Sooth and Hearsay

Like so many reliable tenets of the jurisprudential realm, the modern Hearsay Rule, you will not be surprized to learn, was borne out of an abiding fascination with the Occult.

The Hereafter-Seance Rule, as it was originally termed - the effective prohibition on second-hand (and second-world) testimony - was a late 19th century reaction to a growing abuse of the trial process. At the close of that epoch, courts in Great Britain were facing a real problem: Jack the Ripper had recently placed serial killing in vogue, and a steady rise in deaths meant a steady dearth of a eyewitnesses.

Third-eyewitnesses, then, were a natural solution. Psychics and clairvoyants, previously confined to to catering to a sullen public with unresolved issues, suddenly found themselves in a place where no issue is ever left unresolved or masked beneath an impenetrable layer of obfuscation: the law.

It was not uncommon in those days for any number of capital murder trials to have a parade of such spiritualists testifying on behalf of the recently departed. After a rigorous series of direct examination questions, and a general dimming of the courtroom lights, skilled barristers were often able to elicit from various ethereal souls direct identification of accused murderers, and an occasional table levitation for a wearied jury.

The practice, however, eventually fell into disrepute. Emboldened by the lax vetting process for the experts, and the relatively wide leeway afforded to counsel on examination - crystal balls were routinely introduced as Exhibits A - defence counsel began bolstering their own witness lists with apparitions for any number of crimes, let alone murder. Judges also grew understandably sceptical that mediums could never sustain open lines of metaphysical communication for any length of time, or at least through cross-examination.

Eventually, the Privy Court's own Lord Frankensteen was led to famously declare that, "No testimony shall be admitted as evidence unless it be tendered by those who speak it." This, as you well know, was also largely responsible for the brief, and incomparably messy, fascination with spiritualists' next great feat, corporeal re-animation, a practice typically attempted in court. The venture was almost always unsuccessful, but it caused at least one courtroom guest, Miss Mary Shelley, a regular at probate court, to later get ideas.

Ultimately, it was deemed that incorporeal evidence could never rise above the circumstantial. And although we modern analysts may relegate these former experts to the realm of charlatanry, their true effect upon courtrooms of yore cannot be understated. During their heyday, the demand for these spiritualists was so great, amidst a supply so small, that barristers were often seen scrambling outside courthouses to retain the help of such professionals, a scene giving rise to the modern day appellation, Somnambulist Chasers.