Charles Cullis

Cullis was a famous revivalist who specialised in working with the poor. (Anon, Transactions of the … Session of the American Institute of Homeopathy, Volume 25, (American Institute of Homeopathy., 1872). Pages 168 and 415. See also Anon, The Homeopathic Medical Directory of Great Britain and Ireland, and Annual Abstract of British and American Homeopathic Serial Literature, (1873). Page 178. See also Anon, Proceedings, Volume 2, (Massachusetts Homeopathic Medical Society, 1867). Multiple Pages).

From http://healingandrevival.com/BioCCullis.htm ‘… Charles Cullis was born on March 7, 1833 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was the son of English immigrants…. He was in poor health for most of his early life… His memories of childhood included constant sickness…

His family attempted to put him in school but his health was so bad they eventually gave up. At the age of 16 he started working in a dry goods business… When he was 19 his health collapsed once more and he had to stop working. He lost his voice and could only speak in whispers. Cullis assumed that with rest that his health would improve and he could return to work, but that door was closed forever.

Dr Orin S. Sanders, a physician friend, opened his library to Cullis and began to take him on rounds with him. Dr Landers suggested that Cullis study medicine… Although he did not have the money to complete the required coursework God opened the doors for him every step of the way. Later he was to see God’s hand clearly in the process, but it was hidden from him at the time. Cullis came under conviction to know God better… 

Over the next several years Cullis added a worker’s home, a cancer home, a spinal home, an orphanage, a mission, a chapel, a Faith Training College, and supported the Beacon Hill Church on Bowdoin Street in Boston. The Willard Tract repository was also created for printed gospel material. Cullis started two major regular publications. The first was a yearly “Consumptives Home Report”… Secondly he started monthly publication called “Times of Refreshing”. Faith was stretched to the limits, over and over, as funds would dwindle to nothing, and then God would miraculously provide. Cullis also supported holiness and temperance works, often speaking at Women’s Chrisitian Temperance Union (WCTU) Meetings…

In the mid-1880’s Cullis began holding “Faith Conventions” in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire…. Cullis purchased land in Intervale Park, New Hampshire so he could hold conventions of his own that did not have to work around other ministries’ schedules. In 1883 Cullis wrote a book to promote his new convention site called “Intervale Park.” He brought in guest speakers, who had healing ministries, from all over the US and Europe. The conventions attracted a lot of media coverage, both positive and negative. The conventions would end with a general healing service led by Dr. Cullis, who prayed over hundreds people, in healing lines.

Through Cullis’ direct influence, by the late 1880’s, there were over 25 “faith homes” in the US being run by various ministries. The majority of these were associated with the Christian and Missionary Alliance which Cullis’ teaching had so strongly impacted. Another hymnal was produced called “Songs of Victory” in 1889, probably in support of his conventions. Finally in 1892 a series of sermons were published called “Tuesday Afternoon Talks”.

By any standard the work that Cullis was handling was enormous. From 1864 to the 1890s the Consumptive Home had taken care of 2000 critically ill patients, the vast majority of which had been brought to a saving knowledge of Christ. He was constantly meeting with supporters, writing, teaching, publishing, visiting the poor, handing out tracts, and holding summer conventions. His life of prayer was central to his vision and ministry. In 1892 Dr. Charles Cullis suddenly collapsed. He died on April 18th at the age of 59. The Consumptive’s Home continued to operate for another 25 years, eventually handling over 4000 patients. Still Cullis’ lasting impact was his teaching on having faith in God, and the revelation that we could believe God for our salvation, provision, and healing…’ With thanks to http://healingandrevival.com/BioCCullis.htm

Richard Whiteing was an intimate friend of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘… I am not going on with my little essay on the Egypt of Correspondences. It has been interrupted by a very remarkable book by Richard Whiteing, No. 5 John Street. I have written a Swedenborg view of it. It deserves it, for it is an inspiration, or reflexion for purposes of use, of the Hades within it & above us, It maybe published! And if so you shall see it. Mr. Whiteing is an intimate friend of our house… (Swedenborg Archive K125 [10] Letter dated 28.3.1899 from Garth Wilkinson to Rev Peter Melville.)…’

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Whiteing ‘… Richard Whiteing was born in London the son of Mary Lander and William Whiteing, a civil servant employed as an Inland Revenue Officer. His mother died early and Richard claimed to have spent much of his upbringing with foster parents. For seven years in his youth Whiteing was apprenticed to Benjamin Wyon as a medalist and seal-engraver; meanwhile he was also educating himself on the side. In 1866, after a failed attempt to start his own medalist business, he turned to journalism as a career. He made his debut with a series of papers in the Evening Star in 1866, printed separately in the next year as Mr Sprouts, His Opinions. He became leader-writer and correspondent on the Morning Star, and was subsequently on the staff of the Manchester Guardian, the New York World, and for many years the Daily News, resigning from the last-named paper in 1899. His first novel The Democracy (3 vols, 1876) was published under the pseudonym of Whyte Thorne. His second novel The Island (1888) was about a utopian life on Pitcairn Island; it attracted little attention until, years afterwards, its successor, No. 5 John Street (1899), made him famous; the earlier novel was then republished. No. 5 John Street has the character from the first novel return to London, but has no money, and describes the low-life of London. Later works were The Yellow Van (1903), Ring in the New (1906), All Moonshine (1907). Whiteing died 29 June 1928 in Hampstead and is buried in the Parish Church of St. John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, London near his wife Helen... Whiteing’s autobiography, My Harvest, written in 1915, led many to believe he was an only child, whose mother had died in the 1840s when he was quite young. However family historian, Kathleen Whiteing Fitzgerald, revealed that Whiteing actually had three siblings. There were two brothers, Robert & George, who had both lived well into adulthood and a sister Elizabeth who died as an infant. Fitzgerald noted that in the 1861 London census Whiteing, then 20 years old, was listed as living with both of his parents and his younger brother George. Both of Richard’s parents died in 1886. In 1869 Whiteing married Helen, the ward/niece of Townsend Harris, US Ambassador to Japan. To their marriage was born an only child in 1872, Richard Clifford Whiteing. Their son married Ellen Marie Louise “Nell” DuMaurier in 1908, the niece of illustrator and novelist George Du Maurier and cousin of actor Gerald Du Maurier. After Whiteing’s separation from Helen, he lived for many years with journalist and children’s author Alice Corkran. He was also friends with her sister Henriette, who wrote an intimate account of him in her Celebrities and I…’

 

 Rabindranath Tagore

‘… In 1936, he wrote: “I have long been an ardent believer in the science of homeopathy, and I feel happy that it has got now a greater hold in India than even in the land of its origin. It is not merely a collection of a few medicines, but a real science with a rational philosophy as its base” (Bagchi, 2000)…. (Dana Ullman, The Homeopathic Revolution: Why Famous People and Cultural Heroes Choose Homeopathy. (North Atlantic Books, 2007). Page 82).

)’

 Franz Joseph I or Francis Joseph I  (1830-1916) 

‘… The Emperor of Austria was cured of his stab by a homeopath, Dr. Marenzeller of Vienna, after the regular Physicians had said that his brain & eyesight were seriously affected and that he would never again be equal to the cares of state… (Swedenborg Archive K124 [b] Letter dated 13.3.1855 from Garth Wilkinson to James John Wilkinson senior…’ Matthias Marenzeller James John Garth Wilkinson

 Sir Coles Child, 1st Baronet (1862–1929) 

‘… When it was decided to expand or build a new [homeopathic] hospital, Coles Child, Lord of the Manor, presented Bromley with The White Hart Field in 1897, a section of which was given for the new hospital…’

From http://www.londongardensonline.org.uk/gardens-online-record.asp?ID=BRO061  (See also http://www.ideal-homes.org.uk/bromley/assets/galleries/bromley/hospital) Queen’s Gardens are set in the shade of The Glades Shopping Centre that opened in 1991 in the centre of Bromley, with Kentish Way a major thoroughfare to the east. By the C19th the site was known as The White Hart Field and shown as such on the 1st edition OS map of 1871; it was used for public recreation and sports, and was named after the Inn of that name that stood to the side of the site. County cricket was played here until 1847.

In 1865 the ground floor of the White Hart Inn was opened as a homeopathic dispensary by Edward Gould, providing medical care to Bromley residents. The popularity of homeopathy led Dr Robert Phillips to open another practice in 1874 in 19 Widmore Road; he soon began collecting funds for building a much-needed hospital and in 1889 Bromley’s first homeopathic hospital opened. When it was decided to expand or build a new hospital, Coles Child, Lord of the Manor, presented Bromley with The White Hart Field in 1897, a section of which was given for the new hospital. The rest of the field remained in use for public recreation and was laid out with paths and planting, renamed Victoria Gardens in celebration of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The gardens have since become known as the Queen’s Garden or Queen’s Gardens.

The original main entrance to the gardens in the north west corner was at the apex of a triangle adjacent to Market Square where there were fine ornamental iron gates, donated by Lord Kinnaird (George William Fox Kinnaird 9th Lord Kinnaird 1807 – 1878), a close friend of Coles Child. The gates, which Kinnaird had purchased at auction, date from the 1850s and had stood in front of his residence, Plaistow Lodge, on London Lane. In 1990, when The Glades Shopping Centre was constructed, the gates were moved to their present position in the southern part of the gardens.

Phillips Homeopathic Hospital had opened in 1900, was enlarged further in 1907, but it was bombed in WWII by a direct hit and although it temporarily became a home for homeless people, escalating costs meant that it was eventually demolished in 1951. From the outset patients had used the adjacent recreation ground during convalescence. When The Glades Shopping Centre was built, the site was reduced somewhat in size. The naming of The Glades, chosen through a competition in which local residents participated, reflected the leafy, green image of the borough in which Queen’s Gardens plays a part. Today the gardens have formal beds of annual bedding plants, tarmac paths, seats and a number of mature and semi-mature ornamental trees. The copper beech are especially fine…’

From http://www.thepeerage.com/p21887.htm ‘… was the son of Coles William John Child and Elizabeth Letitia Jones. He married Eliza Caroline Barton, daughter of Richard Bolton Barton, on 5 August 1885. He died on 29 January 1929 at age 66. He was Lord of the Manors of Bromley, East Farleigh and East Peckham. He gained the rank of Honorary Colonel in the service of the 3rd Volunteer Battalion, Royal West Kent Regiment. He held the office of Deputy Lieutenant (D.L.) of Kent. He held the office of Justice of the Peace (J.P.) for Kent. He was created 1st Baronet Child, of Bromley Palace, Bromley, Kent [U.K.] on 16 September 1919.

Children of Sir Coles Child, 1st Bt. and Eliza Caroline Barton

• Marjorie Isabel Knox Child b. 28 Apr 1886, d. 19 Dec 1969
• Dorothy Child b. 28 Apr 1886, d. 2 May 1886
• Audrey Eleanor Mary Child b. 17 May 1887
• Norah Phyllis Amy Child b. 17 May 1889
• Kathleen Ida Rachael Child b. 4 Jan 1893, d. 8 Mar 1934
• Sir Coles John Child, 2nd Bt. b. 11 Feb 1906, d. 26 May 1971…’

Joseph Wilson Swan’s brother John Swan (?-?) worked as a homeopathic chemist (Mary E. Swan, Kenneth Raydon Swan, Sir Joseph Wilson Swan, F.R.S., inventor and scientist, (Oriel P., 1968). Page 28). Joseph Wilson Swan was in Partnership with John Mawson (?-1867), a homeopathic chemist (George Atkin, The British and Foreign Homeopathic Medical Directory and Record, (Groombridge & Sons, 1853). Page vii. See also Thomas Marwood (Ed.), North of England maritime directory, shipping register, and commercial advertiser, (1848). Page 72), whose widow Mrs. Mawson (?-?) (Joseph Wilson Swan’s sister) was a ?patient ?friend of James John Garth Wilkinson, as her name is listed in his address book at Ashfield House, Gateshead on Tyne (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘Where is it’ dated 1.10.1892). Joseph Wilson Swan is also listed in Garth Wilkinson’s ‘Where is it?’ address book at Lauriston Bromley Kent.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan ‘… The common coupling of Swan’s name with that of Edison [Thomas Alva Edison] in connection with the incandescent electric lamp has often led to the notion that Swan collaborated with Edison in this invention. That was not so. Their work was completely independent, and although each knew the other was working on the problem of devising a practical lamp, they had neither met nor communicated with each other. The conjunction of their names came about in 1883 when the two competing companies merged to exploit both Swan’s and Edison’s inventions….’

‘… In 1904 Swan was knighted by King Edward VII, awarded the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal, and was made an honorary member of the Pharmaceutical Society. He had already received the highest decoration in France, the Légion d’honneur, when he visited an international exhibition in Paris in 1881. The exhibition included exhibits of his inventions, and the city was lit with electric light, thanks to Swan’s invention. 

Joseph Wilson Swan was born in 1828 at Pallion Hall in Bishopwearmouth (now part of Sunderland, Tyne and Wear). His parents were John Swan and Isabella Cameron . He served an apprenticeship under a pharmacist there. He later became a partner in Mawson’s, a firm of manufacturing chemists in Newcastle upon Tyne. This company existed as Mawson, Swan and Morgan until 1973, formerly located on Grey Street in Newcastle upon Tyne near Grey’s Monument. The premises are now owned by the Swedish fashion retailer H&M and can be identified by a line of Victorian-style electric street lamps in front of the store on Grey Street.

Swan lived at Underhill, a large house on Kells Lane North, Low Fell, Gateshead, where he conducted most of his experiments in the large conservatory. The house was later converted into a private fee paying, grant aided co-educational grammar school named Beaconsfield School. Here, students could still find examples of Swan’s original electrical fittings. In 1850 Swan began working on a light bulb using carbonized paper filaments in an evacuated glass bulb. By 1860 he was able to demonstrate a working device, and obtained a British patent covering a partial vacuum, carbon filament incandescent lamp. However, the lack of a good vacuum and an adequate electric source resulted in an inefficient bulb with a short lifetime. 

In 1875 Swan returned to consider the problem of the light bulb with the aid of a better vacuum and a carbonized thread as a filament. The most significant feature of Swan’s improved lamp was that there was little residual oxygen in the vacuum tube to ignite the filament, thus allowing the filament to glow almost white-hot without catching fire. However, his filament had low resistance, thus needing heavy copper wires to supply it. 

Swan first publicly demonstrated his incandescent carbon lamp at a lecture for the Newcastle upon Tyne Chemical Society on 18 December 1878. However after burning with a bright light for some minutes in his laboratory, the lamp broke down due to excessive current. On 17 January 1879 this lecture was successfully repeated with the lamp shown in actual operation; Swan had solved the problem of incandescent electric lighting by means of a vacuum lamp.

On 3 February 1879 he publicly demonstrated a working lamp to an audience of over seven hundred people in the lecture theatre of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, Sir William Armstrong presiding.

Swan turned his attention to producing a better carbon filament and the means of attaching its ends. He devised a method of treating cotton to produce “parchmentised thread” and obtained British Patent 4933 on 27 November 1880. From that time he began installing light bulbs in homes and landmarks in England. His house, Underhill on Kells Lane in Low Fell, Gateshead, was the world’s first to have working light bulbs installed. The Lit & Phil Library in Westgate Road, Newcastle, was the first public room lit by electric light during a lecture by Swan on 20 October 1880. 

In 1881 he founded his own company, The Swan Electric Light Company, and started commercial production. The Savoy, a state-of-the-art theatre in the City of Westminster, London, was the first public building in the world lit entirely by electricity. Swan supplied about 1,200 incandescent lamps, powered by an 88.3 kW (120hp) generator on open land near the theatre. 

The builder of the Savoy, Richard D’Oyly Carte, explained why he had introduced Swan’s electric light: “The greatest drawbacks to the enjoyment of the theatrical performances are, undoubtedly, the foul air and heat which pervade all theatres. As everyone knows, each gas-burner consumes as much oxygen as many people, and causes great heat beside. The incandescent lamps consume no oxygen, and cause no perceptible heat.” The first generator proved too small to power the whole building, and though the entire front-of-house was electrically lit, the stage was lit by gas until 28 December 1881. At that performance, Carte stepped onstage and broke a glowing lightbulb before the audience to demonstrate the safety of Swan’s new technology.

On 29 December 1881, The Times described the electric lighting as superior, visually, to gaslight. The first private residence, other than the inventor’s, lit by the new incandescent lamp was that of his friend, Sir William Armstrong at Cragside, near Rothbury, Northumberland. Swan personally supervised the installation there in December 1880.

Swan had formed ‘The Swan Electric Light Company Ltd’ with a factory at Benwell, Newcastle, and had established the first commercial manufacture of incandescent lightbulbs by the beginning of 1881. The first ship to use Swan’s invention was The City of Richmond, owned by the ‘Inman Line’. She was fitted out with incandescent lamps in June 1881.

The Royal Navy also introduced them to their ships soon after with HMS Inflexible having the new lamps installed in the same year. Swan was one of the early developers of the electric safety lamp for miners, exhibiting his first in Newcastle upon Tyne at the North of England Institute of Mining Engineers on 14 May 1881. This required a wired supply so the following year he presented one with a battery  and other improved versions followed. By 1886 a lamp with better light output than a flame safety lamp was in production by the Edison-Swan Company. However, it suffered from problems of reliability and was not a success. It took development by others over the next 20 years or so before effective electric lamps were in common use… 

When working with wet photographic plates, Swan noticed that heat increased the sensitivity of the silver bromide emulsion. By 1871 he had devised a method of using dry plates and substituting nitro-cellulose plastic for glass plates, thus initiating the age of convenience in photography. Eight years later he patented bromide paper, developments of which are still used for black-and-white photographic prints. In 1864, Swan patented the transfer process for making carbon prints, a permanent photographic process. By adding the transfer step, Swan was able to easily make photographs with a full tonal range…’ 

Of interest

From Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘Where is it’ dated 1.10.1892. See also http://isee.gateshead.gov.uk/detail.php?type=related&kv=2515&t=objects See also http://low-fell.com/remember-when-mawson-and-swan/ See also http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a/records.aspx?cat=183-dtmsm&cid=0#0 See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Swan: Mrs. Mawson (?-?), listed in the “Where is it?’ address book at Ashfield House, Gateshead on Tyne, was the widow of John Mawson (?-1867), a homeopathic chemist who had this house built. ‘… Ashfield which is now a nursery but was originally built in the 1860?s for a Newcastle chemist, John Mawson, and his family… [John Mawson] was in partnership with] Joseph Wilson Swan … [to] became Mawson and Swan. On Kells Lane until the 1920?s was Mawson Swans Dry Plate works. Dry plate photography was invented by Joseph Swan and led to photography becoming much more widely used. But there’s another connection between the two as they became brothers in law when Joseph Swan’s sister Elizabeth, married John Mawson in 1848. John Mawson became Sheriff of Newcastle and was unfortunately fatally injured when overseeing the disposal of gunpowder on Newcastle’s town moor in 1867.  He had just signed the conveyance to buy Ashfield but in the end, it was his widow and her children who eventually moved in…’

 Butcher and Sons Homeopathic Chemists

William Frederick Butcher was an active member of the homeopathic community, his company was prominent and present at many homeopathic events and advertised in all the homeopathic journals. William Frederick Butcher was an active speaker at all such events (Anon, Annals and Transactions of the British Homeopathic society, (1882). Multiple pages).  William Frederick Butcher worked alongside Robert Masters Theobald, a close friend of James John Garth Wilkinson, at the Blackheath Homeopathic Dispensary. William Frederick Butcher supplied homeopathic remedies, and possibly photographic supplies, to James John Garth Wilkinson, and his company is listed in James John Garth Wilkinson‘s address book at 315 Regent Street, W, and also in a second entry as a ‘Homeopathic Chemists’ at Spencer Place, Blackheath SE (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘Where is it’ dated 1.10.1892).

From Neil Rhind, Blackheath Village and Environs, 1790-1970: The village and Blackheath Vale, (Bookshops Blackheath Limited, 1976). Page 103 onwards. William Frederick Butcher created a storm when he began showing moving films of Blackheath in 1898.

From http://www.historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium/pm.cgi?action=display&login=butcherco (NB: Photo above is also from this site) ‘… In 1869 William Butcher began practicing as a registered pharmacist in his firm of Wm Butcher & Co wholesale homoeopathic chemists of Blackheath, England. In 1889, William Butcher Sr. and his son William Fredrick established a small camera
factory, and were pioneers in the wholesaling of photographic apparatus and materials amongst retail chemists. In 1899, W. Butcher & Son, are London agents for Mr. McKellan’s Cathedral hand camera. 1902 W. Butcher and Son became W. Butcher and Sons. By 1903, the photographic and pharmaceutical aspects of the business were separated, and a private limited company formed with premises at Camera House, Farringdon Avenue, E.C. On, Dec 21, 1903 Wm. Butcher Sr. died.  In 1913 The firm’s name was changed to W. Butcher and Sons Ltd., to include another son working in the business. In 1915, with six of the principal photographic firms in London, he assisted in forming the British Photographic Industries, Ltd., employing over 3,000 people. Wm. F. Butcher was Vice- Chairman of this Company. The company called the Houghton-Butcher Manufacturing Co. Ltd. In 1926 the two principal companies, Houghton and Butcher’s, were merged into Ensign, Ltd., at Holborn. On January 12th, 1936 Wm. F. Butcher died. (born 1866)

 Charles Edwin Benham (1860-1929)

Charles Edward Benham was a correspondent of James John Garth Wilkinson, and he is listed in James John Garth Wilkinson‘s address book at The Essex Standard, High Street, Colchester (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘Where is it’ dated 1.10.1892).

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Benham  Charles Edwin Benham (1860-1929) ‘… was a journalist, editing for many years the Essex County Standard, a published author of works such as Essex Ballads and an amateur scientist-cum-inventor, which led him to create Benham’s top, which was named after him.

Born on 15 April 1860 into a family of newspaper proprietors, Benham was educated at Colchester Royal Grammar School but did not attend university. He later returned to the school to become President of the Old Colcestrian Society for old boys of the school. Living in Colchester for all but a handful of years of his life spent with Mebrose printers in Derby – and, in turn, writing about it in many of his books – he helped edit the family-controlled paper the Essex County Standard jointly with his brother William Gurney Benham (1859-1944) from 1892 until his death in 1929, which was described as “sudden and unexpected”, from angina pectoris whilst in his editorial office for the newspaper. He left a widow.

In the spare time that this provided, Benham was a keen amateur scientist and contributor to the journal Nature. His obituary in Nature noted that Benham was “a representative of the type of scientific amateur of which British science has reason to be proud… by faithful observation and original mind he was able to make some notable contributions to knowledge.” Most significantly, however, he is credited for the discovery of Benham’s top, the invention of which was relayed through an 1894 issue of Nature. The disc, when spun, produces vivid and coloured images of concentric circles (Fechner colours), despite neither of these being present in the design.

Additionally, Benham contributed an essay defending the reputation of William Gilbert (1544-1603), asserting that “though Gilbert’s actual discoveries were few and crude, he must be judged rather by the spirit of his work.” Other contributions were plentiful in the areas of optics and fluorescence. His exploits were also described in Knowledge and the (English) Journal of Botany . The invention of a “miniature twin elliptic pendulum harmonograph” was also credited to him. It was… “… a good means of entertaining friends at home or elsewhere…” In addition, Benham became a justice of the peace in 1917 and was a distinguished artist in his own right, particularly in watercolour...’

 Elizabeth M Bruce (1830-1911)

Elizabeth M Bruce was a friend of James John Garth Wilkinson, and her name is in his address book at Rock Rest, Maplewood, Malden, Massachusetts (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘Where is it’ dated 1.10.1892).

From http://readseries.com/auth-bc/brucebio.html ‘… Another author whose life merits more attention than it’s previously received is Elizabeth M. Bruce. Almost no information is available about her early years other than that she was born in New York in September 1830 to a man from Vermont and his Massachusetts-born wife. The family name may have been Hurd. Bruce’s date of marriage and husband’s full name remain mysteries. Her first identifiable book, Our Children’s God: A Book of Stories for the Young, appeared in 1859 as by “Mrs. E. M. Bruce,” the name used on her subsequent book publications. Five more titles, issued as the initial volumes in Life Stories for Children, were published in 1863 by the Boston firm of Tompkins and Company. This appears to be a publisher-created series, for the sixth and final book was by Sarah Carter Edgarton Mayo (1819-1848). Nonetheless, at least two of Bruce’s volumes have a narrative connection, for The Sun-Beam is a sequel to the preceding book, Georgy King and His Three Little Pets. A second series, Happy Heart, was published in 1874. In addition to her juvenile fiction, Bruce also wrote works for adults, including A Thousand a Year (1866), about the financial trials of a pastor’s family in the city. Bruce was well qualified to write about the tribulations of ministers, for she was herself a pastor in the Universalist Church — and more: she had not only built her church, the Wayside Chapel in Malden, Massachusetts, but “was also its trustee, janitor, choir, and preacher.” Actively involved in the church and women’s issues, she attended the first Woman Preachers’ Convention in Boston in May 1873, where she was elected secretary of the organization. (Julia Ward Howe was its president; Olympia Brown and Mary H. Graves, the two vice-presidents.) In their biography of Howe, her daughters Laura E. Richards and Maud Howe Elliott mention that “After the formal conference, [Howe] welcomed the members at her own house, talked with them, and heard of their doings. Her eyes kindled as she heard of the Wayside Chapel . . . heard how for thirteen years [Bruce] had rung the bell every evening for vesper service, and had never lacked a congregation.” A later account noted that Bruce offered daily services for more than twenty years, during which time “at least 80,000 people attended.” In fall 1873, Bruce was present — and quite vocal — at the Massachusetts Universalist Convention, when the topic of admitting women to Tufts University was raised. One report notes she “offered a preamble and four resolutions calling for forthright action . . . Her wording was spiced with a certain amount of righteous indignation.” Although “All of Mrs. Bruce’s efforts were tabled by the Convention, . . . it was voted that they be considered again at the next meeting”, but they were ultimately quashed by the university’s president. However, according a history of the college in its online magazine, “When Tufts finally went coed, in the 1890s, it was thanks to the pressure exerted by Universalist women such as Mrs. E. M. Bruce . . . who for several years sponsored resolutions in the General Convention . . . directing the College to do the right thing.” Were that not enough, about late 1874, Bruce became co-editor of the Ladies’ Repository, a responsibility she shared with Mrs. Henriette A. Bingham, and “prepared” its final two issues when Bingham was ill. In 1875, she assumed the editorship of The Myrtle, a Unitarian Sunday-School magazine for children, a position she held for more than thirty years, all the while maintaining her pastorate in Massachusetts. She also continued to write children’s books, and her six-volume Helpful Hand stories appeared in 1880. Mr. Bruce’s whereabouts during these years are unknown. The 1880 census — the earliest in which Elizabeth Bruce has been located — shows her living alone. This situation suggests that like many other women writers of the era, she may have turned to her pen to support herself, and that Mr. Bruce may have been absent — due to a separation or death — as early as the 1860s. In the 1900 census, Mrs. Bruce was still living alone and still listing her occupation as clergy. That census was the first to ask for additional information about marriage history and childbirth: in Bruce’s entry, the space reserved for number of years married has been left blank, but the census taker recorded that she had had no children. Although Bruce ceased editing The Myrtle in 1905, she apparently continued to preach, for the 1910 census again shows her as minister in Massachusetts. She died in Massachusetts 20 August 1911…’

See also http://readseries.com/auth-bc/HomeAShrine.html ‘… article, published in the Boston Globe on October 14, 1894, offers not only a look at Mrs. Bruce’s unusual home but also her equally unusual ministry. Moreover, although biographical details are slight, it’s clear that that Bruce’s life and family influenced the decoration of her home and chapel…’

Alexander Wilder was the President of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, and co-editor of their journal The Medical Eclectic. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees of the New York Homeopathic Medical College (Anon, The North American Journal of Homeopathy, Volume 18, (American Medical Union, 1870). Page 267 and page 278). He was also an Honorary Member of the Eclectic Medical Societies of Illinois, Michigan, Connecticut and Pennsylvania, and an Honorary Fellow of the Anthropological Society of Liverpool, England.

Alexander Wilder wrote extensively about esoteric subjects, and he was a member of the Rosicrucian Council of Three,  (https://www.soul.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=147), and he was also a member of the Rosicrucian Council of Seven (H. Spencer Lewis, Complete History of the Rosicrucian Order, (Book Tree, 1 Dec 2006). Page 146 onwards), as was Ethan Allen Hitchcock, and Paschal Beverly Randolph.

All these three men knew English homeopath and Swedenborgian James John Garth Wilkinson. Ethan Allen Hitchcock was introduced to the works of Emanuel Swedenborg via Sophia Peabody, the wife of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Sophia Peabody was a patient of James John Garth Wilkinson. ‘… It was Sophia who had a ‘private talk with the Hermetic Philosopher’ on 14th August 1863…’ (Arthur Versluis Associate Professor of American Thought and Language Michigan State University, The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance, (Oxford University Press, 16 Feb 2001). Page 82).

Alexander Wilder was a close friend of James John Garth Wilkinson and is listed in both of his address books at 5 North 11th Street, Newark, New Jersey – entries dated 30.7.1895 (Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895. See also Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson ‘Where is it’ dated 1.10.1892.). James John Garth Wilkinson and Alexander Wilder were both ardent crusaders for the anti compulsory vaccination campaign (William White, The Story of a great delusion in a series of matter-of-fact chapters, (E.W. Allen, 1885). Multiple pages).

In 1883 when Wilder’s friend Hiram K. Jones became President of the American Akademe, Wilder was made Vice President. Hiram K. Jones was also a close friend of James John Garth Wilkinson, who wrote ‘… Dr. H K Jones is one of my most revered friends. He is the centre of a school of Spiritual Platonists…’ Hiram K. Jones’s name is also in James John Garth Wilkinson‘s address book at Jacksonville Illinois USA (Swedenborg Archive K125 [44] letter dated 5.8.1893 from Garth Wilkinson to John Marten. See also Swedenborg Archive Address Book of James John Garth Wilkinson dated 1895).

A biography of Alexander Wilder is in Howard Atwood Kelly, A Cyclopedia of American Medical Biography: Comprising the Lives of Eminent Deceased Physicians and Surgeons from 1610 to 1910, (W.B. Saunders Company, 1920). Page 1235. See also Dale R. Congdon, A Leland journey: an historic account of the Elder John Leland and Lemuel Leland families, with excursions into the lives of the families Case, Goodwin, Nickerson, Noble, Powell, and Wilder, (Dale R. Congdon, 1998). Multiple pages).

From: http://www.soul.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=147‘… Physician, Journalist, Philosopher, Writer, Medical iconoclast, neo-Platonist, friend of man, Philosophic Initiate and Member of the Council of Three… Before Wilder had reached the age of twenty he had become acquainted with the Hermetic Initiate, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, then Commandant of the Cadets at West Point, and became thoroughly imbued in the Arcane…’ From 1850 onwards, Alexander Wilder became acquainted with Paschal Beverly Randolph‘… In 1852 he became assistant editor of the Syracuse Star and later was on the staff of the Syracuse Journal… In 1854 he was appointed clerk in the newly created state department of public instruction and for some time he edited the College Review and the New York Teacher. In 1857 he moved to New York City, where for thirteen years he held a position on the editorial staff of The New York Evening Post. All this time he was engaged in research in the Arcane on the one hand, and practice of its teachings on the other… In 1869 he published New Platonism and Alchemy… He was now recognized as an authority on the subject… He now felt ready and sufficiently strong to engage in a crusade he felt called upon by God. The Light had shown him prior to 1848, that it was unholy to desecrate the body by the use of animal products such as pus used in vaccination, and he started on his mission by founding the County Botanical Medical Society, and in 1869 he became president of the New York State Eclectic Medical Society, a branch of the National Eclectic Society Eclectic Medical College formed to promote botanic [Nature’s] medicine. He founded and was president of the of New York from 1867 to 1877… During the period between 186o and 1878 he was engaged in a bitter fight against compulsory vaccination, called by him “animal pollution,” evil if man accepted it of his own free will, but unbearable when enforced. At times the fight waxed so bitter that partisans of the practice waited for him when he tried to leave his home and stoned him. Nevertheless, having both political and organization ability, he employed both in his fight—His heart and soul (not mere belief) being in it. His reputation was such in finances (though not possessed of money or property) and in political science, while on the Staff of The Evening Post, that he was elected an Alderman of New York in 1871 on an anti-Tweed ticket… Wilder became a member of the Council of Seven under Randolph… and [he] became a member of the Council of Three under our tenure of office in 1907…‘

These excerpts are from http://newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/the-eclectic-life-of-alexander-wilder-alchemical-generals-isis-unveiled-and-early-american-holistic-medicine/ Written by Ronnie Pontiac !Brilliant biography – I recommend people to read the complete article! Alexander Wilder (1823-1908) ‘… Born in New England in 1823 to a family that left Lancaster, England in 1638 to settle in Massachusetts Bay Colony, Alexander Wilder grew up on a farm…

Thanks to his [disabled] brother, the fifteen-year-old Wilder became teacher in the one room schoolhouse where he had been a student… [against his own wishes] became a Presbyterian of the New School. But Alick didn’t want to be a preacher.  He wanted to be a doctor… Wilder’s spiritual yearnings now took over from his restless search for a career… ‘… Prompted by a lady who had been one of my teachers in boyhood, I procured and read with interest the philosophical and theological works of Emanuel Swedenborg.” 

But in this biographical sketch Wilder leaves out perhaps the most disturbing community that entangled him. According to his own affidavit, in winter of 1842, eighteen-year-old Wilder joined the Calvinist Perfectionist community, where he lived in the house of John Noyes, the founder of the Oneida community… The founder of Oneida, John Humphrey Noyes, is generally credited with being the first American to put free in front of love.  Free love was a scandalous but popular subject in America at the time… The founder of Oneida’s father was a businessman, an openly agnostic teacher, and an elected member of the House of Representatives… As for Wilder, he didn’t last long at Oneida, perhaps not surprisingly, he also became an advocate of celibacy… In an affidavit on Noyes, Wilder testified: “I know him to be a despot – an ambitious self-seeker – and my horror of him is as intense as my horror of a venomous serpent… ‘

After Oneida, Wilder worked at farming and typesetting, reading medicine with local physicians, until in 1850 Syracuse Medical College gave him a diploma. In 1853 he became [a journalist and editor]…  The American Institute of Homeopathy released a series of pamphlets written by him… 

Among Wilder’s other extraordinary friends was General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, the Revolutionary War hero Ethan Allen’s grandson… During the Civil War, Hitchcock served in the Department of War as a major general. Wilder met Hitchcock through a mutual friend, a bookseller, who arranged the meeting for Wilder who was a fan of Hitchcock’s books, including Swedenborg a Hermetic Philosopher (1858), and The Story of the Red Book of Appin (1863) where Hitchcock shared his theories about alchemical metaphors in fairy tales. 

In 1857 Hitchcock had anonymously published Remarks on Alchemy and the Alchemists, which anticipated [Carl Gustav] Jung by almost a hundred years in the theory that alchemical language was actually a symbolic code for spiritual experiences.  Hitchcock argued that the alchemical mercury was the human conscience.  Until the conscience is awakened the alembic (human being) contains only base metals (ignorant suffering).  Hitchcock wrote that fire and sulphur were alchemical symbols for conscience because conscience burns until what is left is pure.  The gold conscience gives us is a spiritually aware soulful life.  Wilder based his own 1869 work Alchemy or the Hermetic Philosophy on Hitchcock’s book. At the beginning of the Civil War, Hitchcock sold his library to the great regret of Wilder who hated to see such a comprehensive collection scattered to the four corners of the world…

From 1860 to 1878 Wilder fought against mandatory vaccinations.  He thought better methods could be achieved to inoculate the masses than what he dismissed as “animal poisons.”  Ex-mayor Havemeyer, Horace Greeley, and other powerful notables decided New York City needed an Eclectic Medical College.  They turned to Wilder to prepare the charter.  Just after the Civil War ended in 1865 he pushed the charter through the legislature despite the opposition of traditional doctors.  Wilder was the right man in the right place at the right time.  A friend of the governor, he knew every member of the legislature personally.  They all knew him to be an honest, intelligent man, a true man of integrity.  Wilder had a logical answer to every protest the old school doctors could summon.  Besides, after five years of Civil War the United States needed as much medicine as it could get.  The college was established…

In 1906, less than two years before his death Wilder wrote in Metaphysical Magazine: “We have shown the power of imagination to occasion disease and death. There is such a thing as destroying individuals by mental operation… He describes a condition, which is both psychic and psychological when he writes: “The conception of evil which exists in the mind of the one may be instilled into the other, and produce disorder and mischief.  There is a killing with kindness as well as with malice.  In daily life there are so many injured and even driven to actual death by overmuch anxiety and carefulness, that there is much need also to acquire what we may call the knack of wholesome neglect. Take away from individuals the consciousness of being constantly watched for slips of misconduct or bodily infirmity. We should keep carefully out of our thoughts the notion that this person or that is ill or liable to become so: lest we inoculate him with the same impression, and so create the very condition which we are seeking to avoid.”… 

Wilder was proud of his low profile.  Few of his colleagues in the political, journalistic, and medical worlds knew about his occult interests.  He took no extraordinary measures, relying instead on his flurry of activity and the fact that the friends who respected his esoteric learning rarely overlapped with his friends in public life.  His contributions to the Transactions of the Eclectic Medical Society of the State of New York, where amid the exchange of cures and medical tips could be found Wilder’s writing about Plotinus and Alchemy, illustrate how his esoteric interests could be considered scholarly, and how expert he was at framing respectable contexts and legitimizing them with historical precedents.

But then Madame Blavatsky entered his life, book first [1879].  “On a pleasant afternoon, in early autumn,” Wilder writes, “I was alone in the house. The bell was rung, and I answered at the door. Colonel Henry S. Olcott was there with an errand to myself. I did not recognize him, as I had never had any occasion to make his acquaintance, but he having had some governmental business with one of my employers several years before, had known me ever since. He had never suspected, however, that I took any interest whatever in unusual subjects; so completely successful had I been in keeping myself unknown even to those who from daily association imagined that they knew me very thoroughly. A long service in journalism, familiar relations with public men, and active participation in political matters, seemed to have shut out from notice an ardent passion for mystic speculation, and the transcendental philosophy.” 

Why had Colonel Henry S. Olcott rung the bell?  “He had been referred to me by Mr. Bouton.”  Wilder worked for J.W. Bouton as an editor, proofreader (for English and Hebrew) and expert on esoteric subjects… Madame Blavatsky was pleased by the results…

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated Colonel Henry S. Olcott was part of the investigation team.  In 1868 he began a law practice.  By 1874 he was exploring the seances that were popping up everywhere…  1879 was also the year that Wilder met General Abner Doubleday, a prominent member of Madame Blavatsky’s New York circle… When General Abner Doubleday died in 1893, Wilder, seventy years old, took on the task of writing an introduction and annotations for General Abner Doubleday’s translation of Transcendental Magic by the Parisian magus Eliphas Levi...

In 1882 Wilder gave lectures at Amos Bronson Alcott’s Concord School of Philosophy.  As the titles of just a few of Wilder’s hundreds of lectures there and nearly anywhere proves he was expert on many subjects…

In 1883 when Wilder’s friend Hiram K. Jones, a popular lecturer nicknamed “The American Plato” became president of the American Akademe, Wilder was made vice president… ‘  These excerpts are from http://newtopiamagazine.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/the-eclectic-life-of-alexander-wilder-alchemical-generals-isis-unveiled-and-early-american-holistic-medicine/ Written by Ronnie Pontiac – !Brilliant biography – I recommend people to read the complete article!

From https://www.soul.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=147 ‘…  Alexander Wilder, Physician, Journalist, Philosopher, Writer, Medical iconoclast, neo-Platonist, friend of man, Philosophic Initiate and Member of the Council of Three, was born in Verona, New York, May 14,1823. He was the son of Abel and Asenath [Smith] Wilder. Both parents were old American stock, the Wilder ancestry going back to Thomas Wilder who came from England to Massachusetts Bay in 1640, and, imbued with the almost fanatical belief in the right of man to freedom, both religious and civil, conveyed this idea and desire to his son. 

Wilder was brought up on his father’s farm, was educated in the common school and himself became a country school teacher at the boyhood age of fifteen… Before Wilder had reached the age of twenty he had become acquainted with the Hermetic Initiate, Ethan Allen Hitchcock, then Commandant of the Cadets at West Point, and became thoroughly imbued in the Arcane. In 1846, when but twenty-three, he published his first treatise, a pamphlet entitled The Secret Immortality Revealed, Mystical in nature and showing the tendency of his nature. His progress in the Arcane was rapid and he prepared himself for the work he contemplated doing, a work to free men from the many forms of slavery which permitted man little choice of action, even as it concerned his own person.

For a time Wilder supported himself by farming, teaching and typesetting. During this period he also taught himself Latin, Greek and Hebrew so well that in later years he was recognized as a finished scholar in these languages. To his studies of Alchemical writings he added those of neo-Platonism in which in later years he was accepted as an authority. As an Initiate of the Arcane, a Light as from heaven—possibly the same Light that descended upon Paracelsus—came upon him, and pointed out to him that the person of man, created in the image of god, by god, was Holy and Sacred and should not be either defiled or polluted; that the practice in medicine of attempting to prevent or cure diseases by means of injecting or transmitting vile animal serums was wholly against the Divine Law and, man being a free agent, should not only protest against it, but be willing to give his life in defence of his person against such pollution. 

This was, of course, fully in harmony with the teachings of all who had followed the Biblical injunction “to seek the kingdom of heaven” and “become the Sons of God,” free from all evil, though few had gone as far as Wilder in accepting this dictate as an absolute Law to be obeyed though it meant revilement and imprisonment. In order to be free from such pollution and independent of doctors in matters of health, he, under the guidance of a local physician, took up the study of medicine and became so engrossed in it that he pursued it whole-heartedly and whole-Soul-ed-ly, as he did all things in which he was interested, and, having finished this study under proper guidance and instruction, was granted a degree by the Syracuse Medical College in 1850.

After graduation, and in order to be more fully prepared for the work he intended to do, he both studied and lectured on Anatomy and Chemistry in that College. While in Syracuse he became acquainted with young Randolph and was introduced into as much of the Asian [Ansaireh] Mystery as was then known to Randolph. This acquaintance and further study under Randolph later, bore fruit in the work he did in editing Ancient Symbol Worship; Serpent and Siva Worship; The Origin of Serpent Worship, and The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries. 

In 1852 he became assistant editor of the Syracuse Star and later was on the staff of the Syracuse Journal. In all of this he was following a carefully outlined plan as will be seen later. In 1854 he was appointed clerk in the newly created state department of public instruction and for some time he edited the College Review and the New York Teacher.

In 1857 he moved to New York City, where for thirteen years he held a position on the editorial staff of The New York Evening Post. All this time he was engaged in research in the Arcane on the one hand, and practice of its teachings on the other, no other Neophyte ever holding himself to as strict a regime as did this man who believed in thorough preparation.

In 1869 he published New Platonism and Alchemy, a right-from-the-heart biographical and expository study of the Neo-Platonists. He was now recognized as an authority on the subject. He now felt ready and sufficiently strong to engage in a crusade he felt called upon by God. The Light had shown him prior to 1848, that it was unholy to desecrate the body by the use of animal products such as pus used in vaccination, and he started on his mission by founding the County Botanical Medical Society, and in 1869 he became president of the New York State Eclectic Medical Society, a branch of the National Eclectic Society Eclectic Medical College formed to promote botanic [Nature’s] medicine. He founded and was president of the of New York State Eclectic Medical Society from 1867 to 1877.

During the period between 186o and 1878 he was engaged in a bitter fight against compulsory vaccination, called by him “animal pollution,” evil if man accepted it of his own free will, but unbearable when enforced. At times the fight waxed so bitter that partisans of the practice waited for him when he tried to leave his home and stoned him. Nevertheless, having both political and organization ability, he employed both in his fight—His heart and soul (not mere belief) being in it. His reputation was such in finances (though not possessed of money or property) and in political science, while on the Staff of The Evening Post, that he was elected an Alderman of New York in 1871 on an anti-Tweed ticket. 

In 1873, Wilder published Our Darwinian Cousins. Ancient Symbol Worship , was edited in 1875. Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries , was edited in 1875. Serpent and Siva Worship , was edited in 1877. A monumental work, A History of Medicine, was published in 1901. A translation of The Theurgia of Iamblichos by Wilder, 1911. Wilder translated many of the writings of Paracelsus, Levi and the Alchemists for us. His translations were sympathetic and understanding because he thoroughly understood the Arcane and the jargon, of the authors, and was wholly free from bias or personal feeling. 

Alexander Wilder was one of the most modest men that ever lived; a man who effaced himself in his work; sought neither glory nor position, unless it could help him in his work, and he risked his own liberty and life that others might be free. Wilder became a member of the Council of Seven under Randolph, continued such under Dowd, and became a member of the Council of Three under our tenure of office in 1907, our last meeting with him was in the summer of 1908. He passed into the Light he had so faithfully served, September 18, 1908…’