to remember (in the second place) that a hypnotised subject can frequently imitate any known handwriting far more closely than in his waking state; and that consequently we are bound to credit the subliminal self with a mimetic faculty which may come out of these messages without any supraliminal guidance whatever on the automatist's part.

I give in 864 A an abridged account of a series of experiments by Professor Rossi-Pagnoni at Pesaro, into which the question of handwriting enters. The full account illustrates automatic utterance as well as other forms of motor automatism, and possibly also telekinetic phenomena. The critical discussion of the evidence by Mr. H. Babington Smith, to whom we are indebted for the account, shows with what complex considerations we have to deal in the questions now before us.

865. The case of Mrs. Underwood next to be quoted (in 865 A) contains several points of interest besides the alleged resemblance of handwriting. It shows once more, for instance, the great similarity of ways in which this writing takes its rise with automatists all over the world, and the recurrence of the same puzzles with observers of many different types, and may thus serve as an introduction to the groups of cases which follow.