The Fox Sisters' Confession, 1888: Raps From a Big Toe

In 1848 two girls in Hydesville, New York, Margaret and Kate Fox, reported knocking sounds in their house that answered questions. Those “rappings” became the founding story of modern Spiritualism. Forty years later Margaret, now Mrs. Kane, went on stage to explain how she had done it.

What the wire reported

The New York dispatch, dated 21 October 1888, ran the next day in papers across the country. The Sacramento Daily Record-Union put it on page one under “With Her Big Toe.” The story says she read a lecture to a large audience at the Academy of Music and then produced the famous raps “by the movement of her big toe joint,” loudly enough to be heard in the hall. It adds that she “thanked God she was able to expose spiritualism.” The Omaha Daily Bee carried nearly the same text that morning.

New York’s Evening World used its editorial column to press the point. It credited the confession to its sister paper, The World, called the Fox sisters “the original spirit rappers,” and claimed that “the manner in which the raps are made was detected years ago.” The Evening World wasn’t a neutral voice here, since its own morning paper had the exclusive. Later accounts, such as Smithsonian Magazine’s, say The World paid $1,500 for that exclusive.

The recantation

About a year later, in November 1889, she took it back. Secondary accounts say she told an interviewer the confession had been made under pressure and for money. People who still defend the Fox sisters’ mediumship point to the recantation. Skeptics point to the stage demonstration. We haven’t read the 1889 interview itself.

Ledger status

Marked hoax, on the strength of a public demonstration of the method by the medium herself. The recantation is real and belongs in the record, so the evidence table marks the overall question as disputed among believers.

Spiritualism is a living religion today. This file is the history of one medium’s confession and its reversal, not a verdict on anyone’s faith.

Next checks: The World’s own 21 October 1888 page, and the November 1889 interview.

Part of From the Archive, October 2026.

Sources

Library of Congress, Chronicling America (US newspapers, public domain):

• Sacramento Daily Record-Union, 22 Oct 1888, p.1, “With Her Big Toe” — loc.gov
• The Evening World (New York), 22 Oct 1888, p.2, editorial “The Spiritualistic Humbug” — loc.gov
• Omaha Daily Bee, 22 Oct 1888, p.1, “A Spiritualistic Expose” — loc.gov

Secondary:

• Smithsonian Magazine, “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism” — smithsonianmag.com
• Society for Psychical Research, Psi Encyclopedia, “Fox Sisters” — psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk

Quotations from the 1888 pages were checked on the page images by the research desk.