From the Skeptical Literature—NYPD Policewomens Bureau chief Mary Sullivan, 1938: ———— In my many years as a member of the New York Police Department, I have had my future looked into literally hundreds of times. I have listened to turbanned crystal-gazers, had my palm explored by gypsies, been talked to with the voice of Little Laughing Water, and had smartly dressed women chart my life from the courses of the planets and stars. If any woman in the world could be expected to have a clear idea of her future, I am that woman. Yet not once was I told anything—outside of such vague generalities as You will travel some day—that later came true. Not one of these seers was able to give a recognizable picture of my past or present. Not one of them, in fact, was informed by his stars, spirits or crystal that I happened to be a policewoman. My experience has greatly strengthened my previous conviction that no human being can accurately read the future… In the days when I went out on assignments personally, I always took a grim delight in springing the trap on a fortuneteller. I knew only too well from hearings in the Family Court the amount of trouble these prophets cause. The case of a husband leaving home, or assaulting a family friend because a fortuneteller told him that his wife was unfaithful, has been repeated hundreds of times. Bitter family quarrels, some of them ending in bloodshed, have resulted from a fortuneteller’s remark that a sister or mother-in-law has been trying to make trouble behind the customer’s back. … It is estimated that Americans spend $125,000,000 a year on having their fortunes told. This doesnt include the amounts lost through bad investments advised by the prophets. I had a personal reason for finding the fortuneteller hunt attractive. When I was a child my five-year-old brother wandered out of the house after mass one Sunday and was never seen again. Tortured by uncertainty as to whether he was alive or dead, my mother turned to fortunetellers for guidance. For years they led her on from one false hope to another, telling her that he would be brought home by shipboard the following spring; that a dark woman was holding him prisoner in a basement; that we would see him on the street when he was fifteen years old. The repeated disappointments my mother suffered caused her as much pain as if the boy had been lost to her many times instead of only once. My recollection of all this made it doubly pleasant to me to flash my badge before an astonished seeress and tell her that she and her paraphernalia were about to depart for a ride. —Mary Sullivan. My Double Life. (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1938.) pp. 145–147 —Sullivan was the long-time head of the NYPDs Policewomens Bureau. She entered the force in 1911 as one of a pioneering few female Police Matrons, and became the second woman in NYPD history to achieve the rank of Detective, First Grade. Because the Policewomens Bureau specialized in undercover vice stings, she and her officers were tasked with policing several areas of interest to skeptics, including psychic scams and fraudulent quack doctors. In 1931, she led a city-wide crackdown on fortunetelling operations in an unusual collaboration between New York City and the Society of American magicians. —For more on Mary Sullivans life, as well as the career of private investigator Rose Mackenberg, see Junior Skeptic #46, bound inside Skeptic Magazine, Vol. 18 No. 1: skeptic/productlink/magv18n1 — The Skeptics Society & Skeptic Magazine
Posted on: Tue, 06 May 2014 18:29:25 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015