The Lyman Family: Building a Messiah's Complex

Born in Eureka, California in 1938 Mel Lyman is probably best known for following Bob Dylan at the legendary Newport Folk Festival in 1965.
Dylan had made his name as an acoustic folk singer and had played at previous Festivals in Newport and been very popular.
However at this point Dylan had recorded some songs featuring electric instruments and was determined to introduce amplified electric performance to the usually exclusively acoustic Festival.
Dylan played three songs backed with an electric band to the disgust of the partisan crowd. Boos began to be heard around the audience and even two acoustic songs to round out the set were not enough to calm the horde of furious spectators.
Rumour has it that Pete Seeger was wandering around backstage with an axe to try and cut the cables to the amps...
Mel Lyman came onstage faced with a furious crowd that appeared on the verge of a riot.
Armed only with a harmonica he played a 30 minute improvisation around the traditional hymn 'Rock of Ages' that calmed the audience and brought a spirit of unity back to the previously agitated mob.
Talking about the experience afterwards Lyman said that what he did was:

'...like what Christ had to do before mounting the cross, he said not my will but thine be done and then there was no cross, no death...'

This was not Lyman's first flirtation with Messianic comparisons...
Lyman had moved to Boston in the early Sixties and had been experimenting with various hallucinogens. Soon after he began to believe that he was destined to become a massively important spiritual leader and began to make preparations to lead humanity into a new world under his guidance.
He founded a 'Family' and established a commune in the Fort Hill area of Boston.
Ostensibly operating along the same lines as many other urban communes at the time Lyman's group was actually far from the 'hippie' stereotype.
The social dynamics within the group were far more conventional than most communes that were founded around the same time.
Although Lyman and a few other members of the Family fathered children by different women most people within the group lived monogamously, people tended to dress relatively conservatively and the men within the Family generally wore their hair shorter than most men of the time.
Another key element that differentiated them from hippie communities was an almost nihilistic attitude to culture and society that promised violent change at the hands of Lyman and his followers.
Lyman wrote a song promising:

'I am going to burn down the world / I am going to tear down everything that cannot stand alone / I am going to shove hope up your ass / I am going to turn ideals to shit / I am going to reduce everything that stands to rubble / and then I am going to burn the rubble / and then I am going to scatter the ashes / and then maybe someone will be able to see something as it really is / Watch Out!'

Lyman also established a 'Karma Squad' within the Family to ensure loyalty and ordered the building of a 'Vault' in the Fort Hill development. This was an isolation chamber that dissident Family members would be placed in to think about their mistakes...
These actions and this attitude would seem to place Lyman closer to Charles Manson, who also boasted a 'Family' of followers, but in truth the Lyman Family were never the threat that they talked of being.
Instead of using violence as a tool of revolution they attempted to harness the media to tell their story.
Articles appeared in newspapers and magazines and interviews were recorded on television and radio.
It seemed a major coup when two members of the Lyman Family, Mark Frechette and Daria Halpin, were cast in a new film called 'Zabriskie Point' to be directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Frechette hoped to use his access to Antonioni to recruit the director into the Family but Antonioni showed no interest whatsoever.
Frechette refused to give up though and took to leaving Family related literature in the director's trailer...
But nothing seemed to give the Family the momentum they need to become the social and political force that Lyman desired. Family members donated substantial amounts of money allowing for the publication of magazines and newsletters that spread the word of Lyman's imminent emergence as a spiritual leader but no one seemed to want to listen. One of the major contributers to the Family was Frechette himself.
He donated all of his $60,000 earnings from 'Zabriskie Point' to the Family and was determined to keep the income stream of the Family liquid.
When the acting jobs dried up Frechette led a team of Family members on an attempted robbery of the Brgham Circle bank in 1973. During the robbery one Family member was shot and killed by police and Frechette was arrested and eventually sentenced to five years in Norfolk State Prison where he died in a bizarre weightlifting accident in 1975.
But this brief flirtation with violent action was about as active as the Family got in terms of pushing their message out to the people.
Lyman himself was a very reclusive Messiah, preferring to send others out to spread his words while he oversaw the development of the Fort Hill commune.
As the years went on there was less and less heard from the Family while the Fort Hill development grew beyond recognition. Money that had previously been earmarked for media projects to promote the teachings of Lyman began to be used to buy land and property in places such as Boston and Kansas.
Mel Lyman died in 1978 but the Family didn't disband.
Instead its members used the skills acquired in developing the Fort Hill commune and the property portfolio that had been invested in and took their collective wealth and experience to found the Fort Hill Construction Company.
A group that had long advocated the spiritual rebirth of America instead turned its energies toward the redevelopment of the country one construction project at a time and this most conservative of communes took the logical step of evolving into a prosperous business.
It's just ironic that a group that was brought together by one man's nihilistic vision of the destruction of society found their true purpose to be that of building...

Harold Davidson: The Rector of Stiffkey

On the 21st of October 1932 Harold Francis Davidson was defrocked in a ceremony in Norwich Cathedral and removed from his position as rector of the parishes of Stiffkey St. John with Stiffkey St. Mary and Morston, two rural areas on the north coast of Norfolk.
He had been charged on four counts of immoral behaviour including a specific charge of improper conduct 'in embracing a girl in a Chinese restaurant in Bloomsbury'.
Generally he was under investigation following an accusation from one of his parishioners that he had neglected his duties in Stiffkey and Morston to travel to London working to save 'fallen' women or women he felt were in danger of being tempted into a sinful life.
Reverend Davidson did spend his Fridays and Saturdays in London's theatre district, particularly in the areas around Piccadilly Circus and Soho, and would talk to runaways, prostitutes and waitresses, trying to convince them to find work in shops, factories and theatres before returning to Norfolk on Saturday evening to prepare himself for his services on Sunday.
Unfortunately the rector had made an enemy in Major Philip Hammond, a local landowner in Morston, who had held a grudge against Reverend Davidson after being overlooked as churchwarden.
In November 1930 Davidson missed the Remembrance Day service having been taken ill while in London and unable to travel.
Major Hammond made a complaint to the Bishop of Norwich and an investigation into the rector's activities was undertaken. A detective agency was hired and they followed Reverend Davidson for a year. They uncovered little.
The rector did travel to London and spend time with women trying to help them improve their lot but when questioned the women made it clear that the rector's behaviour remained appropriate at all times. One woman did make a statement, while drunk, against Davidson but recanted it when sober.
After a year of investigation with nothing to show for it the Church began to panic.
They had cast enough doubt over Davidson to make his position untenable but had not uncovered sufficient evidence for their charges to stick.
They asked him to resign and the rector agreed to do so if his parishioners wanted him to go but, Hammond and his cronies apart, Reverend Davidson still had a lot of local support.
Eventually a trial was convened and the rector faced his accusers.
Dozens of witnesses were called but none were prepared to support the charges and implicate Reverend Davidson in the acts he had been accused of.
The church's case was in disarray when the prosecution team suddenly produced a photograph.
It showed Davidson helping a naked girl into a shawl. The girl was 15 years old.
However, neither Davidson or the girl had any recollection of posing for the photograph and close examination shows a white line down the centre of the picture that would seem to indicate that it was faked.
Not that it mattered. The Church had the guilty verdict it needed and was rid of its turbulent vicar.
But Harold Davidson was far from finished as a public figure. He had a very definite idea about what his life would involve now he was out of the Church.
He would go back to the stage.
Having been a keen performer during his student days it seemed an easy decision to Harold. He had applied for a licence to perform public recitations while on trial and had began to write an outline of the affair from his perspective to be performed around the country. This denunciation of the Church began to be performed in some very bizarre locations.
He appeared in Blackpool in 1932 fasting in a barrel, took part in a stage show that depicted him in Hell being attacked by imps and somehow ended up on Hampstead Heath stood next to a dead whale.
Almost inevitably he was killed after being mauled by a lion.
As part of a show in Skegness Davidson was billed as a 'Modern Daniel in the Lion's Den' and was caged with a lion called Freddie and a lioness called Toto.
Both animals were partly sedated and the performances went off without a hitch until one day, mid-diatribe, Harold stepped onto Toto's tail. Her roar alerted Freddie who although old, toothless and sedated managed to swipe a paw at Davidson's neck.
The injuries were not very serious but unfortunately while in hospital Harold was wrongly prescribed insulin which sent him into a coma.
He died two days later.
His funeral was attended by 3,000 people and his widow wore white as she saw it as an occasion to celebrate the life of Harold Davidson rather than to mourn his passing.
The ceremony took place in Stiffkey, Norfolk at the request of his former parishioners...

Stanley Green: Protein Wisdom

The Protein Man was a familiar sight on Oxford Street for many years, armed with his billboard which read:

'Less Lust, By Less Protein: Meat Fish Bird; Egg Cheese; Peas Beans; Nuts. And Sitting. Protein Wisdom.'

Beginning his mission in 1968 Stanley Green would parade up and down the street explaining his theory on the link between protein intake, inactivity and lust to passers-by and selling booklets that explained his ideas.
Green's theory was that a diet that was dominated by protein would fuel the human sex drive to unbearable levels and that large periods of inactivity would only mean that the body would store up this energy without any outlet.
Most people would take this to mean that sexual abstinence would be the problem and allow the lustful desires to grow but when it came to 'inactivity' Stanley had zero tolerance.
He was opposed to the very idea of sitting.
He believed that 'those who do not have to work with their limbs and are inclined to sit about are storing up their protein for passion.'
To be fair he practised what he preached. He would march up and down Oxford Street for hours at a time and cycled a 24 mile round journey each day from his house in Northolt to undertake his duties.
He used public transport when he qualified for free travel as a pensioner but he had been making the journey for twelve years at that point.
Green had developed his ideas while on active service in the Navy during the Second World War. He was shocked by how openly his fellow servicemen discussed sex.
He felt it was due to the dominance of protein in their diet and began to adjust his own nutritional intake accordingly.
Stanley stopped eating meat, peas, beans, nuts and dairy products and began to eat only porridge, home made bread, steamed vegetables and pulses and a pound of apples a day.
His booklet was entitled 'Eight Passion Proteins' and was first produced in 1973 at a price of ten pence. it went through 52 different editions and by 1993 he had sold 87,000 copies.
Green produced the booklets at home on his own printing press. His approach to typeography and layout was eccentric at best, meaning that the booklets would often change typeface or typesize halfway through a sentence or even a word.
Stanley also wrote a novel called 'Behind the Veil: More Than Just a Tale' which has been described as a 'colourful account of the dangers of protein and the possibility of redemption.'
It was never published.
Similarly the manuscript for 'Eight Passion Proteins' was rejected by Oxford University Press in 1971 but through a campaign of letter writing Stanley ensured that copies were delivered to the Prince of Wales, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the editor of the Times, the Director-General of the BBC and Pope Paul VI.
Five different British Prime Ministers also received complimentary copies.
Green was determined to get his theory out as widely as possible and was driven by the idea that the world would be improved as a consequence of embracing his ideas.
As well as suppressing lust he felt that his diet would make for 'better, kinder and happier people.' and he seemed genuinely concerned about the welfare of those around him. As he told the Sunday Times:

'Passion can be a great torment...'

He would finish each day with a prayer before bed which he described as:

'Quite a good prayer, unselfish too.'

Stanley Green died on December 4th 1993.
His billboard and booklets went to the Museum of London where they remain on display warning us of the dangers of cheese, beans and sitting...

Monsignor Horan: The Builder of Knock

Monsignor James Horan was a man who got things done.
As a curate in Tooreen, County Mayo in the 1940's and 50's he worked beyond his ecclesiastical duties and involved himself in a number of projects that encouraged the local community to pool resources to enable the electrification and installation of drainage of this rural area.
He also suggested opening up a dance hall to strengthen social ties locally and raise funds for various projects in the parish.
Soon afterwards a rumour began to spread that the devil himself had turned up at one of the Tooreen dances. Apparently a local girl had been dancing with a dashing, handsome stranger but happened to look down and notice he was twirling her around the dancefloor on cloven feet.
Initially it was believed that this story was created by a local rival dancehall promoter, Albert Reynolds, who would go on to become the taoiseach or Irish Prime Minister, but as the crowds in Tooreen began to swell with those hoping to catch a glance of Lucifer a whisper went about that the canny curate himself might have put the story out there...
This sort of grasp on the importance of publicity and the power of myth-making would hold Monsignor Horan in good stead for his next set of projects.
Appointed the parish priest of Knock, County Mayo in 1967 Monsignor Horan saw an opportunity to put this quiet town in the West of Ireland on the map when he learnt of an appearance of the Virgin Mary that had occurred in 1879.
Realising the approaching centenary of the event he decided to build a 15,000 capacity basilica on the site of the apparition and promote the centenary as a massive event, attracting pilgrims from around the world and even a Papal visit by Pope John Paul II.
The basilica was completed in 1976 and the centenary saw 450,000 visitors descend upon this tiny village.
Knock had been transformed into a shrine whose fame and popularity rivalled Lourdes itself. Monsignor Horan was not a man to rest on his laurels though and was determined that the flow of visitors to Knock should continue unabated.
He envisioned a link between Knock and Lourdes, allowing pilgrims to travel between the two most famous Marian shrines in the world.
He decided that Knock needed an international airport.
This was an extraordinary decision. Ireland as a nation had suffered economically for years through lack of investment and the devastating effects of mass emigration and the rural West of Ireland had endured more than most.
The idea of a parish priest heading up one of the largest building projects in the country's history appeared absurd but Monsignor Horan was nothing if not determined.
He secured informal permission from the taoiseach, Charles Haughey, who probably felt it was a pipe dream that he could nod at and forget, but the Monsignor took this ahead of any official planning permission and hired contractors to begin work immediately.
Around IR£600,000 was spent on preparing the land for building and a team of labourers hired in the run up to the general election in 1981.
Monsignor Horan felt that if sufficient money was spent and the project was well under way it would have to be approved regardless of who was in power after the votes were counted.
Others were less sure of the wisdom of the plan.
Critics felt that building an international airport in such a 'foggy, boggy' spot was lunacy and there was every possibility that Monsignor Horan could be left looking like a fool and damning Ireland's image internationally in the process.
After the election it appeared as if the critics were right.
Haughey was kicked out and all government funding for the project was lost.
Monsignor Horan found himself IR£4million short on his funding and it appeared that there would be no airport in Knock.
However, this is where the Monsignor's extraordinary drive and belief came into play.
He undertook a massive worldwide tour, visiting countries such as the United States and Australia with wealthy Irish immigrants and tirelessly pleaded his case.
Appearances on television in Ireland and around the world made him very much the face of the project and his charm and optimism saw the money come rolling in.
A bizarre conspiracy theory at the time suggested that NATO had donated a large amount of money so that America would have another airstrip to use in bombing runs on Libya. Christy Moore, an Irish singer, wrote a song about the airport which included the line:

'All sorts of planes could land there, of that there's little doubt,
It'll be handy now for George Bush to knock Gadaffi out...'

The inaugural flight from the airport took place in 1986 and Monsignor Horan, by then 75 years old, was the first passenger onboard.
Within two months of the official opening of Knock airport Monsignor Horan was dead.
The project completed, he was on pilgrimage to Lourdes when he died suddenly.
His was the first coffin to be flown into Knock for burial...

Marwencol

Mark Hogancamp was brutally attacked by five men outside a bar in Kingston, New York in April, 2000.
He was in a coma for nine days and spent a total of forty days in hospital following the attack which left him with brain damage, including memory loss, and severe physical injuries.
Having been discharged from hospital Mark received counselling to help him overcome the trauma of the incident and begin to piece together his memories of his life and physical therapy to try and repair the effect of the attack on his motor skills which had become significantly impaired.
Before the attack Mark had been a carpenter and the loss of his ability to manipulate tools and materials, coupled with the terror he felt at the idea of interacting with the world, meant that his personal life and career were left in tatters following the incident.
As part of his therapy he was encouraged to keep a journal to chart his emotional journey and help him to reassemble his recollections of his life before the attack.
Mark made good progress in his physical therapy and counselling but still struggled with many elements of everyday life. His relationships with people around him were affected by the psychological damage he had suffered and he was still unable to work due to his ongoing physical recovery.
Then the money ran out...
Without health insurance or an income to pay his medical bills Mark was unable to continue with his therapy sessions. He feared his recovery would come to a standstill without professional support but recorded his solution in his therapy journal.
He wrote:

'I need to create my own therapies...'

He began to work with model kits to improve his motor skills and found himself drawn to material from the Second World War. He found a doll that he liked, a model of a Captain in the U.S. Army and decided to name him Captain Mark Hogancamp.
Mark had met two women after leaving the hospital who had been particularly kind to him, his neighbour Colleen and Wendy, a colleague at a bar Mark had found work at.
Mark found dolls to represent the two women and had them join Captain Hogancamp in the town he had began to build in his back garden.
Drawing on his work as a carpenter before the attack Mark began to construct buildings for the dolls to live in.
Collen had always loved the idea of a florists in town called 'Pocket Full o' Posies' which had closed down. Mark built a replica in the town in his garden for Colleen the doll to live in and built a restaurant called 'Wendy Lee's Kitchen' for the Wendy doll to live in. For his own doll he built 'The Ruined Stocking' a bar and catfight club and with that the town began to grow.
Mark added more characters with dolls based on friends, family and co-workers and gave them all places to live and work. He decided the town would be based in Belgium during the Second World War and that Captain Mark Hogancamp had crashed his plane there while flying back from a mission to China.
With the population and infrastructure in place the town just lacked one thing.
A name.
Using the inspiration of it's first three residents Mark decided to combine the names 'Mark', 'Wendy' and 'Colleen' and named the town 'Marwencol'.
While undoubtedly useful as physical therapy, the construction of the town and manipulation of the dolls and accessories forming a system of physiotherapy that improved his motor skills significantly, the work hadn't yet began to address the mental trauma of the attack apart from allowing him to create a safe haven for his characters and a world he could control entirely.
This all changed with the arrival of the SS...
Mark decided that an SS platoon would find the town and attempt to destroy it.
They targeted Captain Hogancamp as the leader of the town, captured him and kept him as a prisoner in the town's church.
Captain Hogancamp was tortured by his captors and left with a scar down the right side of his face, the same side that Mark had received his most severe damage during his actual attack outside the bar.
It appeared as if Captain Hogancamp was doomed. The men of the town had either fled or been killed when the SS attacked and he was tied up and helpless.
Then the women of the town arrived...
Lead by 'Anna', a doll representing Mark's ex-wife, they descended on the church armed to the teeth, slaughtered the SS and saved Captain Hogancamp.
For Mark this proved that Anna loved Captain Hogancamp and he had them marry shortly after. They were wed in the town square with the bodies of the SS hanging behind them as a grotesque backdrop.
Anna insisted apparently...
The marriage infuriated 'Deja Thoris', a time-travelling Belgian witch who had fallen in love with Captain Hogancamp 2,700 years previously and had travelled through time to be with him.
Despite this, when another SS platoon arrived in Marwecol on a revenge mission and killed Captain Hogancamp and Anna, Deja was able to put her feelings to one side and used her magic to restore the Captain and Anna to life.
As Mark put it:

'With Anna to protect him and Deja able to resurrect him the SS had to accept that they could never hurt Captain Hogancamp...'

Mark began to photograph the story of the town, eventually exhibiting them in New York City, winning some competitions and publishing a book.
Although Marwencol has transformed Mark Hogancamp into a respected artist it would seem that it's most valuable role was as a haven for Captain Hogancamp, a character that can endure physical and mental traumas that would devastate most people and someone who has found a love that allows him to even cheat death...

Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge: A Pandrogenous Pairing

Neil Megson was born in Manchester in 1950 but became famous as Genesis P-Orridge, a performer with controversial groups such as Psychic TV, Throbbing Gristle and COUM, the artists collective behind the notorious 'Prostitution' show presented at the ICA in 1976.
'Prostitution' shocked even London's arts community with its line up of strippers, prostitutes and transvestite guards. Work presenting used tampons, rusty knives and syringes was enough to see questions asked in Parliament as to whether government money should subsidise such exhibitions and the organisers described by a Conservative MP as 'wreckers of civilisation'.
The controversy lead to extensive newspaper coverage which was soon cut up into collages and formed new pieces in the show.
This in turn caused more coverage and before too long the show featured collages of cut up articles about collages of cut up articles...
Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV were musical projects where P-Orridge would explore his fascination with subjects such as pornography, murder and the Occult with Throbbing Gristle forming in 1975 and Psychic TV forming in 1981 and P-Orridge only announcing his formal retirement from musical performance in 2009.
In 1993 P-Orridge met the woman who would become his second wife.
Lady Jaye had been born Jacqeline Breyer but took the married name Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge when the pair were wed while he became Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.
This entwining of the couple's names was just the start of the blurring of their identities...
From early on in their relationship they dressed very similarly and soon came to the decision that they would dress identically. They made it a rule that if either of them bought any new clothes they would have to buy two of the same item to make sure that they could both wear the outfit.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge suffered severe injuries escaping from a fire at producer Rick Rubin's house in 1995 and was awarded $1.5 million in damages against Rubin and his record company as a result.
The Breyer P-Orridges decided to use this money to fund their next project, the natural culmination of the gradual meshing of their identities that had began through their renaming and identical dressing.
They would undertake reconstructive surgeries to attempt to become identical.
However, rather than using one as the template with the other attempting to match them they decided that they would form a pair with the aim being to form a single 'pandrogenous' being. Neither was to undergo a 'sex change'.
They would meet in the middle...
Lady Jaye had twelve separate surgical procedures on her face while Genesis had fourteen. They both had breast implants on Valentines Day 2003 giving them identical bust sizes and Genesis had two beauty spots tattooed onto his face to replicate the pair that Lady Jaye enjoyed naturally.
A key part of the arrangement was that neither should have anything removed. It was designed as a creative process rather than destructive.
Lady Jaye explained:

'If I could have a penis attached I would do it tomorrow, but for him to lose any part of the body that could give pleasure, that's not the idea...'

Lady Jaye died in 2007 from an undiagnosed heart condition.
The project ended there but its legacy lives on in the physical form of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, a man who loved his wife so much he wanted to become her and a man loved so much that his wife wanted to become him.
But it was never going to be as easy as one of them becoming the other.
Instead they both became each other...

George Psalmanazar: London's First Formosan

In 1702 the Reverend William Innes, an army chaplain, returned from Holland to London bringing with him a fantastic companion who would soon fascinate the city.
That companion was George Psalmanazar, a native of Formosa, an island off the coast of Japan now known as Taiwan.
Innes had met Psalmanazar in Holland where the Formosan had been abandoned having been abducted by Jesuit misssionaries in his own land.
Having baptized him and giving him his new name of George Psalmanazar, a name echoing that of Shalmanasar, a King of Assyria who is recorded in the Bible as having exiled the legendary Ten Tribes of Israel and the conquered people of Samaria, Innes decided to bring his prize back to London to be presented to his Protestant superiors as a heathen convert and, more importantly, a victim of Jesuit terror.
Innes introduced Psalmanazar to Henry Compton, the Bishop of London but word soon spread among the society of the city of the bizarre habits of this new, exotic visitor.
Psalmanazar would eat heavily spiced raw meat, explaining to curious observers that cannibalism was common in Formosa, particularly the consumption of adulterous wives, and that he had become accustomed to food prepared in this manner.
He performed various religious ceremonies based around the worship of the Sun and the Moon and centred around the Formosan calender, slept upright in a chair in the Formosan tradition and began, at the request of Bishop Compton, to translate the catechism into Formosan.
Eventually Psalmanazar bowed to public pressure and produced a book, 'An Historical and Geographical Description of Formosa', that outlined Formosan society for the curious. His summary contained all the colourful details that his audience demanded.
The capital of Formosa was a prosperous city called Xternetsa where polygamy was common as there was a shortage of men due to the demands of the native priests for the sacrifice of up to 18,000 boys a year to appease local gods. Men walked naked but for a silver or gold codpiece that covered their genitals, their diet consisted mostly of serpents hunted with branches and murderers were executed by being hung upside down and shot with arrows.
Many people had their doubts about Psalmanazar and Edmond Halley, fellow of the Royal Society and discoverer of the eponymous comet, challenged him to a debate on Formosan society. Halley questioned Psalmanazar's own complexion which was very fair with blonde hair, unlike any of the other people from the region that had made their way to London. Psalmanazar explained that many Formosans lived underground to avoid the fierce heat of the Sun. He managed to deflect Halley's other questions about Formosa by asking how an Englishman in Formosa would prove he was English to the natives there given how little the two societies knew of one another.
This was the key point in Psalmanazar's appeal. People were eager to learn of exotic locations far away and Formosa was about as far away from London as you could get.
This also meant it was impossible to verify any of Psalmanazar's claims.
Those who did were decried as Jesuits which, given the religious and political climate of Protestant English society of the time, meant they were ignored or shouted down.
Eventually Psalmanazar was invited to study and lecture at Christ Church, Oxford where he fascinated his peers by lecturing with a python wrapped around his neck claiming it was a Formosan technique for keeping cool and studying through the night.
Innes and Psalmanazar parted acrimoniously with the chaplain eventually going to Portugal and leaving his protege in London.
Psalmanazar developed an addiction to opium and found his finances affected by a string of bad investments.
More importantly, people began appearing in London who had visited Formosa and their description of the island was very different to Psalmanazar's.
Initially Psalmanazar would defend himself and claim regional differences of culture for the confusion but eventually the evidence began to accumulate.
In 1706 George Psalmanazar made it known to London society that he was not Formosan and had never even visited the country.
In fact, he had never left Europe.
Born in France in his mother sent him away aged 16 to find his father in Germany.
He set off but soon ran out of food and money and decided upon an imposture to aid his journey. He stole a cloak and staff from the reliquary of a church and began to beg for alms claiming to be an Irish pilgrim. He soon realised that people were familiar enough with Irish culture to be able to make out his deception fairly easily so he set his sights a bit further afield and began to claim to be Japanese.
This worked reasonably well until he met Reverend William Innes who was doubtful about the young man's claims to Japanese ancestry. Despite knowing no Japanese, Innes asked him to translate an extract from Cicero into Japanese for him.
The young man, knowing Innes knew no Japanese, did so happily and produced a page of nonsense for the chaplain. But Innes had anticipated this and simply took the translation and handed back the extract and asked him to do just one more thing.
Translate the same extract again.
The imposter lost his nerve and admitted his deception to Innes, begging not to be revealed.
Innes looked the man who would become George Psalmanazar square in the eye and simply said:

'We'll have to be more careful from now on...'

They worked together to develop his new Formosan persona with Innes deciding that this nationality would be obscure enough to be able to avoid detection in London.
Once he was unmasked Psalmanazar threw himself on the mercy of London society.
Most people were unconcerned, the craze for Formosa having long passed.
More importantly Psalmanazar could count among his friends the famed lexicographer Samuel Johnson who admired the imposter's contrition and made himself the chief protector of the fraudulent Formosan.
A man given to plain speaking and not afraid to be among the harshest of critics, Johnson said of Psalmanazar:

'He was the best man I knew. His piety, penitence and virtue exceeded almost what we read as wonderful even in the lives of the saints. I should as soon thought of contradicting a bishop.'

Of course, if that Bishop is Henry Compton and he's waving around a copy of his Formosan catechism, perhaps a spot of contradiction wouldn't be out of place...