ABSTRACT
The foundation of the Society for Psychical Research was not primarily the work of those who afterwards became its leaders. Spiritualistic phenomena formed only a small part of the terrain to be scrutinised by the several special working committees set up at the Society’s foundation. Professor W. F. Barrett, who was largely responsible for the foundation of the English Society for Psychical Research, was also instrumental in the foundation of a comparable Society in the United States. Barrett, to whose initiative the Society for Psychical Research owed its foundation, was never quite one of its ruling clique; indeed, he came to be increasingly at loggerheads with that clique. The immediate cause of dissension was several series of experiments in thought-transference which Barrett and others conducted with the five daughters of the Rev. A. M. Creery of Bath; Barrett had been the first to experiment with these girls, and they were his especial protegees.
