The Possession of George Lukins

George Lukins was a tailor and carrier from Yatton in Somerset who suffered violent fits for about eighteen years and claimed to be possessed by seven devils. On 13 June 1788 seven clergymen prayed over him in the vestry of Temple Church in Bristol, and the fits stopped. The case was argued over in pamphlets and newspapers at the time. Some of the sources you will find online give the year as 1778. That is a typo that has been copied from page to page. The exorcism and every pamphlet about it date from 1788.

The Fits

Lukins was born around 1743 or 1744. According to the accounts that survive, his troubles began around 1770, when he fell senseless while acting in a Christmas play. He is said to have believed that an invisible hand had struck him. Over the next years he had fits in which he barked, sang, spoke in strange voices and claimed to be the devil. A surgeon at Wrington, Dr Smith, treated him without success. He is also recorded as spending about twenty weeks at St George’s Hospital in London in 1775, where he was judged incurable. Lukins said that seven devils held him and that only the prayers of seven clergymen could drive them out.

Bristol, June 1788

On 31 May 1788 a woman named Sarah Barber, who had once lived in Yatton, approached the Reverend Joseph Easterbrook, vicar of Temple Church in Bristol, on Lukins’s behalf. An appeal for help appeared in the Bristol Gazette on 11 June. It is believed to have been written by William Robert Wake, the vicar of Backwell. On Friday 13 June seven clergymen, among them Easterbrook and Methodist ministers, held the service in the church vestry with hymns and prayer. Easterbrook reported that the devils were cast out in the name of the Trinity and sent to hell. Lukins then praised God, said the Lord’s Prayer and thanked those present. Crowds gathered outside, and news of the event spread to Bath and London.

We have found no reliable count of the people present in the vestry, so this page gives none.

The Doubters

The case was disputed at once. Samuel Norman, a surgeon in Yatton who had known Lukins since 1770, called him an impostor in his 1788 book Authentic Anecdotes of George Lukins. He argued that St George’s Hospital had discharged Lukins for lameness, which Norman thought was also feigned. The Gentleman’s Magazine put the symptoms down to epilepsy and St Vitus’s dance. The physician John Ferriar, who wrote on demonology and medicine, also judged Lukins an impostor. A satirical print called Imposture’s Last Shift mocked the exorcism.

Easterbrook defended it in An Appeal to the Public respecting George Lukins, printed in Bristol in 1788. A separate anonymous Narrative of the Extraordinary Case of George Lukins, with a letter from Wake, appeared the same year.

Assessment

The contemporary pamphlets are good evidence that the exorcism happened and that people argued over it. They are not evidence that demons were involved. The voices, barking and ventriloquism fit a skilled performer, and Lukins was known as a singer, ventriloquist and amateur actor. Epilepsy or a dissociative condition are other modern readings. A fit that ends after a dramatic, publicised ritual is common in such cases. No independent record shows how he fared afterwards.

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