William Tylar. The Great Bournemouth Mystery: The Spirit of Irene Speaks. Bournemouth, England: William Tylar, 1923.
Third Edition of 5,000 copies. (190 x 130 mm) pp. 128. Frontispiece portrait of Charlotte Sparkey. Each page ruled in red with title in top left corner. DJ, chipping to spine corners, not price clipped. Half bound in publisher's green cloth with cream card with title, author, and edition statement in green. Signed by Charlotte Starkey, medium, who discovered by clairvoyance that Thomas H. Allaway was the murderer of Irene Wilkins in 1921. Overall VERY GOOD condition.
The Spirit of Irene Speaks (Bournemouth, 1923) is an exceptionally rare and curious British spiritualist work, rooted in the real-life murder of Irene Wilkins in 1922. The book advances the extraordinary claim that the crime was solved not by conventional investigation, but through psychometrics—clairvoyant communications derived from an object associated with the murder scene—allegedly with police awareness or cooperation. This occult dimension is absent from modern accounts of the case, making the volume a singular alternative record of the crime.
The book also includes a forceful early plea against capital punishment, with essays arguing for its repeal on moral and Christian grounds, situating the text firmly within interwar spiritualist and reformist discourse.
Of particular note are the striking endpapers by the visionary outsider artist Madge Gill, here credited as “Madge E. Gill of London,” and described in the text as producing automatic drawings through mediumship. These original designs—different at front and rear—are an unusual and desirable example of Gill’s work within a printed book, and notably lack her more familiar female figure motifs.
A scarce and compelling convergence of true crime, early twentieth-century Spiritualism, social reform, and outsider art.