Sir William Barrett | |
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| Born | (1844-02-10)10 February 1844 |
| Died | 26 May 1925(1925-05-26) (aged 81) London, England |
Sir William Fletcher Barrett (10 February 1844 – 26 May 1925) was an Englishphysicist andparapsychologist.[1][2]
He was born in Jamaica where his father,William Garland Barrett, who was an amateur naturalist,Congregationalist minister and a member of theLondon Missionary Society, ran a station for saving enslaved African people.[3] There he lived with his mother, Martha Barrett, née Fletcher, and a brother and sister. The family returned to their native England in Royston, Hertfordshire in 1848 where another sister, the social reformerRosa Mary Barrett was born. In 1855 they moved to Manchester and Barrett was then educated at Old Trafford Grammar School.[4]
Barrett then took chemistry and physics at theRoyal College of Chemistry and then became the science master at theLondon International College (1867–9) before becoming assistant to John Tyndall at theRoyal Institution (1863–1866).[4] He then taught at the Royal School of Naval Architecture.[4]
In 1873 he became Professor of Experimental Physics at theRoyal College of Science for Ireland. From the early 1880s he lived with his mother, sister, and two live-in servants in a residence at Kingstown (nowDún Laoghaire). Barrett discovered Stalloy (seePermalloy), a silicon-iron alloy used in electrical engineering and also did a lot of work onsensitive flames and their uses in acoustic demonstrations.[4] During his studies of metals and their properties, Barrett worked with W. Brown and R. A. Hadfield. He also discovered the shortening of nickel through magnetisation in 1882.[4]
When Barrett developedcataracts in his later years, he also began to study biology with a series of experiments designed to locate and successfully analyze causative agents within the eyes. The result of these experiments was a machine called theentoptiscope.[4] He was elected a Fellow of theRoyal Society in June 1899[5] and was also a fellow of theRoyal Society of Edinburgh and theRoyal Dublin Society. He was knighted in 1912. He marriedFlorence Willey in 1916.[4] He died at home, 31 Devonshire Place inLondon.[1]
Barrett's last book,Christian Science: An Examination of the Religion of Health was completed and published after his death in 1926 by his sister Rosa M. Barrett.
Barrett became interested in theparanormal in the 1860s after having an experience withmesmerism. Barrett believed that he had been witness to thought transference and by the 1870s he was investigatingpoltergeists.[4] In September 1876 Barrett published a paper outlining the result of these investigations and by 1881 he had published preliminary accounts of his additional experiments with thought transference in the journalNature.[4] The publication caused controversy and in the wake of this Barrett decided to found a society of like-minded individuals to help further his research. Barrett held conference between 5–6 January 1882 in London. In February theSociety for Psychical Research (SPR) was formed.[6]
Barrett was aChristian andspiritualist member of the SPR.[6] Although he had founded the society, Barrett was only truly active for a year, and in 1884 founded theAmerican Society for Psychical Research.[4] He became president of the society in 1904 and continued to submit articles to their journal.[4] From 1908–14 Barrett was active in the Dublin Section of the Society for Psychical Research, a group which attracted many important members including Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, T.W. Rolleston, Sir Archibald Geikie, and Lady Augusta Gregory.[7]
In the late 19th century theCreery Sisters (Mary, Alice, Maud, Kathleen, and Emily) were tested by Barrett and other members of the SPR who believed them to have genuine psychic ability, however, the sisters later confessed to fraud by describing their method of signal codes that they had utilized.[8] Barrett and the other members of the SPR such asEdmund Gurney andFrederic W. H. Myers had been easily duped.[9]
As a believer intelepathy, Barrett denounced themuscle reading ofStuart Cumberland and other magicians as "pseudo" thought readers.[10]
Barrett helped to publishFrederick Bligh Bond's bookGate of Remembrance (1918) which was based on alleged psychical excavations atGlastonbury Abbey. Barrett endorsed the claims of the book and testified to Bond's sincerity.[11] However, professional archaeologists andskeptics have found Bond's claims dubious.[12][13]
In 1919, Barrett wrote the introduction to mediumHester Dowden's bookVoices from the Void.
Barrett held a special interest indivining rods and in 1897 and 1900 he published two articles on the subject inProceedings of the SPR.[4] He co-authored the bookThe Divining-Rod (1926), withTheodore Besterman.[14]
Barrett rejected any physical theory fordowsing such as radiation.[14] He concluded that theideomotor response was responsible for the movement of the rod but in some cases the dowser's unconscious could pick up information byclairvoyance.[15][16]
Barrett has drawn criticism from researchers and skeptics as being overly credulous for endorsing spiritualist mediums and not detecting trickery that occurred in theséance room. For example, authorRonald Pearsall wrote that Barrett was duped into believing spiritualism by mediumship trickery.[17]
SkepticEdward Clodd criticized Barrett as being an incompetent researcher to detect fraud and claimed his spiritualist beliefs were based onmagical thinking and primitive superstition.[18] Another skepticJoseph McCabe wrote that Barrett "talks nonsense of which he ought to be ashamed" as he had poor understanding ofconjuring tricks and failed to detect the fraud of the mediumKathleen Goligher.[19]
Psychical researcher Helen de G. Verrall gave Barrett's bookPsychical Research a positive review describing it as a "clear, careful account of some of main achievements of psychical research by one who has himself taken part in these achievements and speaks to a large extent from personal knowledge and observation."[20] However, in theBritish Medical Journal the book was criticized for ignoring critical work on the subject and being "a negative assault on scientific method generally".[21]
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