Harry Price
| Harry Price | |
|---|---|
A photograph of Harry Price, taken by paranormal hoaxer William Hope in 1922
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| Born |
17 January 1881 United Kingdom |
| Died | 29 March 1948 (aged 67) |
| Occupation | Psychic researcher |
| Organization |
Magic Circle National Laboratory of Psychical Research American Society for Psychical Research University of London Council for Psychical Investigation The Ghost Club |
Harry Price (17 January 1881 – 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and his exposing of fake Spiritualists. He is best known for his well-publicized investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.
Although Price claimed his birth was in Shropshire he was actually born in London in Red Lion Square on the site of the South Place Ethical Society's Conway Hall. He was educated in New Cross, first at Waller Road Infants School and then Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys School. At 15, Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society and wrote plays, including a drama, about his early experience with a poltergeist which he said took place at a haunted manor house in Shropshire.
According to Richard Morris, in his recent biography Harry Price: The Psychic Detective Stroud, 2006, Price came to the attention of the press when he claimed an early interest in space-telegraphy. He set up a receiver and transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Hatcham and St Peter's Church Brockley and captured a spark on a photographic plate this was nothing more than Harry writing a press release saying he had done the experiment, as nothing was verified. The young Price also had an avid interest in coin collecting and wrote several articles for The Askean, the magazine for Haberdashers' School. In his autobiography, Search for Truth, written between 1941 and 1942, Price claimed he was involved with archaeological excavations in Greenwich Park, London but in earlier writings on Greenwich he denied any involvement in the excavation.
From around May 1908 Price continued his interest in archaeology at Pulborough, Sussex where he had moved prior to marrying Constance Mary Knight that August. As well as working for paper merchants Edward Saunders & Sons as a salesman, he wrote for two local Sussex newspapers: the West Sussex Gazette and the Southern Weekly News in which he wrote about his remarkable propensity for discovering 'clean' antiquities. One of these, a silver ingot (discovered by Richard Morris to be housed in Price's collection of artefacts at Senate House, University of London) which was stamped around the time of the last Roman emperor Honorius. A few years later, another celebrated Sussex archaeologist Charles Dawson found a brick at Pevensey Fort in Sussex which was purportedly made in Honorius' time. In 1910 Professor E. J Haverfield of Oxford University, the country's foremost expert on Roman history and a Fellow of the Royal Academy, declared it to be a fake. A report for the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (number 23, pages 121–9) in the same year reported that:
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