The extraordinary case of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the spirit world, and the mystery of a Norfolk soldier's death.
The name was world-famous, the message nothing short of extraordinary.
As Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, stood to address the audience at St Andrew's Hall in Norwich in November 1922 his subject matter was about as far removed from the Baker Street sleuth as could be imagined.
Here was Sir Arthur, creator of the most pitilessly logical literary character ever written, talking about the paranormal – the undeniable in contrast with the (so the critics had it) unprovable.
After running through a list of scientists and authorities who, he said, had conceded the existence of a 'higher plane', what the 63-year-old writer said next must have made his audience sit up in astonishment.
During the war, he said, he used to go out to an army camp near his home, Windlesham [at Crowborough in East Sussex] and chat to the soldiers. 'I sometimes talked to them about spiritualism,' he said. 'Among them was a young Norwich boy who was an officer in the Norfolk Regiment.
'He became very interested in the subject, and later wrote to me saying that the front trench was a very different place to him now after what I had taught him.
'But one curious thing happened to the young man before he departed for a second time to the front. By automatic writing [a paranormal technique for receiving 'spirit messages'] he received a message from a very much admired and departed officer who was killed at the Somme and whose Christian name was Sam.
'The message ran: 'Meet me in May near the church – Sam'. The young officer showed the message to me. I regarded it – although I did not tell him so – as his death warrant, which it turned out to be.'
Conan Doyle took this as proof-positive of the existence of the spirit world. And the author had a deeply personal reason to clutch at any such straw of comfort he could find. His son Kingsley had survived being wounded in the neck in the slaughter on the first day of the Somme in 1916. But where enemy shot could not find him, germs could.
Cruelly, on October 28 1918, within touching distance of the Armistice, he succumbed, aged 26, to the deadly Spanish influenza pandemic. It was the hardest of blows, especially as the deeply-Christian Kingsley was estranged from his father over the latter's spiritualist beliefs. The flu outbreak was also to claim the life of Conan Doyle's brother Innes five months later.
The author sought comfort in the beliefs he had flirted with privately since the 1880s and publically signed-up to in 1916, stating that he would devoting the rest of his life to 'the great cause'.
The rigorously practical Conan Doyle saw no conflict between his science-based medical training and these dabblings in the seemingly bizarre world of the paranormal. His argument was that all this WAS scientific – just not science that had been proven yet. That was why his lecture – entitled 'The New Revelation' – began with a muster-list of scientific and expert opinion.
It was the most sensitive of subjects. For as bereaved families struggled to cope with the enormity of the slaughter of the Great War, the lure of somehow being able to contact their lost loved ones was an attractive one. 'Where were they? What had become of these splendid young lives?' Conan Doyle had once written.
Controversy about spiritualism raged across newspapers, books, and lecture halls, with all the sound and fury that usually follows when unwavering belief collides with cold science. The spirit world, he told his Norwich audience, was extraordinarily like this one, 'only in a measure more glorified and on a higher plane'.
Sir Arthur's unshakeable belief in the subject was in sharp and ironic contrast with the evidence-led logic of his famous creation. After all, had Sherlock Holmes not once said: 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?'
Norfolk author Sir Henry Rider Haggard – a friend of the Conan Doyles - was one of many other doubters, commenting dryly after an earlier encounter that 'the spirits' [his quotation marks] seemed to be 'singularly reticent upon many important points'.
And those who kept up to date with the issue could read between the lines when Conan Doyle began his Norwich lecture. For a few weeks before, a very bitter and very public dispute had broken out between the author and his friend, another world-famous figure: magician and escapologist Harry Houdini.
They made for an unlikely pair, Conan Doyle the portly king-and-empire pillar of the British establishment, Houdini the slight-of-stature New World outsider.
But they did have much in common. A flair for self-publicity for one (although Conan Doyle never went quite as far as the shameless Houdini, who once hired a troupe of men to walk round a town and bow in a line to reveal 'HOUDINI' painted on their bald heads, a letter at a time.)
What had brought them together was their mutual fascination for the paranormal.
Sir Arthur described the American as 'far and away the most curious and fascinating character I have ever encountered' while Houdini wrote that the author was 'nice and sweet'.
Houdini had sent Conan Doyle a copy of his book 'The Unmaking of Robert-Houdin', in which he debunked the famous French illusionist from whom he took his own stage name (Houdini's real name was Erik Weisz). Sir Arthur invited him to Windlesham in April 1920, and so their friendship began.
Where Conan Doyle was a simple, and uncritical, believer in the paranormal, Houdini's relationship with the subject was more complex. In the early stage of his career he had staged fake séances – with his wife Bess playing a medium - which had brought near-riot to small-town America, which made him all too aware of how an audience could so easily be manipulated. In the end he gave up these 'seances' in disgust.
But on the other hand Houdini was profoundly affected by his half-brother Herman's death from TB in 1885, aged just 22, and tried to contact him through various mediums.
He soon became a relentless debunker of charlatans, believing that his position as the world's most famous magician gave him a unique insight into trickery, however ingenious. 'Only I can expose these vermin,' he once said, even going so far as to go undercover, donning a blond wig and round glasses as 'Mr F. Raud' (and looking bizarrely like David Hockney in the process). After all, the man who had once made an elephant disappear on stage was not going to taken in by common-or-garden tricksters.
That October, he announced that, following 25 years of research, he had concluded that he had 'never seen or heard anything that could convince me that there is a possibility of communications with the loved ones who have gone beyond.' It was a very public slap in the face for Sir Arthur, and his wife Lady Jean, who was as much an enthusiast as the author himself. For Lady Jean had led various séances as a medium which Houdini had attended. By casting doubts on the whole principle behind spiritualism, the American was claiming by implication – so an angry Sir Arthur believed – that Lady Jean was a trickster.
Conan Doyle had already been badly bruised by public opinion that year. In March he had published The Coming of the Fairies, his widely-ridiculed attempt to prove the claims of two Yorkshire girls to have played with – and photographed - fairies at Cottingley, near Bradford.
This may have been one of the reasons why his Norwich lecture was far from a sell-out. A concert at the same venue a few days later pulled in a full house of 1,300.
Sir Arthur concluded his lecture with no more revelations about the Norwich officer whose death he had foretold. When he sat down, he was duly thanked, Lady Jean being handed a bouquet, and the 'fairly large' audience, led by the Lord Mayor (whose name, delightfully, was Holmes), giving him a polite reception.
The author was to continue to very publicly espouse his 'great cause', earning him many more headlines and controversy. His pronouncements included claiming the following March that Tutankhamun expedition funder Lord Carnarvon's death was down to supernatural reasons rather than the real cause, a mundane but fatal enough infected mosquito bite. The New York Times' headline on that particular outburst was to the point: 'He's Beginning to Try Our Patience,' it sighed.
Houdini stepped up the attack. In October 1923 he was to accuse his one-time friend of 'misleading the public' and adding 'his teachings are a menace of sanity and health'.
But Sir Arthur was not to be dissuaded, or deflected. Right up to his death in 1930, he continued to bang the drum for spiritualism, despite challenge after challenge for séances to be staged under rigorous scientific test conditions.
The Strange Case of Sir Arthur and the Norfolk Soldier's Death seems to have one final twist, one worthy of a Sherlock Holmes story.
According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, there were four officers from the Norfolk Regiment who died in May 1917 or May 1918 – the only possible dates according to Conan Doyle's account.
And how many were Norwich men? None.
So is that the end of the story? Not quite. On the face of it, that list of deaths seems to show that Conan Doyle was being disingenuous to his city audience, or even – perhaps – deliberately misleading, all for the sake of 'the cause'.
But was he? For military historian and former EDP features editor Steve Snelling believes he has found the perfect candidate for Conan Doyle's mysterious Norfolk soldier.
Terence Algernon Kilbee Cubitt was the son of a North Norfolk gentleman-farmer. 'Although the family hailed from Sloley Old Hall, near North Walsham, they were living in Thorpe Road, Norwich, at the time of the First World War,' he said.
'TAK, a former pupil of Paston and King Edward VI Grammar School, Norwich, was working as a bank clerk in Attleborough when he volunteered for the army.'
Mr Snelling, who is currently editing the letters and writings of the soldier-poet, pointed out that there is firm evidence that Conan Doyle had befriended the one-time bank clerk while at the Crowborough camp.
He has been in touch with Ros Rice, TAK's niece, who lives in Jersey, and who has mentioned her uncle's friendship with Conan Doyle in her letters. 'In one, she refers to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 'with whom TAK corresponded and visited when on leave',' he said.
'In another she says: 'Mum told me TAK met and corresponded with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle during WW1. Those letters were treasured. My grandparents eventually moved from the family house in 'Ridgewell House', 31 Thorpe Road, to 56 Thorpe Road, and in later years, when Mum asked where SACD's letters were no-one was able to tell her - it seems they must have just 'disappeared' in that move or perhaps in my then-widowed grandma's later moves.''
TAK had arrived on the front line in mid-September 1916 as a subaltern (2nd-Lieutenant) with the 9th Norfolks, one of a draft of reinforcements following the losses suffered in the first few months of the Somme offensive.
After two uneventful years based in East Anglia, guarding the coast against a German invasion that never materialised, he found himself pitched into the horror of that bloody campaign. It might have been at the tail-end of the offensive, which eventually resulted in more than 400,000 British Imperial casualties alone, but the continuing death toll was still almost unimaginable.
Young Cubitt – he was barely 21 – was at the forefront of an attack which cost the lives of two-thirds of his company in two days of terror-filled and bloody trench warfare. The action, which earned TAK the Military Cross, was his first brush with danger, but not his last.
Terence, who was posted to the 1st Norfolks from April 1918, found some solace from the horrors of war in his writings, showing a genuine talent for poetry and comic verse. It was this which probably first brought him into Sir Arthur's orbit during the time he was based at the army camp near the great man's Sussex home.
TAK's niece Ros told Steve: 'Not only was Terence Cubitt a very fine soldier, but he was a man of real literary gifts. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle showed him much kindness, and found time, in the midst of all his work, to encourage him by writing to him in France. Sir Arthur no doubt recognised the boy's ability and beauty of character.'
In his biography of Conan Doyle ('Conan Doyle - The Man Who Created Sherlock Holmes'), Andrew Lycett refers to a 'young officer from the 1st Norfolks who, after hearing the message, converted his three room-mates [to spiritualism] and presented Arthur with a rapt audience of 12 people one Tuesday evening,' and Ros Rice believes this must refer to TAK.
Further evidence of Terence's friendship with the Conan Doyles comes in diary entry from March 1918:
'March 20: Reported to Crowborough.
March 28: To Ireland.
April 14: Decided to call on Conan Doyle. Most delightful afternoon.
April 19: To Conan Doyle's in the afternoon. A most delightful talk with he and Lady Doyle.
Warned for Draft at 10.30am.
April 20: To Folkestone by the old 7.25 from Victoria… A calm trip across… Arrived at Boulogne about 4.30...'
Mr Snelling explained: 'At this time TAK was in England recuperating after having been wounded on the first day of the Battle of Cambrai [November 1917].'
So we have the proven friendship, the Crowborough connection, and the 1st Norfolks link. But what about the mysterious 'Sam', described by Conan Doyle in that 1922 lecture as 'very much admired' and who had been killed at the Somme? Crucially, Steve Snelling believes he has identified him too.
'One of TAK's greatest friends in the 9th Norfolks was Sam Blackwell,' he explained. Born in Stratford-on-Avon and living and working in Gloucestershire at the outbreak of war, Samuel Frederick Baker Blackwell was a farmer, aged 26, when he volunteered in August 1914 and joined the Royal Engineers at Chatham. After service with the RE Motor Cyclist Section, he was commissioned into the East Kent Yeomanry in May 1915.
'They had joined the battalion on the Somme together and had both been decorated for their bravery and outstanding leadership in the same action [mentioned above],' Mr Snelling continued. 'TAK received a Military Cross and Sam the Distinguished Service Order, an honour second only to the Victoria Cross.
'Sam was killed during the 9th Norfolks' attack at Cambrai. It could well be that TAK, like many others during and after the First World War, was interested in trying to communicate with his dead friend's spirit in the 'after life', but I have no proof of that.
'At the end of a volume of TAK's letters from France [September 1916-November 1917] is a poem called 'Sam' written in honour of his great friend. It is dated 1917, so would have been written in late November or December 1917, after Sam's death. It was penned as though written by one of his men, using their ordinary soldiers' slang.'
One extract – written in the slang of an ordinary private – reads:
'Our Captin wasn' no ord'nary bloke,
To 'im nothing mattered a dam;
'E always spoke to us friendly-like,
And the officers called 'im 'Sam'…'
The poem concludes:
'We 'went over' at dawn t'other morning'
(I was 'windy' a bit at the start),
But I swore, when I saw our Captin fall
With a bullet wound clean thro' the 'eart…'
Terence Cubitt's own days were to be numbered. He did not fall in May 1918, as Conan Doyle had indicated in his lecture, but instead on August 22 when he was killed by a shell. His luck had finally ran out as the British army made another push across the battlefields of the Somme on the road to victory.
He was buried in Foncquevillers Military Cemetery, a few miles from where he had won his Military Cross almost two long and bloody years before.
So what are we to make of Conan Doyle's claim that he had predicted Cubitt's death? The obvious explanation, of course, that in a war notorious for its death toll on an industrial scale, the chances of a soldier dying on the front line in any given period was always going to be high. But for those who turned to the paranormal in the hope of contacting their loved ones, the author's claims were evidence enough.
Back in Norwich in November 1922, it was now three days after Sir Arthur's lecture. And it was time for Terence Cubitt, and all the thousands like him who had paid the ultimate price for King and Country, to be remembered.
This was the first time since the Armistice that November 11 had fallen on a Saturday. In Norwich, it was to be a particularly poignant occasion.
As the sound of the signal gun from the Castle Keep echoed away, everything stopped. No trams or cars moved, no market traders called out their wares, no feet moved, no conversation buzzed. Instead, the ranks of men and women stood still, heads bowed, and keen to observe what the Norfolk News described as 'the Great Hush'.
'Two minutes passed,' the paper reported, 'and Norwich slipped back into its busy Saturday market scenes once more.'
It had been two minutes of complete silence. No, not quite. For many of the women had been 'weeping quietly', desperate for some sort of spiritual comfort, and lost in thoughts of their terrible loss and soul-searing emptiness.
In those 120 grief-filled seconds the loudest noise a city could produce had been the sound of tears – so many tears.
• With thanks to Steve Snelling, who would like to hear from readers with more information about TAK Cubitt or the 9th Norfolks in the Great War. He can be contacted on sjsnelling@sky.com
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