The Preacher, the Murders and the Hypnotist Who Stormed the Pulpit
Rev. J. F. Gibson came to Seattle to talk about the two girls butchered in his own church last April. Forty people showed up, the sermon turned into a grievance against the newspapers — and then a stage hypnotist leapt on the platform and dared him to be put under.
Not more than forty persons assembled last evening to hear Rev. J. F. Gibson, pastor of the church where two girls, Miss Williams and Miss Lamont, were murdered last April, deliver a lecture upon the awful crime. No clear idea of the case was to be gained from the address.
One object of the meeting, it appeared, was to raise funds for the church in which the crimes were committed. Nearly all of those present were members of the congregation, and they were imbued with a lively interest in their pastor's purpose.
To a listener the lecture was disappointing, despite the fact that the speaker tried his best to make it effective from an oratorical standpoint. A greater part of the speech was given up to comment upon the daily press, which, he claimed, had misrepresented his aims and purposes in reporting the details of the crimes, and to a censure of Police Captain Conlan's methods during the preliminary examination of Durrani, when the reverend gentleman was a witness.
There was a rather sensational ending to the evening's event. As Dr. Gibson concluded, Prof. Tyndall, the alleged hypnotist, jumped upon the stage and defied the reverend gentleman to submit to a test of hypnotic spell. He was removed by the police.
“As Dr. Gibson concluded, Prof. Tyndall, the alleged hypnotist, jumped upon the stage and defied the reverend gentleman to submit to a test of hypnotic spell. He was removed by the police.”
A pastor furious at how reporters covered a murder in his own church, and at how detectives ran the case, is a press-and-police feud that could run on any crime-beat feed today. What has changed is the heckler: in 1895 the man who rushed the stage was a travelling hypnotist; now he would be a livestreamer. The Williams–Lamont killings themselves were never cleanly resolved in print, which is exactly why the preacher was still lecturing about them two months on.
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