Alfred Wilks Drayson

He was then withdrawn, after an attack of scarlet fever, spending time as a convalescent with his elder brother, a civil engineer.

[9] He rose through the ranks of the Royal Artillery, being promoted captain in 1854, on his return from South Africa; major in 1868; lieutenant-colonel in 1869, and colonel in 1874.

[2] A member of White's Club, Drayson played billiards and related games including pyramid pool.

[31] Elisabeth Nichol also sat as a medium for Drayson, in 1867;[32] and he was a member of the Spiritual Athenæum of Daniel Dunglas Home, whose séances he had attended, set up in that year.

[36] He was a member of the Society for Psychical Research,[37] and was brought onto the council of the London Spiritualist Alliance by the autocratic Stainton Moses.

[41] Conan Doyle later reported, in his History of Spiritualism, the claim that Drayson in the 1880s was receiving a large number of apports through a medium.

[1] While related ideas were put forward by Thomas Belt, the theoretical basis for large tilts in the Earth's axis was undermined by 1880, with work of George Darwin.

[44] In 1884, in the weekly Light: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research, he published a paper The Solution of Scientific Problems by Spirits on the moons of Uranus, relating a conclusion given by a medium in a séance of 1858.

[76][77] The invention, the "Elongating Tunnel Marine Telegraph", was a helical wire in india rubber, to protect against longitudinal strain.

[80] Conan Doyle's villain Professor Moriarty has been considered a compound of Drayson, Adam Worth and the forger James Seward.