In May 1864, Ira and William Davenport drew New York audiences to the Cooper Institute with a cabinet, ropes and musical instruments. Newspaper accounts reproduced that year describe hands appearing at an opening, instruments sounding behind closed doors and spectators finding the brothers apparently bound afterwards. Thomas Low Nichols presented these demonstrations as remarkable evidence. A contemporary critic, P. T. Barnum, described methods by which rope escapes and concealed handling could produce such effects. The surviving accounts establish a much-discussed performance, rather than a verified visit from spirits.
A New York season, rather than one precisely dated sitting
The principal account here is chapter XV of Nichols’s A Biography of the Brothers Davenport, published in London in 1864. He explicitly places the Cooper Institute performances in May of that year. He then selects and condenses newspaper material, including a New York Herald editorial dated 4 May, a separate Herald performance report and reports attributed to the New York World. The individual performance reports do not all supply an exact calendar date in this reproduction.
That distinction prevents a misleading reconstruction of one extraordinary evening. The flour test, a committee including Colonel Olcott and the noisy encounters involving a spectator named Conklin belong to different reports within the chapter. They can be compared as accounts of the New York season, but should not be combined into a single uninterrupted observation. Nor are Nichols’s extracts equivalent to independently checked copies of every original newspaper issue.
Nichols was a sympathetic biographer. He praises the demonstrations and judges the newspapers’ reporting favourable to their essential truth. His selection preserves unusually concrete details, but his confidence is part of the evidence’s perspective. The reports include what observers believed they had excluded, as well as what they said they saw.
What the audience was allowed to inspect
In the Herald performance account, the cabinet was examined inside and out, without a visible connection to outside apparatus being found. Its supports were placed on stools with glass tumblers beneath them, in response to suggestions about wires and electricity. The brothers were tied to seats, instruments were placed inside and the doors were shut. The hall’s lights were lowered during the proceedings.
The committee included Judge Baker and a Fire Marshal also named Baker. These are separate participants in the report, not one man holding both descriptions. The writer praised the tying and described the committee as satisfied. A trumpet reportedly flew through the opening almost immediately after the centre door shut. When the cabinet was opened, the brothers appeared bound as before.
Music, visible hands and repeated inspections followed. At another stage, the brothers were found entirely free of the ropes after about three minutes, then bound again after a further four. A committee member sat between them and was later revealed with a tambourine on his head. The report treats the rapidity of these changes and the observers’ impressions of stillness as arguments against ordinary manipulation.
These inspections addressed particular suspicions: hidden machinery, an obvious assistant, or visibly loose restraints. They did not provide a continuous view of the brothers’ hands inside the closed cabinet. Finding someone tied at the beginning and end of an interval does not establish that their hands remained confined throughout it. The distinction is central to assessing the performance.
The wheat-flour test
For the Herald account’s final test, flour was put into the brothers’ hands while they were tied. Loose flour spilled during preparation was brushed away. With the doors closed, sounds continued, a hand appeared at the opening and the trumpet was thrown out. When the doors reopened, the brothers were standing unbound and still holding flour. The committee reportedly found none scattered about their clothing or the cabinet.
The reporter inferred that opening their hands would necessarily have spilled some flour, making ordinary trickery an unreasonable explanation. That was the test’s proposed logic. It was not an independently established physical rule. The account supplies neither measured quantities nor a continuous inspection of both hands during the concealed interval, and its conclusion depends on assumptions about what a performer could manage without leaving a conspicuous trace.
Olcott and Flanders inside the cabinet
The World report reproduced by Nichols describes a committee including Colonel Olcott and the Reverend G. T. Flanders. It offers a more elaborate account of examining the cabinet and binding the performers. Its description again stresses the apparently plain construction and the committee’s satisfaction with the knots. The room remained sufficiently lit for the audience to watch the exterior, while the cabinet’s closed interior supplied the darkness needed for the effects.
The agent, Lacy, explained that darkness was a condition of the manifestation rather than promising a particular religious interpretation. Hands reportedly struck or grasped committee members, while instruments sounded and were thrown out. Flanders sat between the brothers and reported contact with their legs while effects occurred. The hand descriptions emphasise warm, tangible flesh and an apparent cuff, rather than an independently identified deceased person.
A spectator’s tactile impression is relevant testimony, but its coverage is limited. Contact with a knee or shoulder does not automatically account for every hand movement. The report’s expressions of astonishment cannot supply the missing continuous view. Likewise, an audience member’s confidence that a knot was complicated is not a documented test against all forms of escape.
The later Conklin episode adds a sharply different atmosphere: calls from the audience, laughter, demands to open the doors and a spectator entering the cabinet. He emerged describing a blow from an instrument and uncertainty about how it happened. The theatrical uproar is part of this report’s setting. It makes the account vivid, while also reminding readers that these were public entertainments rather than quiet, repeatable laboratory trials.
The contemporary mechanical explanation
Barnum’s The Humbugs of the World, published in 1865, directly challenged the Davenports’ cabinet effects. His chapter describes loosening restraints, slipping hands out and restoring an apparently secure position before inspection. It also proposes ways to handle instruments and transfer compressed flour between hands. Barnum credited some information to Dr. W. F. Van Vleck and wrote as an outspoken opponent of the brothers.
These are contemporary counterclaims, not a complete independent record of the Cooper Institute evenings. The chapter does not reconstruct each moment in Nichols’s reports. It nevertheless identifies the vulnerable inference behind those reports: apparently unchanged restraints after a closed interval need not imply uninterrupted restraint. Neither an enthusiastic newspaper’s assurance nor a critic’s general explanation should be mistaken for a filmed account of what occurred inside.
What the season establishes
Even the Herald editorial reproduced by Nichols says the brothers did not insist that spiritualism explained their powers. Its writer entertained a mysterious physical or mental agency. It would therefore be inaccurate to describe every participant as agreeing that the hands belonged to the dead. The controversy concerned the production of effects as well as the interpretation placed upon them.
The case preserves a detailed encounter between public spectatorship, attempts at testing and competing claims about performance. It does not establish an independently identified spirit, a supernatural force or an escape-proof arrangement. The strongest historical conclusion is that several observers reported impressive effects under conditions that left important actions concealed.
Location and sources
The map uses a broad, rounded Manhattan locality reference from the U.S. Census Gazetteer. The source places the performances at New York’s Cooper Institute; the pin is not the cabinet’s position, a surveyed hall location or present-day visitor guidance.
The principal source is Nichols’s 1864 biography, chapter XV, especially printed pages 173–200: the dated editorial and the distinct performance reports reproduced there. The counterargument is Barnum’s 1865 Humbugs of the World, chapter IX. These contemporary publications have different agendas and neither is treated as a neutral transcript. Coordinates derive from the 2025 Census Gazetteer. Sources checked 10 November 2026.