Wickedpedia: Harry Price

Without a doubt Harry Price is a seminal figure in the field of modern day ghost hunting. Paranormal investigators of today, even though they may know little about Price himself are following the procedures that he used to bring the scientific study of psychical research firmly into the public eye over fifty years ago.

However, several of his cases – the most famous and long lasting of which is the haunting of Borley Rectory – have been the subject of much critical study in the years since his death, as has Price’s own personal reputation. Controversial amongst his colleagues in the field of psychical research during his lifetime, this critical attention continues to this day and as an individual he continues to arouse interest and comment. Recent studies have uncovered much about Price the man that will of course be used by his critics to dismiss his work and the achievements obtained during his lifetime, but although as a person he was indeed a shrewd, complicated and at times calculating individual, his writings and adventures provide a legacy that continues to inspire to this day.

Notwithstanding his claim to be born in Shropshire, apparently changing the details of his early life, claiming that he was the son of wealthy parents and came from Shropshire, Harry Price was born in Red Lion Square, New Cross, a far from wealthy district of London, on the site of the South Place Ethical Society’s Conway Hall. His father was a traveling salesman for a firm of paper manufacturers and after trying his hand at several diverse types of work Harry entered this line of employment himself, becoming a salesman for the same company as his father. Despite being famous as a ghost-hunter Price never actually gave up his day job and worked in the paper industry all his life. Evening classes at Goldsmiths College where Price studied amongst other things photography and engineering gave him practical skills that he later used to his advantage. He was educated in London at Waller Road School and Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham College, the Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham Boys School. When he was 15 years of age Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society and wrote small plays including a drama about his early experience with a poltergeist which he said took place at a haunted manor house in Shropshire.

A few years later, Price came to the attention of the Press when he claimed an early interest in space-telegraphy. He set up a receiver and transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Hatcham and St Peter’s Church Brockley and captured a spark on a photographic plate, though according to the most recent biography of Price by Richard Morris, this was nothing more than Harry writing a press release saying he had done the experiment. Nothing was verified. The young Price also had an avid interest in coin collecting and wrote several articles for The Askean, the magazine for Haberdashers’ School. In his autobiography, Search for Truth, written between 1941 and 1942, Price claimed he was involved with archaeological excavations in Greenwich Park, London but in earlier writings on Greenwich denied he had a hand in the excavation. In 1904 he was appointed honorary curator of numismatics at Ripon Museum and in May 1908 Price continued his interest in archaeology at Pulborough, Sussex where he had moved to before marrying Constance Mary Knight that August. The couple set up their home in the village of Pulborough, West Sussex. The Knights were a somewhat affluent family and Constance had the benefit of a small trust fund that supplemented Price’s income, enabling him to establish what would become the greatest occult library in the world. Price became interested in magic at the age of eight, developing into a competent amateur conjuror and these skills gave him an insight into the workings of the many mediums that he became interested in before and especially after the Great War ended. As well as working for paper merchants Edward Saunders & Sons as a salesman he wrote for two local Sussex newspapers the West Sussex Gazette and the Southern Weekly News where he wrote about his remarkable propensity for discovering ‘clean’ antiquities. One of these, a silver ingot, was stamped around the time of the last Roman emperor Honorius, a few years after another celebrated Sussex archaeologist Charles Dawson found a brick at Pevensey Fort in Sussex which was purportedly made in Honorius’ time. In 1910 Professor E.J Haverfield of Oxford University, the country’s foremost expert on Roman history and a Fellow of the Royal Academy announced it a fake.

For the complete Harry Price Wickedpedia including some truly fascinating insight into his seminal life, grab yourself a copy of issue 3 while you still can.