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Claims of D.D. Home Refuted, Containing a Very Full Account of the Lyon Case and His Disgrace , by Josiah Rand MD. Mr Home, said the author, had been a very active and celebrated spirit medium for a number of years, including amongst his adherents medical men, scientists, barristers, military men, titled personages, and other notable individuals. He was said by many to be the most powerful medium alive, able to levitate heavy items of furniture, cause musical instruments to play by themselves, and touch hot coals without harm, but his most famous achievement was to rise in the air and hover sometimes several feet above his astounded audience.
    Scottish-born Home had lived in America from an early age, and was one of many thousands who, after the widespread publicity given to the spirit rappings of the Fox sisters in Hydesville New York in 1848, had suddenly discovered that he too had mediumistic powers. The sisters’ exhibitions, which, said Dr Rand, most closely resembled the activities of the almost certainly fraudulent Cock Lane ghost, had themselves attracted allegations of trickery, which had had no deleterious effects on the ladies’ continuing fame.
    In March 1855 Home had sailed for England, where an ardent believer in his mediumistic powers who also happened to be a hotelier had generously granted him free accommodation. The tall slender youth – he was then only twenty-two – with blue eyes, flowing auburn locks, and the luminous transparency of the consumptive, seemed already to be hovering on the boundary of another world. In repose his face suggested suffering, and this, together with a gentle air of kindliness, was enough to recommend him to ladies, especially those rather older than himself. His natural charm lent him an easy persuasiveness, but it was his undoubted ability to produce powerful spirit manifestations that quickly gained him an entrée into fashionable society and brought many admirers. There were, however, also sceptics who charged him with fraud, and these included the poet Robert Browning who had openly declared Home to be a charlatan. Browning went so far as to satirise Home in a poem as ‘Mr Sludge, “the Medium”’. Home was not averse to critical examination, and a distinguished scientist, Sir David Brewster (who was an authority on the nature of light) attended Home’s séances. While believing that the phenomena were attributable not to the work of spirits but clever conjuring, Brewster was forced to admit that he was unable to explain what he had seen. The controversy only increased Home’s fame, and income.
    None of this information was especially troubling to Mina, but what followed was alarming to a considerable degree. In 1866 Jane Lyon, a seventy-five-year-old widow, had asked Home if he could manifest the spirit of her dead husband. Home conducted a number of private séances and received gifts of thirty and fifty pounds. Home then discovered that Mrs Lyon, while living in very modest circumstances, was the mistress of a substantial fortune, and had no relatives. He was easily able to persuade her that her late husband wished her to adopt him as her son, and place him in a financial position in life appropriate to his new rank. Eleven days after their first meeting, Mrs Lyon accompanied Home to her bank and there arranged to sell a block of bonds for twenty-four thousand pounds which she then transferred to her new ‘son’. Home next persuaded Mrs Lyon that her husband wished her to destroy her previous will and make a new one in his favour. He changed his name to Lyon, received a further sum of six thousand pounds, and secured his position by having Mrs Lyon create deeds in his favour, which were stated to be irrevocable.
    Gradually, however, Mrs Lyon opened her eyes and saw her terrible folly. She realised that had her husband been living he would never have placed her in such a harmful position, and friends advised her that she was being imposed upon by a fraud. There