Francis Ward Monck's Huddersfield séances

The medium Francis Ward Monck gave two séances in Huddersfield in October 1876 and was charged with deceiving his sitters. Wikipedia records that he was convicted and jailed for three months.

A law report records that Francis Ward Monck agreed with a man named Hepplestone to give two séances in Huddersfield, at Hepplestone's house, paid at two pounds each. The report says Monck held them in October 1876, on the twenty-second and twenty-third.

At the Huddersfield petty sessions on the eleventh of November 1876, Monck was charged with unlawful trickery, by palmistry and other means, aimed at deceiving Hepplestone and several others, among them Bedford and Lodge at Huddersfield on the twenty-third of October. The report describes one of the manifestations. A little musical box went round the company, then sat on the table, and Monck said the spirits could play it. He covered it with a wooden box and said a single sound would mean No and three would mean Yes. Questions were put to it and sounds came, though sometimes five or six together.

Wikipedia reports stuffed gloves turning up in his room, plus cheesecloth, reaching rods and other devices in his luggage, and that after a trial he was convicted of fraudulent mediumship and sentenced to three months in prison. Hereward Carrington, writing in 1907, says Monck's music-box greatly raised his reputation until his exposure, when the method of the trick came to light.