Desmond Gerald Fitzgerald (1834–1905)[citation needed] was an English electrician and spiritualist.

Fitzgerald founded a weekly magazine known as Electrician in 1861. It later became a monthly magazine.[1] Fitzgerald was also involved in improving the manufacture of white lead.[2]

Fitzgerald was a vice-president of the British National Association of Spiritualists and an editor for a spiritualist journal Spiritual Notes. He was a convinced believer in mesmerism and spiritualism. He also defended the discredited "Odic force" of Carl Reichenbach.[3]

He was an early council member of the Society for Psychical Research.[4]

References edit

  1. ^ Brock, William Hodson. (2008). William Crookes (1832-1919) and the Commercialization of Science. Ashgate Publishing. p. 246. ISBN 978-0754663225
  2. ^ Chemical News, September 25, 1874 cited in William Crookes. The Chemical News and Journal of Physical Science. London: Henry Gillman. p. 158
  3. ^ Noakes, Richard. (1999). Telegraphy is an Occult Art: Cromwell Fleetwood Varley and the Diffusion of Electricity to the Other World. The British Journal for the History of Science 32: 421-422.
  4. ^ McCorristine, Shane. (2010). Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750-1920. Cambridge University Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0521747967