The George Lukins Possession
A Yatton tailor said seven devils held him for eighteen years. Seven clergymen prayed over him at Temple Church, Bristol, in 1788; critics called it fraud.
George Lukins, a tailor and carrier from Yatton in Somerset, had violent fits for about eighteen years from around 1770. He claimed that seven devils possessed him and that only seven clergymen could drive them out. On 13 June 1788 seven clergymen, including the Bristol vicar Joseph Easterbrook, prayed over him in the vestry of Temple Church in Bristol. Afterwards he was described as calm and thankful. Many websites give the year as 1778. That is a typo. The exorcism and the pamphlets about it date from 1788.
What Is Documented
Easterbrook printed An Appeal to the Public respecting George Lukins in Bristol in 1788, and an anonymous Narrative of the Extraordinary Case of George Lukins appeared the same year. An appeal for help was published in the Bristol Gazette on 11 June 1788. The service itself was held on Friday 13 June. No reliable headcount of onlookers survives, so none is given here.
The Doubters
Samuel Norman, a Yatton surgeon who had known Lukins since 1770, called him an impostor in Authentic Anecdotes of George Lukins (1788). The Gentleman’s Magazine blamed epilepsy and St Vitus’s dance, and the physician John Ferriar also judged him an impostor. Lukins was known locally as a singer, ventriloquist and Christmas-play actor, which fits a skilled performer. Nothing independent shows what became of him afterwards.
The main page for this case is The Possession of George Lukins.
Sources
- George Lukins (Wikipedia) - summary of the case, the 1788 pamphlets and the critics
- The Devil and George Lukins: a 1788 exorcism in Bristol (Brewminate) - narrative account of the Bristol events
- Temple Church, Bristol (Wikipedia) - the church where the rite was held