| Main Performers | Rev. Dr George May,
George H R Rogers,
Sydney Richardson,
Harry Edwards,
Rev Maurice Elliott,
Olive Burton,
George Burton - speakers
Maude Merson - vocal,
Charles Smart - organ |
| Secondary Performers | William Olsen,
Elizabeth Wilson (Mrs Oliver),
David Baker,
Catherine Taylor - 'patients' |
| Set List | 'O Worship The King',
'Gracious Spirit, of Thy Goodness',
'Praise, My Soul, The King of Heaven',
'Jerusalem', Parry |
| Performance Notes | Harry Edwards healing demonstration:
"The first patient he called was William Olsen, the well-known physical medium. In 1952 to had suffered a spinal collapse. He had been in great pain and had been admitted to a hospital in Rochester. There, said Edwards, he come under the care of a Mr Epps. He had medical treatment but it did not ease the pain: in fact the condition grew worse. Mr Epps had Olsen wrapped in plaster of Paris and send him home. On December 23, Olsen could bear the pain no longer. He went back to the hospital and saw Mr Epps again. Again he was told that nothing more could be done for him, but he could have an unlimited supply of pain-killing drugs. ... On Christmas Day - two days later - Olsen visited Shere. He had made his wife and son rip off the plaster and had come in desperation for treatment. Harry Edwards called William and Mrs Olsen from their sears on the platform to the microphones. Holding Mrs Olsen's hand, Edwards asked her husband: 'Is that a perfectly true record?' Yes, his ex-patient said, it was. 'Is it also true that after treatment you could walk?' Again it was true. That treatment took place five years ago. Olsen had needed no treatment since then. 'I've never felt better...I've travelled 120,000 miles - over every bump in the country - by car.'...
The next case of a little girl, Rosemary. When she was only a few months old she had an operation for a canerous growth. It grew again and another operation was performed. It again grew and she was booked for a third operation and underwent also deep-ray treatment. Her case was so unusal that, finally, no fewer than seven professors of medicine debated it. Four of them were of the opinion that the growth was cancer, three were not sure but stated that it was incurable and that no further treatment could be given. Rosemary was sent home - to die. Edwards told the audience that, wisely, the child's parents had not told her of the nature of her former complaint. She had not been invited along that afternoon, but her mother and a friend had come to testify to her recovery after absent healing. Yes the growth disappeared under treatment. Rosemary had not died. In fact she was now a healthy girl of nine....
The fourth case cited by Edwards was that of Edward Wood. At the age of three, this child had fallen victim to a strange disease. He could not ear, not could he assimilate nourishment. He was bowed over like a question-mark. 'Condition undisagnosable,' was the verdict of all the hospitals he had attended in and around Sheffield. After seven years, Edward was taken to the Great Ormond Street Hospital... He was examined there by Mr Bonham Carter. 'There's nothing we can do,' he told the parents and the boy was sent home. He was a living skeleton said Edwards. The child began to develop a swaying condition. He could not stand still on his feet. He was not expected to live much longer. Then his sister appealed for absent healing ... The boy is now fifteen, takes part in school sports and leads a normal life...."
"Thirty year old David Baker hobbled on to the Albert Hall platform with the aid of a cane and a short straight stick that he leaned on, bent and hunched in body, a human wreck compred with the fine, upright figure he must once have been. His troubles began six years ago when he fell down the stairs of a bus and into the road, breaking both legs and injuring his spine. He lay in plaster for four years. The hospital did not cure him. In addition to his crippled legs he had arthritis in his shoulders and hips and was almost blind when he came to the Albert Hall. He had been brought by a woman Spiritualist who met him only three weeks ago when he was selling shoe-laces at the corner of Fulham Road... It was the most moving moment when Edwards laid his hands on Baker, first straightening his back, then unloosing the stiffened shoulders, hips and ankles. The healer asked him to try and stand upright. Baker tried tentatively, then with some obvious difficulty managed something he could not have done before. Then, himself eager to try, he wondered aloud whether he would be able to get up without prising himself with his hands from the chair. He tried - failed. Tried again - and succeeded. In an outburst of relief the audience gave deafening applause. Playfully, exuberantly showing the freedom of his limbs, Baker gestured as if to tap the healer on the nose. Then, serious but happy, he turned to the microphone and said: 'Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the kindness you have given me in this short space of time.' Further treatment would be needed to follow up the good accomplished. But when David Baker walked off the platform he was standing upright and it was Edwards preceeding him who carried the stick.
There was a burst of laughter right at the beginnig of the healing demonstration when the healer discovered that his first patient had a complaint that he could not treat in public.
More serious was the case of petite, bespectacled, brunette Miss Catherine Taylor... She came up to the platform in response to the healer's invitation for slipped discs. Hers was a good reason: she had two intervertebral discs out of place and had suffered agonies for a couple of years. Edwards placed his arms gently round her back, the fingers of each hand meeting, extended, on her spine. For several seconds he concentrated, eyes shut, his white head slightly bowed. Then he told her to bend backwards and forwards very slowly. This she did, so she said without feeling pain. It was obvious by her expression that she was more than merely pleasantly surprised. ... Yes she had had her fair share of pain, she told Harry Edwards. Her back had been so painful that she had slept on a board for the past two years. Addressing the audience, Edwards said: 'That's another story to show that we can step in where medicine fails. 'Send that board you've been lying on,' he told Miss Taylor, 'to the BMA!' ...
Another touching moment was provided when a coloured man come to be treated. Shyly he told the healer that he had had his particular trouble for 26 years, that he had been X-rayed, but had not been told the extent of the trouble which affected his back. His spine, in fact, was completely locked - set, rigid. Before he quit the platform, the man touched his toes in a blaze of camera flashes. He was quiet, had little to say, but his smile, showing his white teeth, told Harry Edwards he had made another friend for life. 'It's our priviliege,' said Edwards, 'to help people of all nationalities and all religions. There are no barriers to spiritual healing.'"
(Psychic News, 26 July 1958) |
| Related Archival Material | Programme (RAHE/1/1958/86) |