The death of Edmund Gurney

Edmund Gurney, psychical researcher and co-author of Phantasms of the Living, was found to have died at the Albion Hotel in Brighton on 23 June 1888, after taking too much chloroform.

Edmund Gurney's death came on 23 June 1888, at the Albion Hotel in Brighton. The Psi Encyclopedia of the Society for Psychical Research gives the cause as a chloroform overdose. He was said to take chloroform against facial pain from neuralgia. It says most people considered the death accidental, though some thought suicide possible, and that people eager to discredit his ideas and research have since used that suggestion. His widow was Kate, born Sibley, and the couple had a daughter, Helen.

Gurney worked in psychical research. With Myers and Frank Podmore he produced Phantasms of the Living in 1886, a large collection of cases. Elmbridge Museum's biography says he looked into a large number of spontaneous telepathy cases and sorted them, with the main focus on telepathic hallucinations: seeing or hearing a person one knows around the time that person dies. It records that the book drew plenty of notice and criticism, yet became a classic work. Between 1885 and 1888 he also ran a large programme of hypnotism experiments.