George Sexton

          WELL-KNOWN British secularist teacher of the sixties. Robert Owen invited his attention to the phenomena of spiritualism. After a crusade against its doctrines, personal experiences with the Davenports convinced him of their genuine occurrence. Continuing his experiments he finally ended by accepting spiritualism and proclaimed its truth in lectures with the same outspokenness with which he formerly fought against it. He denounced the pretensions of conjurers who claimed to have exposed spiritualism and, pointing out the difference in condition and effect, he actually performed the sham spiritual manifestations before his audience. One of his lectures was printed in pamphlet form under the title: Scientific Materialism Calmly Considered; A Reply to Prof. Tyndall's Belfast Address.

Source (with minor modifications): An Encyclopaedia of Psychic Science by Nandor Fodor (1934).