719 A. From Proceedings S.P.R., vol. x. p. 214. The account is written by Mrs. J. P. Smith.

Amble, Northumberland, January 17th, 1891.

In June 1879, 1 was a teacher in Macclesfield. A friend, Mrs.--, was near her confinement. She told me she was afraid she would die. I went into the county of Durham for a holiday. While there I was roused from sleep by Mrs.-- as I supposed. She was shaking me, and saying, "I have passed away, but the baby will live." Then the figure left the room by the door. I got out of bed and went to my sister and related the incident. We agreed to make a note of it. Next day I received a letter from a friend in Macclesfield saying that Mrs.-- was dead but the baby was alive.

[I was] in the best of health and about twenty-nine years of age.

No other persons were present.

Mrs. Smith, who is the mistress of the Infants' School at Amble, informs us that this is the only experience of the kind she has ever had, and that to the best of her recollection the apparition was seen about an hour or two after the death.

. Unfortunately, neither the note made at the time nor the letter announcing the death has been preserved, but we have received the following letter of corroboration from Mrs. Smith's sister:-

203 Elswick Street, Leichhardt, Sydney, Australia, November 2nd, 1891.

I distinctly remember my sister coming into my room and waking me up to tell me of her dream, which was as follows:-

That she had dreamt that a lady friend of hers some miles away had appeared to her and said she was dead; but that her baby would live. The dream had evidently impressed my sister very much, as she seemed quite agitated, and we said we would note it down, and to our utter astonishment the next morning my sister received a letter to say that her friend had passed away that same night. Annie Brown.

It will be observed that Mrs. Smith's experience is here referred to as a dream. That this is not her own view of it appears from the following account given by Professor and Mrs. Sidgwick of an interview which they had with her on September 16th, 1891. The account was written within two hours of their seeing Mrs. Smith, from notes made at the time.

The figure appeared twice on the same night. The first time was in the breaking dawn of a June morning, before there was any sun. It woke her, and she heard the words she mentions, but she did not get out of bed, and was probably only half awake. The second time the same thing happened, but she is quite sure she was awake. It appeared at the left-hand side of her bed, and, after speaking, it moved very quickly round the bed and apparently through the door, which was at the right-hand side of the bed parallel to the head and hidden by the curtains, so that she did not see it go out. The figure went as if in a great hurry. It seemed to be dressed in drab; the face was seen - it seemed exactly as in life. She felt no fear, nor sense of the supernatural - only anxiety to question further - and regarded it as real until, running after the figure downstairs, she became convinced that it was a vision. She felt as she ran as though she would have caught it up, had'she not had to open the door. It was about five o'clock when she went to her sister, which she did at once after the second vision.

Mrs.-- had told her she thought she should not live, but Mrs. Smith had thought little of this, and it had quite passed out of her mind.

She was in no anxiety. Mrs.-- was no special friend of hers. Her children came to Mrs. Smith's school, and she was interested in them. She did not know why Mrs.-- should have told her of her expectation of dying; but she said at the same time, "If I go, you will be very kind to my children".

The friend who wrote telling her of the death mentioned it casually - as especially sad because of the young children. She mentioned the time as in the early hours of the morning, and it struck Mrs. Smith when she got the letter that the vision had been coincident with the death, but she did not verify this by ascertaining the exact time of the death.

Mrs. Smith told us that when she communicated what she had seen to her sister, the latter said it must have been just a very vivid dream, to which she replied, "Well, it was a very vivid one, then," or words to that effect.

719 B. The following case, taken from Phantasms of the Living, vol. i. p. 449, was received through the Rev. J. Barmby, of Pittington Vicarage, Durham, who obtained it from the Rev. J. T. Fowler, Librarian and Hebrew Lecturer in the University of Durham, in October 1872. The events related had occurred about four years earlier. I omit Mr. Barmby's account (given in Phantasms of the Living) which is practically a repetition of Mr. Clarke's, given below.

The Rev. J. T. Fowler, of Bishop Hatfield's Hall, Durham, writes:-

November 26th, 1884.

I know nothing about the case I mentioned to Mr. Barmby beyond what I gave him in writing. Mr. Clarke, a tradesman in Hull, told me of the case of Mrs. Palliser, and got her to come to his office, in Queen Street, Hull, for me to take down from her own lips the notes I gave to Mr. Barmby. I took great pains to get the whole of the story correctly. J. T. Fowler.

Mr. Clarke writes:-

Winterton Hall, Doncaster, January 20th, 1885.

Widow Palliser was a woman who had seen better days, and worked for my firm, Clarke & Son, Clothiers, Queen Street,Hull. She had an only son, Matthew. I assisted her in getting him to sea. One morning she came to me with tears rolling down her cheeks, and said, "Mat's dead; I saw him drowned! Poor Mat, the last words he said were, ' Oh! my dear mother'.

He threw up his hands and sank to rise no more." I asked how she knew. She said, "I saw him going on board his ship, and the plank that he walked upon slipped on one side, and he fell overboard between the quay and the ship and was drowned. My own mother, who had been dead many years, came to the foot of my bed and said, 'Poor Mat's gone; he's drowned.'" I then said, "Why, Mat's in New York" (I always felt interested in this woman and her son). "Yes," she said, "he was drowned last night at New York; I saw him".

Mrs. P.'s object in coming to me was to ask if I would write to the agent in New York to ascertain the facts. I said I would, and wrote stating that a poor widow had an only son on board such a ship, and she had a vision that an accident (I said nothing about drowning) had happened to her son, and I would take it as a great favour if he would ascertain and tell me all particulars. In about three to five weeks (she came day by day to ask if we had received a reply, always saying that she knew what the answer would be), at length, the letter arrived. We sent for Mrs. P., and before the letter was opened by my son, I said to her, "What will be its contents?" She at once and decidedly said that "Mat was drowned on the very night that she saw him, and in going on board the ship the plank slipped, and he fell overboard between the quay and the ship." So it was. Mrs. P. was then wearing mourning for Mat.

My son and half-a-dozen young men can verify this if needful.

Mrs. P. died soon after. M. W. Clarke.

Reproduction of the letter received from the agent of the ship, as nearly as I and my son can remember:-

"New York, date unknown.

"I have made inquiries of Matthew Palliser, age about twenty, and learn that he fell off a plank in going on board his ship, and got drowned on . . ." The date was the same as Mrs. Palliser said. . . .

In answer to inquiries, Mr. Clarke adds:-

April 6th, 1885.

We have no copy of the agent's letter, but both my son and myself and others are certain that Mrs. P.'s vision and the agent's account of the accident were the same, both as to the time and cause, viz., that Mrs. P. saw her son slip off the plank in going on board his ship, and that he was drowned between the quay and the ship; agent's account that he fell off the plank and was drowned, at the time mentioned, between the ship and the quay. Mrs. P. died soon after the event, which in my opinion shortened her life.

[In the absence of a written note, we cannot of course be perfectly certain that Mrs. Palliser did not read back the details of the plank and the quay into her vision after the arrival of the news, and that Mr. Clarke is right in his recollection of having heard these details from the first. But there can hardly be a doubt that the vision was described as a very impressive one before the arrival of the news; and Mr. Clarke's interest in the matter may fairly be supposed to have made him careful in his scrutiny of the dates].