Dr Alexander Cannon, the king's psychic

[TonyGosling]

DR ALEXANDER CANNON & MOUNTBATTEN’S MOST SECRET REPORT: STRANGER THAN FICTION?
https://bitsofbooksblog.wordpress.com/2014/08/29/dr-alexander-cannon-t he-kings-psychic-sean-stowell-2014/



Following on from looking at The Relentless Gimmickry of Jimmy (Part 1) and his claims to be capable of mass hypnotism, a skill honed by a hypnotist he trained with on the Isle of Man – and also a glimpse into one of Savile’s associates Lady Valerie Goulding’s messenger role for her father, Edward’s lawyer during the abdication (later heading the CRC in Dublin and introducing Savile to Charles Haughey) I was interested to discover a newly published book concerning a previously unexplored hypnotist living on the Isle of Man and materials relating to his role in Edward’s abdication and others such as Dr Cosmo Lang, then Archbishop of Canterbury.

Alerted to the discovery of an MI5 file down the back of a police filing cabinet on the Isle of Man, Sean Stowell talked to those still alive who knew Dr Alexander Cannon and transcribed tapes to unravel a quite amazing story – and as he suggests, the tale of a wily Rasputin and the political machinations of courtiers manoeuvring him firmly out and a surprise role for the Isle of Man as surprise goat-starers’ central during WWII.

Screen Shot 2014-08-31 at 23.16.31Dr Alexander Cannon – The King’s Psychic (by Sean Stowell)

“Dr Cannon was the talk of the town on the island back then, just as he had been amongst the cocktail set in 1930s London high society, but no one in the island knew the real story about Cannon’s secret life before he left London. He had run a clinic for confidence building, treating nervous and even sexual disorders, on Harley Street, just yards from the clinic of Lionel Logue, the speech therapist who worked with George VI on his stammer.

He moved to Ballamoar Castle in the Isle of Man at the start of the war in 1939. His rich and famous followers, including some top brass of the military, were only too happy to make the journey all the way over to the island, not an inconsiderable journey in those days.

Decades later I was introduced via a totally different route to the world of Dr Cannon, namely through MI5 documents, official archives, history books and some very elderly people. They helped me piece together this Yorkshireman’s role in the 1936 abdication.

Dr Cannon was said to be a ‘master of black magic in England’ enjoying a powerful hold over the psychologically-ailing King Edward who suffered from drink and confidence problems.

Most people still believe the official story of the abdication: that Edward gave up the throne for the love of Mrs Simpson. But the documents and recordings I have seen and listened to not only reveal an Establishment plot to oust Edward (the key plotter was Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Cosmo Lang), but also reveal how the fascist far-right tried to subvert that plot which had Dr Cannon playing a central role.

Tape recordings transcribed in ‘The King’s Psychic’ describe how Edward’s fascist Blackshirt supporters claimed to have tried to expose Dr Cannon. They wanted to protect the only monarch they believed would ‘tackle the march of communism’.

After the abdication in December 1936, Dr Cannon did not disappear into the sunset – quite the opposite.

He moved to the island and continued practising his lucrative mystic brand of medicine and extended his sphere of influence to include many top rank military chiefs.

From the RAF base next to his clinic at Ballamoar Castle in the north of the island, he regularly flew to London. He was acting as an unofficial and ‘psychic guru’ to his believers, some of them based at Admiralty. He engineered bizarre experiments in telepathy which, incredibly, caught the attention of the highest ranks.

One such attempt to develop telepathic powers in a patient involved arranging a love affair between an aristocratic Special Operations Executive commander and Cannon’s beautiful young psychic assistant, Joyce de Rhonda. Match-maker Cannon believed communicating by telepathy would be far easier if the subjects were in love. They did fall in love – passionately so.

The Special Operations commander Sir Geoffrey Congreve tried to deploy his new telepathic ‘skill’ during a raid on a Nazi base in Norway. An Enigma code machine discovered during the mission was brought back to England to help break German codes. Rather ridiculously, Dr Cannon claimed the glory and the commander was called to celebrate the find at Downing Street.” (The Dr who dabbled in the Occult, Isle of Many Today, 16 August 2014)

Cannon’s beliefs re love and telepathy being easier for those romantically involved reminded me of a fascinating book claiming to give a first hand account of involvement in several SEO/Commando operations during WWII called ‘The Mountbatten Report – Most Secret – Christopher Robin goes to war‘. This involved Churchill, his right-hand man Major Desmond Morton and Lord Mountbatten employing a young boy from a public school (there’s more than a whiff of a male version of Pygmalion and Professor Higgins with Eliza Doolittle) moulding him into the most perfect junior spy, licensed and trained to kill. Also recounted is the discovery of a method for the transmission of coded messages within music over public airwaves – something which I remember thinking at the time could look a lot like telepathy given the right spin on stage and prompted me to re-read parts of Ray Teret’s book detailing Savile’s percussive talents and practising the ‘Paradiddles’.

About the Author – Sean Stowell – Published by Great Northern Books

“Stowell, a BBC producer based in Leeds, has been working on the project on and off for the last 14 years. It started when he got a call from his father who lives on the Isle of Man. “His friend is an archivist and came across a file found in the back of a police filing cabinet where it had been for decades. Had it been found in London it probably would have just disappeared but because it was the Isle of Man it went into a public archive.”

The file in question was Dr Alexander Cannon’s MI5 file. “My dad said ‘you should have a look at this’ because he remembers Dr Cannon him from the 1950s, by which time he’d become something of a showbiz figure of fun.”

The file showed that Dr Cannon ran a lavish, if slightly odd, clinic at Ballamoar Castle on the Isle of Man where wealthy members of the upper classes came to see him with their various psychological ailments, ranging from battle stress to impotency. “Rich and famous people, those on the periphery of royalty would go and see him. There was all sorts of gossip on the Isle of Man about who would come for treatment,” says Stowell.”



Colney Hatch and Aleister Crowley’s Second Wife

Dr Cannon was a Yorkshire man who studied at Leeds University carrying out training at Leeds General Infirmary before fully qualifying in 1928, four years after graduating in 1924. From 1924 onwards Cannon was travelling abroad studying Beri-Beri in China and publishing in the British Medical Journal, taking his wife who he forces to endure many abortions before coming back to England and going through a divorce. He ends up working in Colney Hatch Asylum in Friern Barnet, near Arnos Grove North East London.

“In 1932 Crowley’s second wife Nicaraguan-born Maria Teresa Ferrari de Miramar, was admitted to Colney Hatch with Alcohol and mental health problems. His first wife, Rose Kelly, had also been committed to an asylum with alcoholic dementia. Clearly marriage to Crowley was hazardous.

Suffering from delusions that she was the daughter of the King and Queen (Crowley and Cannon both claimed to be reincardnations of King Henry VIII), Maria came under the care of Dr Cannon.

Cannon at Colney Hatch was first and foremost a hospital doctor while pushing an alternative lifestyle. Crowly wrote in his diary: ‘Cannon has rather a bug in his brain over hypnosis. He advised me to leave Maria severely alone. He agreed that the case is hopeless, even should sanity temporarily return.” [Loc 939]

As it Happens, Kelly, the surname of Crowley’s first wife was also Savile’s mother’s maiden name. Crowley tests out Dr Cannon’s ‘psychograph’ with poor results.

In 1933 Dr Cannon was sacked from Colney Hatch Mental Asylum and there was an unexplained 18 month gap in General Medical Council records before Dr Cannon re-emerged with enough money to enter into practice in Harley Street, a few doors down from Lionel Logue at no 146 Harley Street who had treated Bertie (Duke of York to become King George VI), Duke of Windsor’s younger brother, for his stammer ten years previously. If one was to pick up high society as clientele, Harley Street was the place to do it.

“Mirroring the MI5 file on Cannon, Compton says: “He vanished and no-one knows quite where he went until he came to number 22 to 24 Welbeck Street (in fact number 53) and a number of well-known people went to him for treatment.” [Loc 1665]



Harley Street, Edward VIII, Vienna

Dr Cannon had allegedly treated Edward for his alcoholism, first in Vienna

“Then Compton describes Edward’s problem in exactly the way Dr William Brown described it to Archbishop Lang: “Now it’s a well-known fact that when you drive one weakness such as a drug out of a person, another weakness takes its place… and the story told to me was whereas he was partly cured of drunkenness, he was wholly depending on a woman who had taken the place of that drink. Mrs Simpson first appeared in London life in October 1934, and by May 1935 she was being openly named in the lighter newspapers as the Prince of Wales’s girl. She ousted Mrs Dudley Ward in his affections and took complete possession of him. He would never make a decision without consulting Mrs Simpson. If she was not there he was quite helpless and when he called for her and she was not there he would threaten suicide. He simply could not be without it – or her – I should say.”

Compton laughed, embarrassed by his faux pas.”

“Unaffected by convention, Edward alarmed politicians by wading in with a comment that ‘something should be done’ about unemployment and poverty in South Wales following a highly publicised-visit.” [Loc 1287]

“After Edward’s visit to poverty stricken Wales in November 1936, not long before the Edward and Mrs Simpson crisis hit the headlines, one executive of the Daily Mail wrote: “The suggestion has been made that Edward could, if he wished, make himself the Dictator of the Empire. Some minds see in his South Wales activity and brusqueness a sign that he may yet dominate the politicians.” [Loc 1692]

Compton’s recording:

“It is possible to guess that it was the Imperial Policy Group, a right-wing group of appeasers which argued that Britain should stay out of European conflicts, most certainly appease and work with Hitler, but concentrate on its empire and rebuild Britain’s economic and political power via the colonies.

He says there were some extremely notable, but absent, supporters who only ever sent their minions to meetings: “It was quite the most influential moevement so far as prominent people are concerned. It occupied one floor of what was known as British Industries House, which was at the Marble Arch end of Oxford Street. When I last passed it I saw it was the C&A building. Who financed it I am not quite sure. One of the men who did was Sir Harry Brittain (wealthy former politician and journalist.) The movement was designed to strengthen or links with the colonies and to avert the coming war.

It was supported in an underground way by Nevill Chamberlain… he was not a great man of course: he meant well, but he was rather weak and never dared appear there… The man we had to deal with was Sir Charles Morgan Webb… Charmberlain’s financial adviser to the House of Lords.” In the recording, he gives a unique view on why the Blackshirts had put so much hope in the man they hoped would be leader.

“The Germans certainly believed Edward was going to form an alliance with them when he became King. Ribbentrop said as much at an Anglo German dinner which was attended by Edward when he said at the end, “I think we should need a dictator here before long.” That was all interpreted as going along the same Nazi line.”

British Industries House now houses the Primark Flagship shop in London.

Stowell’s book goes into a lot of detail over the actions of main players in the abdication such as Dr Cosmo Lang the Archbishop of Canterbury which I haven’t even covered here, although important.

The 1939 move to the Isle of Man

The Island’s Governor was Admiral Lord Granville (1880-1953), who was married to Lady Rose, elder sister of the Queen Mother, and Admiral Lord Granville was very concerned about Dr Cannon. Presumably gossip about those being treated at Cannon’s Clinic for Nervous Diseases in his castle next to an RAF base could find a way back to King George VI via this route. However it appears Cannon had the attention and utmost faith of two key people: Sir Roger Keyes and Commander Cosgreve.

“Following the abdication crisis he might easily have slipped off the radar, but instead he became an influential figure with the Admiralty for a time. “He convinced them there was value to be had in the paranormal.”

Stowell says Dr Cannon promoted himself as a kind of psychic guru and employed two sisters, who he made change their names to Joyce and Rhonda da Rhonda, to become his ‘psychic’ assistants. He set up a clinic on the Isle of Man where he continued practising his highly lucrative and mystic brand of medicine.

He acted as an unofficial and very secret “psychic guru” to a select group of people, including some based at the Admiralty and engineered some bizarre experiments in telepathy. One such attempt involved encouraging a love affair between an aristocratic Special Operations Executive (SOE) commander and one of his young assistants, as he believed telepathy would work better if the subjects were in love.

The commander, who was also an SOE commando trainer, tried to deploy his new telepathic ‘skill’ during a raid on a Nazi base in Norway. An Enigma code machine discovered during the mission was brought back to England to help break German codes. Dr Cannon claimed the glory and the commander was called to celebrate the find at Downing Street.” [The Curious Case of Dr Cannon, 8 May 2014, Yorkshire Post]

Cosgreve was the SEO Commander who had fallen in love one of Cannon’s sister assistants, Joyce, who at 22, was just under half his age. Stowell includes many journal entries from Cosgreve who was convinced that his telepathy was improving when he sent messages to Joyce, although they were never so good as when Joyce sent him messages – he got them right a lot more often. Funny that.

Mid July 1940 Sir Roger Keyes had been appointed as Director of Churchill’s new baby – ‘Combined Operations’; the Commandos.[loc 2868]

Screen Shot 2014-08-31 at 22.19.04
SEO Training at Inverailot House (just over an hour away from Glencoe)

22 July 1940 – Special Operations Executive was founded with the training centre set up a Inverailot Castle in the north of Scotland (just over an hour from Glencoe on the West coast of Scotland) – this was where Eric Sykes and William Ewart Fairbairn were training men in the art of hand to hand combat http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWSLXXdg9Bw

“Such was Savile’s admiration of the marines, he was buried clutching his Green Beret, in his gold-painted coffin, which was angled overlooking the sea at Scarborough.

He was awarded the honorary title after Savile and his brother Vince, then a serving officer with the Royal Navy, completed the marine’s arduous 30-mile speed march test over Dartmoor, which must be done in eight hours while carrying 30lbs of kit.

After Savile’s death, his possessions were auctioned for charity.

Among items going under the hammer was his Royal Marines’ flying suit, bearing his name Jimmy Savile OBE, and a bottle of 15-year-old single Highland malt from the Officers’ Mess at the Royal Marines’ Commando Training Centre, Lympstone.

When Savile died, just days short of his 85th birthday, he was carried by Royal Marine pallbearers.” [Royal Marines erase memory of Jimmy, 19 October 2012, Exmouth Journal]

Jimmy Savile in sex assaults at Marine base [Daily Star 2 July 2013]

Sir Jimmy Savile’s Commando Training Exclusive [ Yorkshire Evening Post, 4 November 2011]



The Final Mountbatten Report – Most Secret – Christopher Robin goes to War

“This report was requested by Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1976. It was not released by the Mountbatten Library so the original author passed it to the publishers thirty years later, citing the wishes of Mountbatten.

This is the story of Churchill, Morton, Mountbatten and Ian Fleming’s Paladin – who from the age of 15 1/2 was a contract killer carrying out some of the great deceptions that turned World War Two.”

I hadn’t paid too much attention to this book mainly because of the website and style of marketing, which isn’t fair to the contents or the narrative style. What struck me was the author’s love of Whitby due to being in the sea scouts at Ampleforth College (the importance of Scarborough and its coastline to Savile is never far from my mind due to his choice of burial location and position in highlighting this to us), and the alleged use of child spies at top schools who had schoolfriends with influential and important fathers key to the direction of the phoney war before Hitler invaded Norway and Denmark, possibly picked because their own fathers or mothers genes had shown ‘good breeding’ for such lethal undercover missions or held positions within a close circle that could be relied upon for discretion. Major Desmond Morton, the subject of Gill Bennett’s Churchill’s Man of Mystery, was selecting children in his care during the 1930s to be trained for daring missions on the declaration of war in September 1939?

This book claims to be a first-person report requested to be written by Churchill and Lord Mountbatten, written by John Ainsworth-Davis, the son of Jack (also John) Ainsworth-Davis, a Welsh Olympic Gold medal winner of 1920 Antwerp who later becomes a a Urological surgeon with a house at 69 Harley Street during the 1930s. Jack got his pilot wings in WWI and went to Cambridge the year after the war ended and there became a very popular chap who was also an excellent musician and scholar, setting up a jazz band with turns from comedians the Hulbert brothers and even Lord Mountbatten as a 19 year old getting involved on the drums . He would also no doubt have been a very useful chap to know if one needed some confidential help with one’s genito-urinary functions especially any form of sexually transmitted diseases contracted.



A missing author?

The royalties are being kept for the author to claim.

John Ainsworth-Davis, post – 2003, pre-2007

[TonyGosling]

M’s interest in Crowley’s Magick

See further for mention of the Isle of Man hypnotist and Sean Stowell’s book The King’s Psychiatrist which details Dr Alexander Cannon’s treatment of Crowley’s first wife.

“Another unsung hero of World War II is Aleister Crowley provided we accept his claim that MI5 invited him to organise some woodland magic of his own, code-named Operation Mistletoe, in Ashdown Forest. Also rumoured to have been involved are Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond books, and Dennis Wheatley whose novels about magic and witchcraft were immensely popular in the nineteen-fifties and sixties. While undeniable that both men worked for the security services during the war there is no evidence that they participated in such an exercise, reportedly the brain child of Maxwell Knight, Head of Section B5(b). (The selfsame Maxwell Knight was an occasional visitor to the vicarage in Limehouse though his MI5 colleague, the predatory Tom Driberg MP, was less welcome and came only once, a former chum of Crowley’s, he was famously described by Winston Churchill as “the sort of man who gives sodomy a bad name.”)” [Magic without Mirrors, David Conway, p.220-221]

Magic without Mirrors: The Making of a Magician, David Conway
Magic without Mirrors: The Making of a Magician, David Conway

photo 3 (16)

“There are others which are more telling, though still obscure. His first wife Gladys, I learnt, died in the Overseas Club after some sort of occult misadventure in which the notorious Aleister Crowley was involved – certainly I’d have been unwilling to enquire too deeply into that particular incident. Black magic was not a subject that held any attraction for me. I accepted M’s interest in it, hoping it was purely academic, but for myself, I preferred to leave it well and truly alone: M understood this. When I tore up a photograph of Aleister Crowley which he had kept, as I believed it to be unlucky, he only laughed.” [p.45]

https://bitsofbooksblog.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/the-book-the-british- tried-to-ban-one-girls-war-joan-miller-1986/