Rosina Thompson

 ( 1868 Births ) 

Thompson worked as a medium at Hertford Lodge in Battersea, London. She came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research and performed séance experiments for them from 1898 onward.J. Gordon Melton. (1996). Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. Gale Research Inc. p. 1311. Thompson was originally a physical medium, however as physical mediumship was exposed as fraudulent the psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers persuaded Thompson to take up trance mediumship.Alex Owen. (2004). The Darkened Room: Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. University Of Chicago Press. p. 237. Some psychical researchers were not impressed with her mediumship as it was discovered that her were not genuine.Raymond Buckland. (2005). The Spirit Book: The Encyclopedia of Clairvoyance, Channeling, and Spirit Communication. Visible Ink Press. p. 410. Richard Hodgson had six sittings with Thompson and came to the conclusion she was a fraud. Hodgson claimed that Thompson had access to documents and information about her séance sitters.Joseph McCabe. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. London Watts & Co. p. 138. "Dr. Hodgson, that quint mixture of blunt criticism and occasional credulity, had six sittings with her, and roundly stated that she was a fraud. The correct information which she gave him was, he said, taken from letters to which she had access, or from works of references like Who's Who. In one case, which made a great impression, she gave some remarkably abstruse and correct information.It was later discovered that the facts were recorded in an old diary that had once belonged to her husband.."

The medium Leonora Piper was described as an American counterpart to Thompson.Bonnie G. Smith. (2008). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Oxford University Press. p. 132. According to William James after the death of Frederic Myers, Piper claimed to receive messages from Myers for his widow. The messages were warnings that Thompson was a fraudulent medium.William James. (1986). Essays in Psychical Research. Harvard University Press. p. 423.

In spiritualist literature, Thompson has been referred to by other aliases such as Rosalie Thompson and Mrs. Edmund Thompson.