Emma Floyd, the future Mother of Spiritualism and founder of “Two Worlds”, was born in London on 2 May 1823.  Her parents were Captain Ebenezer and Ann Sophia Floyd.  They had two elder children, Thomas and Frances, and a younger daughter, Margaret.

As a child Emma was a pupil of Thomas Welsh, a bass singer, composer and singing teacher at the Chapel Royal.  Even then she showed some of the psychic abilities she would later develop to perfection.  The servants remarked how she could describe some of their ‘dead’ relatives, and that “also whatever I prophesised was sure to come to pass.”  All of this though was in the sleep state known as somnambulism, and when she awoke she remembered nothing.

She was introduced to the secret Orphic Society, whose members studied her somnambulism.  She had many strange visions – some of them heavenly, but others terrifying and she would scream hysterically.

A member later recalled that Ebenezer, a sea-captain, also had “phenomenal powers of prevision and other qualities of a Spiritualistic order.”        

At the Society, and in attendance at music recitals, she was constantly in the company of adults.  “I fancy,” she wrote in late life, “that I was never young, joyous or happy like other children.”

Her childhood, such as it was, ended at eleven when her father passed.  The family left house and servants and went to live near the river Avon.  She tells us she was sent out to “earn my bread as a pupil-teacher of music.”  

Once she was so miserable she would have drowned herself in the Avon, had not the spirit of Ebenezer taken her hand and led her homeward.

A promising soprano, she trained for the opera and studied in Paris.  Her somnambulism though continued, and the screaming ruined a voice that conductor and composer, Sir Michael Costa considered one of the finest.

She turned to the stage and appeared in several productions around 1842.  Then she joined the “Adelphi Theatre” in the Strand and stayed a decade, playing in comedy and melodrama.  

She was billed as Emma Harding, and her mother, her constant companion, seems to have been known as Mrs Harding.  (The ‘e’ was not added until after Emma’s arrival in New York.)

A surviving picture from 1847 shows her as Queen Myrtha in a burlesque of the ballet “Giselle”.  She earned enough to rent comfortable lodgings and employ a housekeeper.    

She was attractive and successful, but attracted a male following among what she termed a vicious aristocracy’.  One of them, furious at being rebuffed, was powerful enough to prevail upon the management of the “Adelphi”, and other London theatres, not to employ her.

Having almost recovered her singing voice, she thought again of an operatic career; but was hired by James ‘Young Jim’ Wallack, the Shakespearean actor, to perform Shakespeare in Paris. .

Though a financial failure, the company finished its engagement, but the final curtain seemed to end her career as well.  An American manager, however, offered a contract at the “Broadway Theatre” in New York, and also to pay her passage and her mother’s.

They sailed on the paddle-steamer “Pacific” and she made her debut at the 4,500 seat theatre in lower Manhattan in August 1855.  She was “graciously received” by the public with “warm complimentary notices” from the critics.  

The same manager though – “a presumptuous Yankee” she called him – forced his attentions on her.  When she refused, he reduced her appearances, but held her to the contract.

With time on her hands, she encountered Spiritualism.  An orthodox Christian, her first reaction was of “horror and aversion.”  (Although her deceased father had saved her life, she could not accept that he had done so in person.)

Horror became mockery until finally, as a sceptic she agreed to visit a medium, later known as Mrs Ada Foye.  The method of communication was by rapping when the required letter of the alphabet was reached.

Emma, convinced it was fraudulent, was told that she herself was a great medium, and invited to point o the letters herself.

“Oh, heavens!” she wrote years later.  “What a scene followed.  All the friends I had ever known – nay, the mere acquaintances I had casually met, and long since forgotten the existence of, returned unsought, spelled out by rappings at special letters of the alphabet, their names, ages, places of life and death.”

Her brother Tom, drowned at sea years before, also communicated.  (Both he and Ebenezer would return at times to guide her.)

Her next important séance was with Mrs Kellogg, a powerful medium.  With a touch of her hand, she unleashed the mediumistic powers that had lain dormant for so long.   

During three hours, says Emma, “It was found I could give tests of spirit identity by personations (sic), impressions, writing and automatic movements of my fingers over the alphabet.”

A few nights later, as she sat with her mother, her fingers, moving over the alphabet, spelled out a message.  It was from Philip Smith, one of the crew she had befriended on the voyage to New York.  “My dear Emma, I have come to tell you I am dead.  The ship “Pacific” is lost and all on board have perished.  She and her crew will never be heard from more.”

The next morning she hurried to Mrs Kellogg and found her at the top of the stairs in a semi-trance.  She repeated verbatim the message Emma had written down about the “Pacific”.

At that moment Edward Collins, the owner of the steamship line, walked up the stairs.  He had already lost his wife and child when a sister ship, the “Arctic”, hit an iceberg.

“You are a pair of imposters,” he cried.  “How dare you prophesy the loss of my ship.”  He threatened legal action . . . but true to the prophecy, nothing more of her was heard.

Emma developed clairvoyance, which she preferred to the alphabet, and worked for a while as what she calls a ‘test medium’, like Mrs Kellogg, giving proof of survival.  

Then there came an important change.  Her spirit guides said that she was neither to return to the stage, nor continue working as a test medium.  They wanted to use her for trance and inspired lectures, and the spiritual energies for that were quite different from test mediumship.

She began to give trance and inspired lectures at halls and theatres in and around New York.  She spoke by invitation and her expenses were paid, and usually a fee; but by now a committed Spiritualist, she sought further funding for the cause.  

She organized concerts, sometimes composing words and music.  She accompanied the choir, directed, stage-managed and arranged the publicity.

Her lectures were generally well received by educated and professional people, but opposed by some churchmen and journalists, and the rowdier elements of male society.  (America was more patriarchal than England, and she does not mention a single woman in a position of influence.)  

Disapproving males would stomp around in heavy boots, or keep their hats on – an insult to a lady at the time.  One even threw a rock at her.  Only her voluminous silk dress kept her feet from being crushed.

Nonetheless, ‘Emma Hardinge, the Englishwoman’, as she was known, invariably won them over.  During the next two decades she visited almost every American State giving lectures.

Most were about Spiritualism, but other subjects were included.  For instance, the lost Victorian explorer, Sir John Franklin famously spoke through her about the Arctic.

She journeyed by train, steamboat, stagecoach and buggy, usually alone.  Such confidence did she have in her guides that at their prompting, she once insisted on disembarking at night at a deserted railway station, in a flood, in the middle of nowhere.

Half-frozen she waited patiently, and sure enough, a man driving a buggy splashed through the flood.  “Anyone from the train landed?” he inquired.  He was a medium . . . and yes, he had been impressed to go and pick up someone at the station.

She escaped two attempted armed robberies and survived other calamities, including storms on her many voyages.  (Another steamship she was on, “The City of Boston” sank on the return voyage.)

During the Civil War she was active in the Union cause, and raised thousands of dollars for the care and rehabilitation of the wounded.  

In the election of 1864, she ‘stumped’ California for President Abraham Lincoln, delivering thirty-two addresses in thirty-eight days.  (Those who did not understand that her guides spoke through her, marvelled that she could compose a different speech every time and memorize it!)

Lincoln carried the state and was re-elected president.  After his assassination in 1865 she gave the funeral oration.   

In 1870 she married William Britain, a doctor of science.  Together they served Spiritualism for the rest of their days, and toured Australia and New Zealand.  In late life they settled in Manchester, England.

In 1887 she founded “The Two Worlds”, and in 1890 was instrumental in founding the organization that was to become the Spiritualists National Union.  At a séance with her friend, Kate Underhill, one of the famous Fox sisters, she had received from Robert Owen what were to become the SNU’s Seven Principles of Spiritualism.

 

She founded other newspapers in America and wrote a number of books and pamphlets, some of which can be found, together with some lectures, at www.ehbritten.org.

She passed on 2 October 1899.  Her autobiography was edited and published by her sister, Margaret Wilkinson in 1900.  

Originally published in “Two Worlds”

More articles

Top