"Borley Rectory: the Final Analysis"

review by Andrew Clarke

There have been so many books about Borley Rectory that one is always surprised when another pops up. Surely, everything that could have been said has now been said? The Borley Rectory: the final analysis is the latest. This is of great interest to the Borley Rectory enthusiast, has many good photographs and a few new and interesting items, but it is hardly an analysis at all, let alone the final one.

One feels guilty about criticising a book that is so nicely produced and written by two pleasant and interesting people, but it really does not carry our understanding of Borley Rectory much further forward. The big mistake of the book was it’s incredibly reckless title, "The Final Analysis." It has no chance of meeting this proud boast. As a little book of sidelights about Borley Rectory, it succeeds admirably, but as an analysis of the problem it is nowhere at all.

There is a huge amount that has been written on the subject and a great deal of primary evidence, contemporary interviews, newspaper articles and correspondence. In fact one can probably say that The Borley Rectory affair was always more of a literary and historical phenomenon than a ghostly one. Any sober analysis that aims to get at the truth must be a work of historical and literary detective work.

The Borley Rectory Affair would have long been forgotten as an incident had it not been for Harry Price’s masterly two books. A generation of adolescents read these and trembled. Harry had the journalist’s eye for what would hold the attention and his style is spare and eloquent. He could take even the less promising material and present a narrative so realistic and readable that it it would chill the marrow. He pretended to be a scientist, but his brilliance was as a writer. Like every journalist, he knew that every story could be improved, and he did not hesitate to do so.

Passing over the lightweight Haunted Borley by Henning, and the various unpublished manuscripts that followed Price’s book, we come to The Haunting of Borley Rectory. This was a sensation when it was first published, with reviews in literary journals as well as the press. The three authors showed how incredibly flimsy and dubious the evidence was for the haunting, and how well Harry had ‘worked’ his material to build up the illusion of impeachable evidence. It has become a classic of literary criticism. The authors were not only Psychic Researchers, but were literary analysts. Trevor Hall, one of the authors, went on to evolve the entertaining literary technique called ‘The Higher Criticism’, which involves taking a body of literature such as Sherlock Holmes, and pretending, with a straight face, that it was all entirely true. The reviewer then chased out all the errors in plotting and groundwork to which every busy author is subject. In The Haunting of Borley Rectory, this was done for real. Dr Dingwall, Mollie Goldney and Trevor were a heavywight team who spotted the flaws and inconsistencies, worrying away at the source material like terriers. Harry Price’s reputation never recovered.

Peter Underwood’s book The Ghosts of Borley should really have been the final word on Borley Rectory. Peter Underwood is a professional author of immense charm, who achieved the colossal task of summarising with reasonable fairness the entire story covered by the three books and bringing it all up to date. This book was fun to read, and, for many years, became the standard work that anyone who wanted to understand the whole business would go to. The subsequent books on Borley go to illustrate how difficult was Peter’s task, and how well he did it.

For a long while after the publication of the The Haunting of Borley Rectory, Trevor Hall had been intrigued by the loose ends they had been forced to leave in their book. The most obvious was the fact that they had been unable to trace and interview the principal character in the plot, Marianne Foyster. He then went on to collect a huge amount of information on her in preparation for a new book. Trevor never wrote the book. When the result of all his work was published, The Widow of Borley, it was by a journalist who did not have the same extensive knowledge of the case. It also was a disagreeable book in that it added a censorious and judgemental tone. Almost all of those involved in the case were cast as villains. It didn’t make a credible narrative. Worst of all, the subtlety of Marianne’s character was not conveyed, nor her essential charm or decency. Trevor’s book would have been very different. I know, because he described his intended book to me in the 1960s when I got to know him.

The decline in the quality of books about the rectory continued with Ivan Banks’ book, The Enigma of Borley Rectory.. Ivan’s painstaking research was marred by his ponderous and repetitive style of writing. He made wild, disagreeable and unwarranted accusations against the Bulls, and seemed quite unable to maintain a level of historical and literary analysis. It was not an easy read.

This book was followed by a fake book about the faking of the ghosts of Borley, We Faked the Ghosts of Borley Rectory, by Louis Mayerling. This was a new low in books about Borley. It was supposed to be true, and wasn’t. It was supposed to be funny and wasn’t. The only entertainment in reading the book was in spotting the mistakes.

Just when we’d all given up the idea that any book of value would emerge, out popped Peter Underwood’s Borley Postscript. This was a collection of short essays, and primary evidence. It is fun to read, and provides valuable documents that extend our understanding and enjoyment of the Borley Rectory affair. It was not the final word on the affair but it provided a great deal of previously unavailable information.

We all hoped for so much with ‘Final Analysis’.

Edward Babbs uses an irritating literary device. He pretends to be a disinterested judge at an inquiry, examining all the available evidence and commenting in a magisterial way. At the end of the book, he then ‘climbs off the fence’ and gives a verdict that supernatural things did indeed happen at Borley Rectory. In reality, Edward Babbs is always inclined to accept a supernatural explanation uncritically, and avoids embarrassing details that suggest otherwise. His manifesto is stated as, ". . . we must emphasise the point that that it is necessary to be careful at all times not to allow rigid disbelief to interfere with logic." p183

What he seems to be saying is that one should accept supernatural explanations for events as being logical, even though they defy all our understanding of the natural sciences.

His real agenda is set when he starts with a sour introduction written by Alan Wesencraft, that accuses Trevor Hall of stealing from Harry Price. Even if it were true, (and it was fully answered in the 1960s) it would be irrelevant to the main questions that need to be answered in any ‘final analysis’, and to give it prominence in an ‘Introduction’ is sheer mischief.

Edward Babbs presentation of the story is tedious to read. Events are not consistently treated in a chronological sequence and are sometimes repeated in different chapters. The survey of the ‘legend’ adds very little and is done in much the same way as the previous books. He presents what he feels are the facts without providing evidence. He provides no references. By way of example, he states that Rev Eric Smith believed in Ghosts. "He believed the place was haunted and he never changed his mind." p42

Huh? One really wants to know where this came from. The original newspaper reports emphasised that the Rector did not believe in ghosts. For example the Bury and Suffolk free Press wrote, “The Rector, who is not in the least bit disturbed by the mysteries, in conversation with our representative at the rectory on Tuesday, said he did not believe in ghosts.”

Harry Price's books reaffirmed this fact. His notes of his first visit state, "Smiths took the rectory living in September 1928, finding the place in terribly bad repair. There are rats in the house, and toads, frogs, newts etc. in the cellars. They themselves refuse to believe in ghosts and know nothing about them."

Mrs Smith was perfectly clear in her statement, "I have no reason at all to think Borley was haunted. Of course, our minds were turned towards the subject, owing to so much gossip; but in spite of this, nothing occurred which I consider could not be explained."

So has Mr Edward Babbs some new material that he needs to share with us that has led him to a contrary conclusion? Alas, we will never know because there are no references or footnotes to backup his statements. There isn’t even an index. Again, he states that the Foyster phenomena "were said to consist of almost incessant bell-ringing" amongst others. This is intriguing, as the Foyster ‘diaries’ mention bell-ringing on few occasions, though it is implied that, like the stone-throwing, it happened fairly regularly. It would be interesting to know who it was who said is was ‘almost incessant’.

Edward Babbs uses coy language to accuse Marianne of active promiscuity whilst she was at Borley Rectory. "She found the male of the species to be of interest and the pursuit of this particular interest took her away frequently from Borley." Here, surely, Edward Babbs must be relying on fresh, unpublished evidence. We know of her affair with Frank Peerless, and her later entanglement with Fisher, but her explanations for these matters, when later interviewed by Swanson, are pretty convincing. Her absences from the rectory were mostly due to her having to take several jobs as her husband’s health declined. Rev Clive Lugent, who knew the couple well when they lived at the Rectory, said "She had a flirtatious side to her character but this often helped with visitors and local people who called to see the rector but it was exaggerated and not understood by some villagers." (Interview by Peter Underwood and Tom Brown, published in Borley Postscript, p 120)

It is not just for the sake of academic precision that one needs to be accurate, but also for the sake of Marianne’s living relatives. In other words, it is good manners.

Edward Babbs’ star witnesses are Margaret and Albert Finch. Ashley Cooper has already documented their memories in series of books of local history, and The Foxearth Historical Society video-recorded an interview. It is possible to read Edward Babbs’ book without realising that the Finchs were severe critics of the haunting. Alfred Finch always emphasised that he had lived in the area all his life and never experienced anything paranormal. He didn’t believe the stories at all. He thought the whole thing a load of nonsense originally dreamed up by Constance Bull, who was not quite ‘all there’. Margaret Finch worked as a maid for two years at the rectory in the late 1920s before she married Albert. Not only did she witness nothing whatsoever whilst she was there or afterwards, but she never even heard about it at the time and it was never even mentioned by the Bull family.

The contributions of Claudine Mathias are charming. She has a more readable style, and makes her life and memories come alive. She is particularly interesting on the subject of the excavations and the discovery of the culvert. Whilst one does not always want to agree with her conclusions, (surely the culvert could never have been intended for the passage of people) her work is a valuable contribution to the local history of this part of Essex.

I wish that Edward had left out his theory of the Ley lines, let alone giving it prominence in his conclusions. Leylines are supposed to show alignments. It may be that Cornard, Sudbury, Foxearth, Pentlow and Cavendish are roughly in alignment. However, none of these places has a ‘centre’. Cavendish is an extended settlement on the gravel of the valley-edge. Pentlow is a series of farms and hamlets, Foxearth has actually moved from one side of Foxearth Hall to the other over the centuries, Borley has no centre, and Sudbury grew from a fortified area overlooking the Stour valley. This sort of alignment will certainly occur by chance. On the Ordinance Survey map, it is hard to see any alignment at all.

The publication of any book on Borley Rectory is an event to celebrate. The publication of books on local history is extremely welcome. The advent of a new publisher is also good news. Had this book been severely edited, properly indexed, liberally sprinkled with references to its source material, and contributions credited, then it would stand proud in the library of books on Borley Rectory. Even as it stands, it is worth reading for Claudine Mathias’s chapters. One hopes that this will be the first in a number of books by Six Martlets Publishing, who have achieved a remarkable production quality in their first venture

Publisher's Response