Rosina Thompson

Rosina Thompson (born, 1868) was a British trance medium.^[1]

Rosina Thompson

Thompson worked as a medium at Hertford Lodge in Battersea, London. She came to the attention of the Society for Psychical Research and performed séance experiments for them from 1898 onward.^[2] Thompson was originally a physical medium, however as physical mediumship was exposed as fraudulent the psychical researcher Frederic W. H. Myers persuaded Thompson to take up trance mediumship.^[3] Some psychical researchers were not impressed with her mediumship as it was discovered that her trances were not genuine.^[4] Richard Hodgson had six sittings with Thompson and came to the conclusion she was a fraud. Hodgson claimed that Thompson had access to documents and information about her séance sitters.^[5]

The medium Leonora Piper was described as an American counterpart to Thompson.^[6] According to William James after the death of Frederic Myers, Piper claimed to receive messages from Myers for his widow. The messages were warnings that Thompson was a fraudulent medium.^[7]

In spiritualist literature, Thompson has been referred to by other aliases such as Rosalie Thompson and Mrs. Edmund Thompson.