Douglas Blackburn

Douglas Blackburn (6 August 1857, Southwark – 28 March 1929, Tonbridge) was an English journalist and novelist, who worked in the Transvaal and Natal between 1892 and 1908. He has been called "the great chronicler of the last days of the Boer republic."

Telepathy experiments

During 1882-1883, Blackburn with George Albert Smith took part in a series of experiments that were claimed to be genuine evidence for telepathy by members of the Society for Psychical Research. Blackburn later made a public confession of fraud, stating that the results had been obtained by use of a code.

Blackburn's Confessions of a Telepathist: Thirty-Year Hoax Exposed appeared in The Daily News and the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1911. It was re-printed in A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology, 1985.

Works Novels Prinsloo of Prinsloosdorp: A Tale of Transvaal Officialdom, 1899 A Burgher Quixote, 1903 Richard Hartley, Prospector, 1904 I Came and Saw, 1908 Leaven: a black and white story, 1908 Love Muti, Everett's, 1915

Non-fiction Thought-Reading, or, Modern Mysteries Explained: Being Chapters on Thought-Reading, Occultism, Mesmerism, &c., Forming a Key to the Psychological Puzzles of the Day, 1884 (with W. Waithman Caddell) The Detection of Forgery: A Practical Handbook For the Use of Bankers, Solicitors, Magistrates' Clerks, and All Handling Suspected Documents, 1909 Confessions of a Telepathist, 1911 (with W. Waithman Caddell) Secret Service in South Africa, 1911 The Martyr Nurse: The Death and Achievement of Edith Cavell, 1915