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Friar Herbert Thurston - The Physical Phenomenon of Mysticism

But what I would more especially insist upon is the audacity of all this playing about with fire. There seems to have been very little of the dare-devil, either physically or morally, in the normal Home when not entranced. Think of the social ruin to which he exposed himself if anything had gone wrong. Mr. Jencken stated:

Only within these last few days, a metal bell, heated to redness in the fire, was placed on a lady's head without causing injury, and, in the case of another lady on a different occasion, a red-hot coal “was dropped," she said, "on to my white muslin dress, where it remained for some seconds, as it was so hot we all feared to touch it. My dress though made of the finest muslin was not ignited, and we even failed to detect the slightest trace or mark of any kind after examination."

Nothing was dearer to Home than the vogue he enjoyed in aristocratic circles, but if a lady had had to carry a scar for the rest of her life, or had had her dress set on fire as the result of one of these experiments, he must have known that such an incident would not easily have been forgiven or forgotten.