Thomas Glendenning Hamilton
Encyclopedia
Thomas Glendenning Hamilton (November 27, 1873 – April 7, 1935) was a Canadian doctor, school board trustee and member of the Manitoba legislature
Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
The Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and the lieutenant governor form the Legislature of Manitoba, the legislature of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Fifty-seven members are elected to this assembly in provincial general elections, all in single-member constituencies with first-past-the-post...

. He is best known however for the thousands of photographs he took during séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...

s held in his home in Winnipeg
Winnipeg
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

 in the early 1900s. His wife, Lillian May Hamilton, and his daughter, Margaret Hamilton Bach, were co-researchers and continued this enquiry into life after death after he died.

Life

T.G. Hamilton was born in 1873, in Agincourt
Agincourt, Toronto
Agincourt is a very diverse neighbourhood in the Scarborough district of the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is centred along Sheppard Avenue between Kennedy and Markham Roads...

 (now part of Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

), the son of James Hamilton and Isabella Glendenning. When T.G. was ten, the Hamiltons and their six children moved to Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan is a prairie province in Canada, which has an area of . Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dakota....

 to homestead near Saskatoon
Saskatoon
Saskatoon is a city in central Saskatchewan, Canada, on the South Saskatchewan River. Residents of the city of Saskatoon are called Saskatonians. The city is surrounded by the Rural Municipality of Corman Park No. 344....

. Not long after two tragedies occurred in rapid succession: T.G.’s father died in 1885 and a year later T.G.'s sister Margaret died of typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...

. This and the availability of educational opportunities elsewhere led the family to abandon Saskatchewan in 1891 to move to Winnipeg. T.G. was educated at Manitoba College and the Manitoba Medical College, graduating as an M.D. from the latter in 1903. He lectured in medical jurisprudence and clinical surgery at the Manitoba Medical College, and was an assistant surgeon at the Winnipeg General Hospital. He married Lillian May Forrester three years later and in 1910 set up a private medical practice in a home, later known as Hamilton House, located on what is now Henderson Highway in Elmwood, a suburb of Winnipeg. He and Lillian had four children: Margaret, Glen and in 1915, twins, Arthur Lamont and James Drummond. In terms of religion, the Hamiltons were Presbyterian and later members of the United Church of Canada
United Church of Canada
The United Church of Canada is a Protestant Christian denomination in Canada. It is the largest Protestant church and, after the Roman Catholic Church, the second-largest Christian church in Canada...

.

Besides being a respected medical practictioner in his own city, Hamilton became a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons
American College of Surgeons
The American College of Surgeons is an educational association of surgeons created in 1913 to improve the quality of care for the surgical patient by setting high standards for surgical education and practice.-Membership:...

 in 1920, president of the Manitoba Medical Association in 1921-22 and founder and first editor of the Manitoba Medical Bulletin, and president of the Canadian Medical Association
Canadian Medical Association
The Canadian Medical Association , with more than 70,000 members, is the largest association of doctors in Canada and works to represent their interests nationally. It formed in 1867, three months after Confederation...

 in 1922. He was an elder of King Memorial church for 28 years. T.G. served on the Public School Board for nine years from 1906 to 1915, one year as chairman. T.G. was the first president of the University of Manitoba Alumni Association in 1921 and became the first president of the Winnipeg Society for Psychical Research in 1931.

Hamilton also served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
Legislative Assembly of Manitoba
The Legislative Assembly of Manitoba and the lieutenant governor form the Legislature of Manitoba, the legislature of the Canadian province of Manitoba. Fifty-seven members are elected to this assembly in provincial general elections, all in single-member constituencies with first-past-the-post...

 from 1915 to 1920 as a member of the Liberal Party
Manitoba Liberal Party
The Manitoba Liberal Party is a political party in Manitoba, Canada. Its roots can be traced to the late nineteenth-century, following the province's creation in 1870.-Origins and early development :...

. He first sought election to the Manitoba legislature in the 1914 provincial election
Manitoba general election, 1914
Manitoba's general election of July 10, 1914 was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada.The result was a fifth consecutive majority government for the Conservative Party, led by premier Rodmond P. Roblin...

, and lost to Conservative
Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba
The Progressive Conservative Party of Manitoba is the only right wing political party in Manitoba, Canada. It is also the official opposition party in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba.-Origins and early years:...

 Harry Mewhirter
Harry Mewhirter
Harry Don Mewhirter was a politician in Manitoba, Canada. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba from 1914 to 1915 as a member of the Conservative Party....

 by 364 votes in the Elmwood constituency. He ran again in the 1915 election
Manitoba general election, 1915
Manitoba's general election of August 6, 1915 was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada.This election was held only one year after the previous general election of 1914. In that election, the governing Conservatives of premier Rodmond P. Roblin were...

, and defeated new Conservative candidate D. Munro by 1,453 votes. The Liberals won a landslide majority in this election, and Hamilton served as a backbench supporter of Tobias C. Norris's government for the next five years.

Hamilton sought re-election in the 1920 provincial election
Manitoba general election, 1920
Manitoba's general election of 29 June 1920 was held to elect members of the Legislative Assembly of the Province of Manitoba, Canada.-Background:...

, in the restructured ten-member constituency of Winnipeg. Members were elected by a single transferable ballot. Hamilton finished in twentieth place on the first count with 786 votes, and was eliminated on the 22nd count.

Paranormal investigations

In 1918 W.T. Allison, a professor of English at the University of Manitoba and a close friend of T.G., returned from a visit to American medium Pearl Curran. He passed on his interest and enthusiasm for spiritual communication to T.G. This may never have amounted to more than a passing interest had not fate intervened. In 1919, one of T.G.’s twin sons, Arthur, died at the age of three, a victim of the Spanish flu. T.G.’s daughter Margaret attributed the family’s lifelong search for life after death to this event. Her father’s grief was profound; her mother, having read Frederic W.H. Myer’s book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, encouraged her husband to investigate the phenomenon.

T.G. started with the use of Ouija board and experiments with mental telepathy with his United Church minister, Reverend Daniel Normal McLachlan. The family’s first medium was their Scottish nanny, Elizabeth Poole. She started out by using the Ouija board, but moved on in 1920 when the family was introduced to table tipping, where a table would stop tipping when the “correct” letter was pronounced aloud, somewhat akin to the Ouija board. This led to investigations into telekinesis
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...

, or the movement of physical objects through mental exertions. By now T.G. had established a separate room on the 2nd floor of the house which was to be kept locked at all times when it was not in use. T.G. wanted to investigate paranormal phenomena such as rappings, psychokinesis, ectoplasms, and materializations under scientific conditions that would minimize any possibility of error. A red bulb in the centre of the room provided light. A bank of about a dozen cameras were focussed on the side of the room where activity was to take place, their shutters open, waiting for Hamilton to set off a flash in order for them to all take photos at the same time. A three sided wooden cabinet that T.G. constructed open on one side was used in the telekinesis experiments, where Mrs. Poole would charge a small table by laying her hands on it, causing it to move from the cabinet.

By 1928, Mrs. Poole introduced the Hamilton family to two Scottish sisters-in-law, Mrs. Mary and Susan Marshall, also known as Dawn and Mercedes. These two women became regular mediums at the Hamiltons’ “home circles.” The family would invite friends and members of the community to participate in their séances. Many of the persons who attended the home circles were also respected doctors and businessmen, such as celebrated lawyer Isaac Pitblado and Rh blood specialist Dr. Bruce Chown. The first table rappings and table tiltings of “Elizabeth M,” as Mrs. Poole was known, were followed by clairvoyance, trance states, automatic writing, visions, then the manifestations of materializations, wax molds, bell ringing and finally in 1928, ectoplasms
Ectoplasm (paranormal)
Ectoplasm is a term coined by Charles Richet to denote a substance or spiritual energy "exteriorized" by physical mediums...

. The ectoplasms were considered to be materializations from the spirit world. T.G. photographed the manifestations and Lillian took notes of what occurred in the 2nd floor room in Hamilton House. Margaret also served as recording secretary for many of her father’s experiments.

At first T.G. and Lillian’s investigations into the paranormal were held in secret. But T.G. went public in 1926, delivering a lecture on his research on telekinesis to the Winnipeg Medical Society. From that time until his death, Hamilton delivered eighty-six lectures and wrote numerous articles published in Canada and abroad. His fame spread and the Hamilton family’s work became known in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King
William Lyon Mackenzie King, PC, OM, CMG was the dominant Canadian political leader from the 1920s through the 1940s. He served as the tenth Prime Minister of Canada from December 29, 1921 to June 28, 1926; from September 25, 1926 to August 7, 1930; and from October 23, 1935 to November 15, 1948...

 and Americans Mina Crandon
Mina Crandon
Mina "Margery" Crandon was the wife of a wealthy Boston surgeon and socialite, Dr. Le Roi Goddard Crandon. She became well known as a medium who claimed that she channeled her dead brother, Walter Stinson.-Biography:...

, the medium known as “Margery,” and her husband L.R.G. Crandon, all travelled to Winnipeg to participate in the Hamiltons’ séances. Among those who worked with Dr Hamilton were Ada Turner and her adopted son Harold Turner.
Harold or "Norman" as he is called in the Hamilton records was interviewed by Norman James Williamson about his experience with the Hamilton group in 1982. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle
Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL was a Scottish physician and writer, most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, generally considered a milestone in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger...

, author of the Sherlock Holmes series, came to Winnipeg as part of a cross North American tour in 1923, he attended one of the Hamiltons’ home circles. He later stated in Our Second American Adventure (1924) that Even after his death, the Hamiltons tried to contact Conan Doyle in the spirit world and corresponded with his widow Jean about their success.

In 1935, T.G. Hamilton died suddenly of a heart attack. His wife Lillian and his daughter Margaret continued his work. Lillian and her son James Drummond produced a summary of T.G.’s work in the book Intention and Survival, published in 1942. When Lillian died in 1956, her daughter Margaret carried on. She wrote a series of articles in 1957 for Psychic News in England. These thirteen articles were collected in a booklet and also circulated to daily papers throughout Canada. Margaret later produced a second edition of Intention and Survival in 1977; a third edition came out in 1980.

Archival legacy

The Hamilton family left a rich legacy. Lillian compiled several scrapbooks of photos and other materials for her children. Margaret, however, was the one who collected all the papers from the family dealing with their paranormal research and deposited these with the University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections
University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections
The University of Manitoba Archives & Special Collections, in Winnipeg, Canada, is the official repository of the permanently valuable historic records of the University of Manitoba as well as a collector of private records of individuals, families, organizations and businesses.-Mandate and...

. The family’s fonds, or papers, consist of 2.5 linear metres of textual and other materials, and include scrapbooks, séance attendance records and registers, affidavits, automatic writings, correspondence, speeches and lectures, news clippings, journal articles, photographs, glass plate negatives and positives, prints, slides, audio tapes, manuscripts and promotional materials related to major publications. The materials date from 1919-1986 and since their deposit have been supplemented by other related collections. A companion research grant established by the Hamilton family provides funds for researchers to travel to Winnipeg to study these and other archival collections.

Although these archives have held a strong attraction for those interested in the paranormal, more significantly they have had a very powerful effect in stimulating artistic and cultural expressions. T.G.’s photographs have captured the imagination of many curators. His photos have appeared in art exhibits throughout Canada, from the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, to the Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art in Toronto, Ontario. Internationally his photos were included in the exhibit "Spiritus" at Magasin3 Stockholm Konsthall in Sweden in 2003. In 2005 they appeared in the exhibition “The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult,” held at the Maison européenne de la photographie
Maison européenne de la photographie
The Maison Européenne de la Photographie, situated in the historic heart of Paris, is a major centre for contemporary photographic art. Since February 1996 it has housed an exhibition centre, a large library, an auditorium, and a video viewing facility with a wide selection of films...

 in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 in New York. Later that year they were featured in the Symposium “Dark Rooms: Photography and Invisibility,” hosted by Princeton University. T.G.’s photographs and the Hamilton family’s archives are a major component of the work of Belfast artist Susan MacWilliam to appear in the 2009 Venice Biennale
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. They are also featured in the book: Susan MacWilliam: Remote Viewing (2009).

Beyond art exhibitions, the Hamilton archives have stimulated work in a number of other art forms. In 2007, the archives were the focus of the play “The Elmwood Visitation” by Winnipeg playwright Carolyn Gray
Carolyn Gray
Carolyn Gray is a Canadian playwright. Her full-length play The Elmwood Visitation was produced by Theatre Projects Manitoba in 2007 and won the Manitoba Day Award for excellence in archival research...

, which won the playwright the Manitoba Day Award
Manitoba Day Award
The Manitoba Day Award is an award presented yearly by the Association for Manitoba Archives which recognizes those users of archives who have completed an original work of excellence that enhances the archival community and contributes to the understanding and celebration of Manitoba history...

 for excellence in archival research from the Association for Manitoba Archives
Association for Manitoba Archives
The Association for Manitoba Archives is a voluntary organization dedicated to the preservation of the documentary heritage of the people and institutions of the province of Manitoba, Canada, by improving the administration, effectiveness and efficiency of the province's archival systems...

. This play was later published by Scirocco Drama under the same name. The archives of the Hamilton family also provided the historic theme for the novel Widows of Hamilton House by Christina Penner in 2008. T.G.’s photos have appeared in films, including Winnipeg filmmaker Guy Maddin’s
Guy Maddin
Guy Maddin, OM is a Canadian screenwriter, director, cinematographer and film editor of both features and short films from Winnipeg, Manitoba...

 My Winnipeg (2008) and the more commercial horror film The Haunting in Connecticut
The Haunting in Connecticut
The Haunting in Connecticut is a 2009 American psychological horror film produced by Gold Circle Films and directed by Peter Cornwell. It is alleged to have occurred to Karen Parker and her family, though Ray Garton, author of In a Dark Place: The Story of a True Haunting , has publicly distanced...

(2009), among others. Numerous television shows have featured T.G. and his photographs. The television series Northern Mysteries
Northern Mysteries
Northern Mysteries is a docudrama-style television program that retells some of the stranger events in Canadian history, dealing with ghosts, paranormal events, lost treasures and bizarre murders...

included Hamilton in the episode entitled “Spiritualism” in 2005 and Hamilton was the focus of the television documentary “Chasing Hamilton’s Ghost,” as part of the Manitoba Moments series in 2005.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK