Taking prime location in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Friday 10th January 1941, some spiritualists had got themselves into a right legal pickle. With a bond set at $500, Elizabeth Graff, head of the First Church of Spiritualism, and Vitali Florendo, a spiritualist, had been arrested under charges of practising medicine without a licence. In reality, they hadn’t been donning scrubs and prodding about with hernias, but practising a strange form of deceptive spiritual healing, or fortune telling . These two spiritualists were legitimate targets in the larger play of Robert Voelker vs Pittsburgh Spiritualism, a man with a worthy mission of his own. Presiding over the courtroom affairs was Squire William Lenzer, Jr. who clearly realised that he was onto a good ‘un with the persecution of the new religion and its eccentric supporters.
Graff had been served with a warrant in the middle of a seance[1] and was told to put up a hefty bond, or else she was done for. In response, Graff said ‘We’re no fortune tellers, we are spiritualists. I defy them to put me in jail as a fortune teller. I’ve been in the work 13 years and I’ve never been arrested before…I’ll go to jail for my religion. They are doing the same thing to me as they did to Christ.’
During these first court appearances, neither defence attorney was called, nor – according to the reports – was ‘Voelker’s pretty 20-year-old estranged wife, Alberta.’ Now it seems that Voelker’s distrust of spiritualists and alternative therapies emerged due to Alberta’s interactions with them. Indeed, in an attempt to cure Alberta of her ailments, the spiritualist Florendo had marked her with ‘strange, indelible-pencil “tattoo” marks’, essentially covering her in 1940s permanent marker in an attempt to cure her ailments. Voelker remarked that ‘My wife was going to a regular doctor, but Florendo said she was wasting her time. I took her to see him once. She undressed and he marked a lot of lines, circles, dots and things on her stomach. She went to see him three or four other times, and each time had those marks on her.’ And you can bet this wouldn’t have been for free.
According to reports Voelker ‘was disgusted and he and his wife had numerous arguments over the spiritualists and she left him, taking their 14-month-old-son Robert Jr.’ This split was the fifth in two and a half years, when she left on the 20th December.
But what of the female spiritualist, Elizabeth Graff? Voelker opened his testimony with a character assassination of Graff; she was not a spiritualist, nor a medium, being little more than a fortune teller, and a damn good one at that. It was customary in their Spiritualist church for visitors to write up to three questions on slips of paper, after which they were randomly drawn and answered by spiritual means, via Graff and her compatriots. She firmly denied that they told fortunes, however the fee for answering such questions was a firm 25 cents. Graff’s hit rates were very high, and Voelker’s wife was absolutely besotted with these new powers she was witnessing at church. Voelker had asked the question ‘When am I going to work?”, after which he was told “soon”, and was employed the very next day. However this wasn’t enough for Alberta and she kept returning with more questions, an attentiveness that went on to cause several separations, increasing anger between the couple, and eventually, this court case. In raising a case against Graff’s seemingly unstoppable powers, he called two other witnesses, both of whom had solicited wisdom via Graff’s paper method. One, James Willy, confirmed that none of his three questions came true, whereas the other, Mrs Sarah Miteler offered herself up as a witness after learning of Voelker’s charges. She testified that she’d asked Graff ‘Will my husband get well?’, to which Graff answered that ‘she was sorry but it looked bad.’ Indeed, this did not come to pass, and her husband was sat in the public gallery during the court case itself. She added that ‘I was in that church only once, but that was enough for me. I don’t know how I got down from the third floor of that place. I was a nervous wreck. I should have had her arrested right away.’
Lenzler, The Justice of the Peace, set Graffs bond at $500 before moving onto Florendo, the great 1940s Sharpie-healer. According to the furious Voekler, ‘He asserted that on one occasion he accompanied his wife suffering from an ailment, to the Sawmill way home of the spiritualist and was witness to the strange “tattooing” ceremony. Led there by his wife, he said, he watched as Florendo marked circles, stripes “and dots and dashes” on her stomach.’ Spiritual and strange faith healers’ methods can be amusing to behold, and I’ve certainly considered scribbling on my family since reading these reports. However, when children are involved, it’s a different story.
On Christmas Day, 1940, Voekler came to his in-laws house to bring his son presents, only to find that they boy wasn’t there. Instead, he was told that his son was unwell and had been taken to Florendo’s for treatment. Rushing to Florendo’s house, he said ‘there were the pencil marks all over the child’s chest. That was more than I could stand.’
The medical doctor that was subsequently called by Voelker testified that ‘While examining Robert Voelker Jr. , December 25, I saw peculiar markings on the child’s chest’, later confirming that he saw ‘no medical certificates of paraphernalia (of Florendo’s), but declared that he had heard him referred to several times as “doctor.’” The medical doctor also confirmed that the child had bronchitis, not a condition easily cured with scribbles.
Florendo was asked directly in these early stages of arrest whether he’s referred to himself as a doctor, and didn’t miss a beat in confirming his magical status. ‘Yes, I am doctor of healing, I heal anything I can. I have quite a few customers. I take care of any kind that’s sick.’ Florendo’s bail was marked at an enormous $1000, and was indicted on a charge of practicing medicine without a licence. His outlook didn’t look great. During the trial, Alberta Voelker finally spoke, testifying that ‘Dr. Florendo put the marks on me. But he didn’t give me any medicine. He said you have to pray to get good health. He didn’t prescribe anything. Once he said ‘God’ and then something that sounded like prayers in a foreign language.’
A handful of spiritualists came out in Graff’s support, claiming that she had possessed mystical abilities since birth, and had the gift of prophecy, but neither side of the defence seemed confident in their position.
On 7th March 1941, Judge A. E. Swoyer have his verdict. Elizabeth Graff, spiritualist medium of East Ohio Street was found guilty of fortune telling. Ultimately, she received a suspended sentence and ordered to pay the costs of her 30 day trial.
But what of Florendo, the man who tried to cure a toddler’s bronchitis with symbols? He was acquitted of practising medicine without a license. He was ordered to pay costs, but nothing more. He continued to work as he always had, slipping straight back into the spiritualist community, and disappears from records.
This should be the end of the story, but things get grimmer still. Later, in April of the same year, Alberta was pleading for a divorce. She begged for the judge to pass their divorce papers as she’d ‘rather be dead’ than married to him, and that, ‘I’ve had him arrested six times. He abused me and struck me.’ She claimed that all this trouble started with the spiritualist healing affair, and wanted him gone. All was in place, with Robert ordered to pay her $5 a week, yet she refused to allow him to see his son, meaning that the case continued to roll on and snowballed into a horribly messy affair, played out through local newspapers for months. I can’t be sure what happened to the Voelker family, or even Florendo for that matter, but we can only hope that one of them kept his pens to himself.
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