Travels with Dr. Joad

The road to Borley leads from everywhere and then out again, and the travelers one encounters on that road are numerous and invariably colorful. When I first discovered Borley and Harry Price in the magazines of the 1950's as a small boy in rural Mississippi, I noticed the rather distinctive name of the good Professor, Dr. C. E. M. Joad, who seemed to be Price’s constant companion and sidekick. In addition to the familiar “Blocksburg Tryst” picture with the goat, one of the magazine articles of the time that came to my attention featured the famous “in bed with Harry Price” shot in which neither of them looks too happy. (Joad article on Borley in Harper's.)

I noticed that Dr. Joad seemed to have no first name, but even at that age I knew that important Britons tended to be overloaded with initials, both fore and aft. I also wondered what he was a doctor of. It was only after my interest in Borley and its penumbra was re-kindled in later life (this time by the writings of Trevor Hall) that I took the trouble to obtain and read Paul Tabori’s biography of Price in the paperback edition of 1974, still a sturdy companion in my library. [1]

I thus learned much more about the adventures of the pair, who seemed to thoroughly enjoy each other. There is now a wealth of information on the Internet about Dr. Joad, who I at first thought was simply willing to play stooge and straight man to Price for free beer and some fun trips. It is easy to learn from Internet sources that Dr. Joad was head of a philosophy department (Birkbeck College of the University of London), a popular public intellectual, a rather notorious “Progressive” in politics, an admirer and biographer of George Bernard Shaw, and from 1941 to 1948, a star of an extremely popular radio quiz programme on the BBC, “The Brains Trust.”

And it was in this capacity that Dr. Joad, the prudent semanticist, popularized a statement which gained wide contemporary usage in the War years in England, and was recently brought to its apotheosis by a certain former Leader of the Free World:
“It depends on what you mean by....” [2]

Dr. Joad often used the phrase before he answered a question on the radio programme, a practice apparently more remarkable then than now. But it is understandable for philosophers as well as lawyers and errant husbands to insist on strict definitions of terms.

Dr. Joad had further publicity due to certain religious beliefs he lost and regained, or gained and lost -- the contemporary context of it is rather complex -- but apparently his spiritual searchings somehow became a matter of public interest. He was finally disgraced to some extent for having a penchant for riding on the British Railroad without paying for the service, and being caught at it. He explained the transgression, basically, as a mania for the practical expression of his Progressive beliefs -- consuming what society had to offer.

In terms of his religious beliefs, and why an often-professed atheist (at least at some periods of his life)) should develop an interest in psychic matters at just about the same time Harry Price was brought into the psychic scene [3], a little light might be thrown on the matter by considering the unavoidable relationship between the “hard” scientific understanding of the universe generally held during a given era, and the influence that the resulting world view has on the understanding of the possibility of “paranormal events.”

Increases in the observation of paranormal events of all types seem to correlate well with revolutionary scientific discoveries, at least over the last century and a half. While certainly not original with me, [4, 5] this is a fascinating line of thought, and some obvious points of correlation might serve as rough benchmarks for the reader:

In the 1850's, the dawn of the Spiritualist Age, the mysterious force of electricity was being used for communication at a distance. The clickety-clack of the telegraph brought messages from an unseen operator using an invisible force. Was it not possible that other forces existed through which even the distance of the grave could be overcome? And was it not logical that they should communicate through a code consisting of raps?

In the 1870's, during the Florence Cook heyday and William Crookes’ “investigation,” scientists were discovering that not only could the mysterious Electric Force operate over wires, it could even induce and transmit wireless “fields” of energy over distance; Crookes himself was creating glowing apparitions in his high-voltage vacuum tubes, as well as -- it now seems fairly well established --conducting some heated canoodlings with a medium who was decidedly not a vacuum. Certainly it was possible that with sufficient strength of will, a spirit could demonstrate itself through some fleeting phosphoresences in the material world!

The following couple of decades saw the discovery of the manifestations of radioactivity and the truly amazing X-ray -- both of which had the power to cloud photographic plates, if not men’s minds. Mysterious indeed...but how thoroughly Scientific! And if all this were possible, then what else?

Finally, two events came along which propelled the last big wave of interest in what I call “Classical Spiritualism”: the World War and its terrible carnage of young people, with whom their surviving relatives were eager to be in contact, as has been noted by many writers; and the growing awareness of Quantum Theory and its implications among the academic community outside the narrow field of theoretical physics, and indeed ultimately even among the educated lay public.

It seems to have been this theory which troubled Dr. Joad, as it did Einstein, who himself was extremely popular in the 1920's and 1930's. Einstein’s famous remark, “God does not play dice with the universe,” was prompted by a distrust of the random, causeless and essentially impalpable universe posited by Quantum rewrites of old familiar laws, which incidentally conflicted in important points with Einstein’s own Relativistic rewrites of those same laws. Almost anything might happen next!

While Einstein was horrified at the idea of a universe fundamentally lacking order and determinacy, Joad seemed to have been more fascinated with the implied ultimate “immateriality” of the Quantum world, perhaps because he loved country life and getting dirty, and now was beset by the gnawing possibility that the dirt wasn’t real.

Revolutions in politics and in thought often provide fertile fields for all manner of radical beliefs to take root and thrive. Thus, the landmark scientific discoveries of the late Victorian age -- combined with the religious fervor of the highly aggressive “Revivalism” prevalent at the time among many Protestant sects -- helped pave the way for the acceptance of communication with the departed as a possibility. The original Spiritualist movement took its scientific cues from the most modern theories of the day, and continued to thrive on such into quite recent times.

The Quantum view presents “ultimate reality” as a statistical construction bearing even less resemblance to ordinary experience than Einstein’s Relativistic universe. With classical physics thus disposed of, there was no reason at all why a table -- or a man -- shouldn’t levitate, and why spirits, which after all were pure psychic energy, shouldn’t make themselves heard to those who cared to listen. The field was wide open, and a philosopher would naturally want to investigate the possibilities.

To me, this is a very plausible reason for Joad to have begun his psychic enquiries. Although his motives were very different from those of his future collaborator, his arrival on the scene in time for Harry Price was the beginning of interesting times for both, with Joad providing a certain academic legitimacy to some of Price’s schemes. [6] But, as Trevor Hall tells us, Joad was not totally willing to subscribe to some of his friend Harry’s more outlandish claims of psychical manifestations. [7] Finally, and characteristically, Hall points out that Joad himself was not above “gilding the lily” in psychic matters by claiming personal participation in events and investigations in which there is no evidence to support his claims of involvement, and indeed in certain instances there is credible evidence to the contrary. [8]

Although he is not a central figure in Price’s investigations of Borley, Dr. Joad was an observer there and wrote about his experiences, and he was certainly a major player in the London psychical research world of the 1930's and later. I encourage you to learn more about the amazing Dr. Joad and his times on the following Web sites, which I can personally recommend and which cover most of the major points of his life. A search will turn up many others. As is the case with all Internet material. I cannot vouch for the veracity of any material on these or other sites.

By the way, the initials stand for “Cyril Edwin Murtchison.” Although there is no authority for my thesis, it has long been my contention that his nickname was probably “Bud.” Any scholarship along these lines that you might bring to my attention will be sincerely appreciated.

REFERENCES:

[1] Tabori, Paul: Harry Price: The Biography of a Ghost-Hunter [c1950], London: Sphere Books (Dennis Wheatley Library of the Occult, 1974) Dr. Joad is mentioned in numerous places. Photo of Joad and Price, facing page 265.

[2] Augarde, Tony (ed.): The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, Oxford: 1991, p.113. The other Joad quotation given there is: “My life is spent in a perpetual alternation between two rhythms, the rhythm of attracting people for fear I may be lonely, and the rhythm of trying to get rid of them because I know that I am bored.”

[3] Tabori, p.54

[4] Henslow, G.: The Proofs of the Truths of Spiritualism, London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd.,1919, p. 94; pp. 99 - 104.

[5] Brandon, Ruth : The Spiritualists, NY: Knopf, 1983, pp.127ff.

[6] Hall, Trevor H.: Search for Harry Price, London: Duckworth, 1978, p. 170

[7] Ibid., p.201.

[8] Ibid., p.170ff.

© 2002 Harry C. Brown, Jr.