The paranormal Arctic: Lady Franklin, Sophia Cracroft, and Captain and ‘Little Weesy’ Coppin

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Lloyd-Jones, Ralph
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2001
• Subjects: General Earth and Planetary Sciences; Ecology; Geography, Planning and Development; Arctic; Perseverance; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247400026723; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247400026723

Abstract Although Jane Franklin has acquired a well-deserved reputation for stoicism and perseverance in the search for her missing husband (a central theme of nineteenth-century polar exploration), there remains evidence that she was prepared to resort to the surprising measure of the use of spirit mediums. The suggestion that she, or any Arctic explorers on the spot, had heeded such methods, led to a bitter public debate in the 1890s, involving survivors of the search for Franklin. Not only is it a particularly strange and absorbing story, but there also emerges evidence that Lady Franklin's papers may have been deliberately censored in order to preserve her credibility.