Victorian occult journalism and Spiritualism

Charles Maurice Davies

1828 – 1910

Charles Maurice Davies was an Anglican clergyman turned journalist who systematically investigated London's unorthodox religious and occult scene, publishing Unorthodox London (1873) and Mystic London (1875) as firsthand ethnographic surveys of Spiritualism, mesmerism, séances, and heterodox sects. His own conversion to Spiritualism following his son's death in 1865 lent personal weight to his reportage, making his works unusually sympathetic participant-observer accounts of the Victorian occult milieu. His books preserve unique eyewitness documentation of the London Spiritualist and occult revival at its formative moment.