The R101 Séance: Eileen Garrett and the Voice of Flight Lieutenant Irwin

5 October 1930. At about 02:05, on its maiden voyage to Karachi, the airship R101 crashed and burned near Beauvais in northern France. Of the 54 people aboard, 48 died.

Two days later, a sitting took place at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, 13 Roland Gardens, South Kensington. The Australian journalist Ian D. Coster had requested it. He hoped to reach Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who had died earlier that year. Harry Price, a sceptic of mediumship in general, picked the trance medium Eileen J. Garrett, whom he called a "first-class medium". A stenographer was ready.

Garrett went into trance. Her usual control, "Uvani", spoke in his characteristic voice, unlike hers. He said someone named "Irving" or "Irwin" was coming before a different voice took over. It spoke fast, urgently and brokenly while the stenographer struggled to keep up. It called itself Flight Lieutenant H. Carmichael Irwin, captain of the R101.

"The whole bulk of the dirigible was entirely and absolutely too much for her engine capacity. Engines too heavy." The fragments kept coming: useful lift too small; elevator jammed; oil pipe plugged; load too great for long flight; starboard strakes started. Then a line about the final route: "Almost scraped the roofs at Achy. Kept to railway."

Price listed the terms he believed lay beyond Garrett's knowledge. Gross lift. Disposable lift. Cruising altitude. Airscrews. Trim. She had no background in aviation or engineering.

Will Charlton, the R101's supply officer, asked for the transcript. He and his colleagues called it an "amazing document" with "more than 40 highly technical and highly confidential details". French officials confirmed the airship had been sighted near Poix, 14 miles north of Achy.

Major Oliver G. Villiers, an Air Ministry intelligence official and a friend of the dead officers, held seven more sittings during the official inquiry. Voices claiming to be Irwin, Scott and Colmore described a failing girder and a tear in the outer cover, opening about ten minutes before the crash. A voice claiming to be First Officer Atherstone spoke of a secret diary left with his wife. In 1967 his widow showed a documentary maker a diary recording the crew's misgivings about airworthiness.

Lord Dowding compared the transcript with Charlton's comments and disagreed on only 8 of 53 points. Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard found errors in the Villiers transcripts but said they "had the ring of truth". In 1948 Flt Lt William H. Wood, an atheist and airship pilot who had served with Irwin, recognised his manner of speech and declared himself convinced. Price stayed undecided between spirit contact and a subconscious source.

The sceptics answered sharply. The magician John Booth called Garrett a fraud and suggested she got blueprints from an aerodrome technician. Melvin Harris called the details "either commonplace, easily absorbed bits and pieces, or plain gobbledegook" and proposed cryptomnesia. Archie Jarman, a sceptic commissioned by Garrett herself, is quoted calling the material "valueless". Yet in 2015 Steve Hume, working from Jarman's unpublished report, said it concluded the information could not have been learned normally.

The full transcript sits in the Eileen J. Garrett Collection at UMBC. Price told the story in Leaves from a Psychist's Case Book, John G. Fuller in The Airmen Who Would Not Die. Susan MacWilliam returned to the room itself in her 2007 artwork 13 Roland Gardens. The argument over the voice has never been settled.