William Roy

William Roy (1911-1977) was the pseudonym of William George Holroyd Plowright, a notorious fraudulent medium in the history of British spiritualism.

Biography

Roy was born in Cobham, Surrey. He married Mary Castle, a nightclub owner, in London when he was seventeen years old. During the 1930s, his wife died and he remarried. He set up in business as a spiritualist medium. Roy's second wife, Dorothy, committed suicide. Three weeks after her death, Roy married Mary Rose Halligan. Roy had rich clients and lived in expensive style. He separated from his third wife in 1956.

Fraud Fraudulent devices and electrical equipment that Roy utilized. Roy used technical devices for his fraudulent mediumship and employed hidden accomplices. He concealed a microphone and recorded the conversations of the sitters before his séances.

His "direct voice" mediumship was a clever microphone relaying technique. The "spirit" voices were made in an adjoining room by his accomplice who spoke into a microphone or played tape recordings. Despite his confessions Roy continued to operate as a fake medium under the name "Bill Silver" until his death.

Roy's apparatus for his fraudulent mediumship is now contained at Scotland Yard, in a museum at the Metropolitan Police Detective Training School.