Tillyard, R(obin) J(ohn) (1881-1937)

British psychical researcher and biologist, vice president of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research in 1926. He was born in Norwich, England, on January 31, 1881. He was educated at Dover College, and Queen's College, Cambridge University (M.A., Sc.D.). Following his graduation in 1903 he migrated to Australia and taught at the Sydney Grammar School for a decade (1904-13) before becoming a Fellow in Zoology at Sydney University (1914-17) and then a lecturer in zoology in 1917. In 1920 he became Chief Entomologist to the Commonwealth of Australia.

He traveled to England and the United States in the 1920s to sit with mediums, especially Mina Crandon ("Margery" ). This sitting convinced him of survival of bodily death. He published his convictions in 1928 in Nature. In a "solus" sitting with "Margery" in Boston, he obtained apparent fingerprints of "Walter," the control. In his enthusiastic letter to Sir Oliver Lodge he stated: "This séance is, for me, the culminating point of all my psychical research; I can now say, if I so desire, nunc dimittis, and go on with my own legitimate entomological work." However, there now seems little doubt that this particular phenomenon was fraudulent.

During his association with psychical researcher Harry Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, Till-yard also investigated the phenomena of Eleonore Zügun and Stella C.

In his book Confessions of a Ghost Hunter (1936; 1974), Harry Price described a visit to Jeanne Laplace, a French clairvoyant, who gave a remarkable series of correct statements about Till-yard through simply holding a letter from him (without seeing the letter itself). The impressions included the prediction, later fulfilled, that he would die in a railway accident.

Sources:

Berger, Arthur S., and Joyce Berger. The Encyclopedia of Parapsychology and Psychical Research. New York: Paragon House, 1991.

Evans, J. W. The Life and Work of Robin John Tillyard, 1881-1937. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1963.

Pleasants, Helene, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Parapsychology. New York: Helix Press, 1964.

Tillyard, R. J. "Evidence of Survival of a Human Personality." Nature 122 (August 28, 1928).

——. "Science and Psychical Research." Nature 118 (1926).