I know I promised to write about Eugene Konecky, and I WILL--but something else came up. Again. In the course of doing a bit of research for someone, I came across this ad in the May 27, 1906, issue of the Omaha World-Herald for a clairvoyant named Madame Brown (you will hear more of her in future posts):
In case you're wondering, the "G" is for Gertrude, although her name actually seems to have been Susie. Glamorous though "Gertrude" may be, there were a few more flamboyant-sounding clairvoyants advertising in the same issue: Madame Buddha, Zora (Mysterious Powers, Psychic Force), Mirze, and K-A-R-M-E-R the Mastermind. More prosaically, there was also "Mrs. O'Neal, colored palmist [and] card reader." Not to mention the supremely business-like
Stock tips? Looking at the city directory, I discovered that this medium was Mrs. C.E. Stockman (no, I did not mean this to be a pun!), married to Charles E. Stockman, a clerk at the Fairmont Creamery Co.
Mme Brown's ad was pretty low-key (she may have been mindful of the rate-per-word) compared with, say, the eighth of a newspaper page commanded by Armonde Leveaux, the clairvoyant sensation from France, "a man of strange powers," who was both a psychic palmist and a trance medium. His ad included drawings (of himself, presumably, and his extended hands), and urged readers to "consult this wonderful man at once" (adding rather ominously "it may be too late tomorrow"). After enumerating his many skills (including the ability to deliver readings in English, French, Swedish, or German) the ad copy asserted, "his powers are beyond belief" (Omaha World Herald, April 7, 1907, p. 5). I bet they were!
Mme Brown was one of only two practitioners listed in the Clairvoyants column that day to post a price. Fifty cents does not sound much--even today, according to MeasuringWorth.com, this would be the equivalent of $12.50, based on the Consumer Price Index. But it was clearly a living, since the number of clairvoyants advertising in the paper seemed to grow month by month. You had to make enough to make a profit after paying your license fees. Yes, clairvoyants were supposed to be licensed. Thomas' Revised Ordinances of the City of Omaha, Nebraska (1905) says
Either the city was trying to put a few hurdles in the way of scam artists or--more likely--it was looking to cash in on what was apparently a growing interest in supernatural or psychic phenomena of all kinds--fortune-telling, palmistry, card-reading, or communicating with the dead via mediums (should that be media? No, probably not...). I personally like the term "occult scientist," which appears in some newspaper ads. Spiritualism (the aforementioned communicating with the dead) in particular had a great vogue in the US, peaking just after World War I, according to Mary Roach's superbly informative and entertaining book Spook (check it out of the library), and enjoying validation by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Queen Victoria, William James, and a host of other celebrities of the age. You can see the increase in people advertising paranormal services in the city directory--there were no clairvoyants, mediums, or palmists listed in the business section before 1903, but the number had grown to 9 by 1918. For the most part they saved the splashier ads for the newspaper; here's the clairvoyant section for 1914:
Obviously mostly respectable married women....
Notably, no less a person than John G. Neihardt, Nebraska's poet laureate for many years, reportedly visited a clairvoyant in Omaha in 1912 and was much impressed (according to his biographer, Julius Temple House). Other evidence for the enthusiasm for psychic phenomena around that time is provided by the national New Thought convention held for eight days in Omaha, beginning June 18, 1911.
All of this goes to show that what we think of as New Age is actually pretty Old Age, although the terminology does change; "clairvoyant" isn't as common as it used to be. And "fortune teller" sounds like a Halloween costume. The trendier term now seems to be "psychic reader"--I pass one every time I go to the supermarket.
