Hamilton, T(homas) Glen(dinning)
(18731935)
Medical practitioner of Winnipeg and former president of
the Winnipeg Society for Psychical Research. Over a period of
15 years, Hamilton carried on systematic research in his own
laboratory under scientific conditions and often in the presence
of distinguished guests from across Canada and the United
States.
He was born in Agincourt, Ontario, Canada, on November
26, 1873, into a farming family. He studied at Manitoba Medical
College, after which he spent a year as house surgeon at
Winnipeg General Hospital. In 1904 he established a private
medical practice in Elmwood, Winnipeg. He took a great interest
in community life, serving as chairman of the Winnipeg
Playground Commission and in 1915 serving on the Manitoba
Legislative Assembly.
His interest in psychical phenomena dated from his days as
a medical student, and through the 1920s he studied Pearl L.
Curran, the medium of the entity known as Patience Worth.
In Winnipeg he formed a circle consisting of four medical doctors,
a lawyer, a civil engineer, and an electrical engineer. His
wife, an experienced nurse, also assisted. He secured the services
of several nonprofessional mediums known only as Elizabeth
M., Mary M., and Mercedes. Through regularly attending
the séances, some of the sitters also developed mediumship
and fell occasionally into trance. The supposed spirits of author
Robert Louis Stevenson, missionary David Livingstone, Spiritualist
medium W. T. Stead, Baptist minister Charles H. Spurgeon,
and psychical researcher Camille Flammarion acted as
regular controls.
Many of the phenomena were simultaneously photographed
by a large group of cameras, several stereoscopic, and
Hamilton obtained a unique collection of photographs of table
levitations, telekinetic movements, teleplasmic structures, and
materialized hands, faces, and full figures. The success of the
circle was credited to the harmonious conditions that prevailed.
It allowed Hamilton to make an important contribution
to the study of direct voice and psychic lights. Apart from the
photographs, the most valuable contribution was a critical analysis
of trance that, in the hands of a competent observer, would
be invaluable to researchers in eliminating imposition and
fraud, whether deliberate or unintentional.
Hamilton died April 7, 1935.
Sources
Hamilton, Margaret L. Is Survival a Fact Studies of DeepTrance
Automatic Scripts. London, 1969.
Hamilton, T. Glen. Intention and Survival Psychical Research
Studies and Bearing of Intentional Acts by Trance Personalities on the
Problem of Human Survival. Toronto Macmillan, 1942. Rev. ed.
London Regency Press, 1977.
. A Lecture to the British Medical Association. Psychic
Science 9, no. 4 (January 1931).
. The Mary M. Teleplasm of Oct. 27, 1929. Psychic
Science 10, no. 4 (January 1932).
. Teleplasmic Phenomena in Winnipeg. Psychic Science
8, no. 3 (1929); 8, no. 4 (January 1930); 9, no. 2 (July
1930).
