Why will people doubt when the fountain of wisdom is open and the truth of the new life made manifest to all. In a few years all will see the truths of which we know, and those who see them now are the heralds of the coming dawn. B. Franklin
I was puzzled. I did not believe that the spirit of “B. Franklin” had written these words, but I wondered if Slade had ever been under the influence of syggognicism or hypnotics? I did not think so, for I experienced no sensation such as people feel in recovering from the trance, I was the same then as I am now, writing this letter at home. But I must tell you more.
I asked Slade if he could give me a message from some well-known Canadian, and he replied, “I shall try.” Once more the slate was closed, and soon after opened again, and the following letter, in a different handwriting, appeared on the slate:
There are principles and forces in nature unknown to science, and the ethics of spiritualism is their crowning glory. D’Arcy Mcgee
It will be seen that the spelling of McGee was wrong, and on pointing this out to Slade he said that he could not account for these things. Sometimes the spirits of the late illiterate made no mistakes, and sometimes the spirits of the late accomplished many.
But the marvellous was still before me. I saw a white hand and arm pull my trousers. A slate I held in my hand was jerked out of it, and passing under the table was then placed upon it. What could have done it? It was like shooting a rifle bullet around a corner. A hand patted me on the cheek. I saw it, felt it, but could not grasp it. There was no mistake unless indeed I was in a trance. The table was lifted until the four legs were six inches from the ground and with all my force I could not press it down. There was some force at work, but what it was I do not know, and when the performance was over, I left more bewildered than ever.
According to Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained, slate-writing, which was a staple of many nineteenth-century mediums, was first employed and made popular by Henry Slade.
In 1876, John Nevil Maskelyne, a member of the Magic Circle and founder of the Occult Committee who was interested in exposing fraud and dispelling the notion of supernatural power, was called to testify against Slade in a London court.
As outlined in Tatiana Kontou’s The Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth-Century Spiritualism and the Occult, Maskelyne, the author of the 1875 books Modern Spiritualism and The Fraud of Theosophy, was asked to reveal to the court how slate-writing could be performed without any spiritual assistance.
“There are slate-writing mediums such as Slade, who can use the toes for writing messages on slates laid on the floor under the table,” writes David Phelps Abbott in the 1912 book Behind the Scenes with the Mediums. “The medium wears a shoe that he can slip off the foot easily, and the end of the stocking is cut away.”
Even though Slade was exposed as a trickster, charged with fraud, and eventually disappeared from spiritualism circles, the inclusion of slate-writing in seances continues.
The Slave Who Burned a City:
The Trial of Marie-Joseph Angélique
Old Montreal
While the debate between “innocent victim” or “fierce arsonist” continues to rage, like that once-spectacular fire in the spring of 1734, one thing is clear: The brutal torture and execution suffered by Marie-Joseph Angélique, who was convicted for this crime, also echoes hauntingly from history.
It was in the evening of April 10, 1734, when a startling cry of “Fire!” rang through the streets of Montreal.
Saint-Paul Street was ablaze. As the hospital and church bells rang out their warning, the wind coming in from the west helped the fire spread at an alarming rate. Within three hours, forty-six buildings were destroyed, including the Hôtel-Dieu of Montreal (a convent and hospital). The losses were spectacular. Hundreds of people, both wealthy and poor, suddenly found themselves homeless. Many lost everything they had.
It’s not a surprise that the people of Montreal were quick to identify someone to blame.
That someone was a slave named Marie-Joseph Angélique.
Long before the disaster of the great fire in Old Montreal, Marie-Joseph Angélique’s life was a tragic one. Born in Portugal in 1705, she was sold into slavery in her early teens. First purchased by a Flemish merchant named Nichus Block, she was eventually sent to North America, arriving in New England. It was there she was purchased by the French merchant François Poulin de Francheville, who brought her to Montreal to be a domestic slave in his home. The year was 1725, and Marie-Joseph was twenty years old.
Thérèse de Couagne, Francheville’s wife, changed Marie-Joseph’s name to Angélique, which was the name of her deceased daughter. Though this might seem like a touching tribute, there is nothing sentimental about slavery, and Marie-Joseph’s life in the Francheville household was far from happy. Though unmarried, she had three children while living there, none of whom survived infancy. A slave named Jacques César, owned by a friend of the Francheville family, is believed to have been the father of the children. It’s possible the two were forced to have sex in order to produce offspring.
The one ray of sunshine in Angélique’s life was her lover, Claude Thibault, a white servant who also worked for the Franchevilles. The Montreal community of the time didn’t approve of the relationship between a black slave and a white servant, which is hardly surprising. But given what we know of her personality, it’s unlikely that she cared — for Angélique was hardly a meek and obedient slave. Instead, she is described as stubborn, willful, and bad-tempered, all of which would become more apparent as her hopes of one day winning her freedom began to slip from her grasp.
Francheville passed away in 1733. Sadly, his passing didn’t mean freedom for Angélique, who was still owned by Francheville’s widow, Thérèse de Couagne. Though freedom wasn’t being offered, Angélique took the bold step of requesting her freedom from her mistress in December of 1733. She was denied. It’s at this point that Angélique became furious and incredibly difficult to deal with. She argued constantly with the other servants and talked back to her mistress. She suddenly became obsessed with fire and she threatened to burn the other servants and kill her mistress, also by fire. Servants began to quit service in the Francheville household to get away from her. Angélique was a terror to behold.
Likely as a result of these alarming threats, Angélique was sold in 1734 to François-Étienne Cugnet for six hundred pounds of gunpowder. Cugnet planned to resell the girl in the West Indies. Furious that this was happening to her, and possibly thinking she had nothing left to lose, Angélique threatened to burn down her mistress’s house with Madame de Couagne in it. Shortly thereafter, before she could be sent to Cugnet in Quebec City, Angélique made her first daring move: she ran away.
Her partner on the run was her lover, Thibault. Before running off, the two set fire to Angélique’s bed, further solidifying the association with fire in the minds of the Francheville neighbours. They fled across the frozen St. Lawrence River, aiming for New England and the hope of a boat back to Portugal. Sadly, their escape didn’t go as planned. Delayed by bad weather, they were caught in Chambly only two weeks after their initial escape and escorted back to Montreal. Angélique was returned to Madame de Couagne and Thibault was sent to jail. He would be released in April of 1734, just two days before the Montreal fire.
As the smoke cleared on the morning of April 11, rumours began to circulate that it was the slave Angélique and her lover who had set the blaze. The Canadian Mysteries website points to an Amerindian slave named