For the first History Group meeting of 2020, Roy Iremonger spoke about the short life of Christopher Guy Tristram (1925-1943), his parents’ strong spiritualist beliefs and the private publication of letters supposedly dictated via ‘automatic writing’ to his mother from beyond the grave.
At the outbreak of war the family were living at Cox’s Mill, Dallington. His father was Major Guy Tristram R.A. and his mother, Ruth Marie Tristram a botanical illustrator. Christopher and his younger brother were sent to stay with an uncle in America, but after the uncle died, Christopher, now old enough to enlist, decided to return. He was drowned when the ship he was travelling on was sunk by German U-boats.
Roy offered a sympathetic account of the attraction of spiritualist beliefs to the bereaved parents, and set these within the context of the period following the First World War, when surprising numbers of people, including scientists, writers such as Arthur Conan Doyle, and even Air Force Marshall Lord Dowding (a friend of the family who wrote the foreword to “Letters from Christopher”) shared these beliefs.
You can read Roy’s notes with more information in this online document:
