37 min listen
126: 1860s "Spirit" Photographer William Mumler w/ Peter Manseau - A True Crime History Podcast
126: 1860s "Spirit" Photographer William Mumler w/ Peter Manseau - A True Crime History Podcast
ratings:
Length:
57 minutes
Released:
Sep 13, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
In the aftermath of the American Civil War there was a sharp rise of interest from Americans interested in communicating with the dead, and the Spiritualism movement grew increasingly popular. This, combined with the new technology of photography, gave rise to a scam called "spirit photography". The main perpetrator of the fraud was William H. Mumler, who convinced many that he could capture images of lost love ones alongside the living in portrait photographs. Eventually he would face a sensational trial, with even P.T. Barnum testifying against him. My guest is Peter Manseau, writer and curator of American Religious History at the Smithsonian Institution. His book is called "The Apparitionists: A Tale of Phantoms, Fraud, Photography, and the Man Who Captured Lincoln's Ghost", and he tells the this tale of deception in this latest episode of Most Notorious. Become a Most Notorious patron at: www.patreon.com/mostnotoriousLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Sep 13, 2019
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
1: Gangsters in 1930s Minnesota with Paul Maccabee - A True Crime History Podcast Hosted by Erik Rivenes: In the 1930s, Saint Paul Minnesota was considered a vacation home for some of the most notorious bank-robbing gangsters of the Depression-era, including John Dillinger and the Barker-Karpis Gang. My guest, Paul Maccabee, wrote the definitive book on... by Most Notorious! A True Crime History Podcast