Washington Irving Bishop

Washington Irving Bishop
Born	March 4, 1855
Died	May 13, 1889
Occupation	Mentalist

Washington Irving Bishop, also known as Wellington (4 March 1855 – 13 May 1889) was an American stage mentalist. He started his career as an assistant under the muscle reader J. Randall Brown, but was most well known for his performance of the blindfold drive.

Bishop was born in 1855. In the early 1870s, Bishop was the manager of Anna Eva Fay's spiritualist acts, but in 1876, he exposed her trick methods to the media. He became an anti-spiritualist performer and wrote a book exposing the trick methods used by psychics.

Bishop had exposed the tricks of Fay in an article for the Daily Graphic. His article accused the physicist and spiritualist William Crookes of being duped by Fay. Crookes defended Fay in a letter that was printed in the article. Bishop began performing the Fay act to the public with an explanation for all her tricks.

Bishop later became interested in thought-reading after he attended a show by J. Randall Brown. Brown later hired him as an assistant.

In 1880, he published a one shilling book called Second Sight Explained.

During his shows similar to Brown, Bishop would ask a member of his audience for an object to be hidden in a secret location, he would then hold the hand or wrist of the person and ask them to think of its location. Bishop would then search to find the object. Bishop performed such famous "thought reading" demonstrations all over the world. He claimed no supernatural powers and ascribed his powers to muscular sensitivity (reading thoughts from unconscious bodily cues).

He arrived in London in 1881 where he was tested by William Benjamin Carpenter who commented that his talent may be great use to the study of psychology.George Romanes noted that Bishop was "guided by the indications unconsciously given through the muscles of his subjects."

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