MRS. DR. STANLEY : THE GREAT ENGLISH PALMIST AND PHRENOLOGIST .... MAGNETISM AND ELECTRICITY IS LIFE! DR. STANLEY IS ENDOWED WITH GREAT POWER AND TREATS WITH NEVER-FAILING SUCCESS ALL FEMALE DISEASES ... [caption title] de [Phrenology] - 1890]

[Manchester, N.H.?: s.n., 1890]. Very good. [ca. 1890s] Broadside, 10 x 5 3/4 inches. On green paper. Small discoloration, affecting a few characters of text, light horizontal fold, very minor chipping at edges (affecting no text). Very good.

Broadside advertising the services of palmist, phrenologist, and clairvoyante "Mrs. Dr. Stanley," who exhibited the "Strange Gift of Prophecy" and specialized in counseling on matters of marriage and healing of women's afflictions. The lower portion of the broadside is completed in print with the fees (fifty cents to two dollars) and address of her current engagement: No. 188 Merrimack St. (likely in Manchester, New Hampshire). Newspaper records show Dr. Mrs. Stanley touring the Midwest, the Northeast, and California between 1890 and 1902. In late 1890 and early 1891, she was the subject of some controversy in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. The November 30, 1890, issue of the NEWS-DEALER there reported that she and another woman, both "alleged fortune tellers and 'trance mediums'," became the targets of "the eagle eye of that great guardian of public morality Con[stable] McGroarty," who brought them before the mayor on the basis of "an absurd old law." The mayor was forced to fine and expel them, despite the fact, as the paper remarked, nobody had "ever complained that these two ladies did any harm." Six weeks later, Stanley's name reappeared in the NEWS-DEALER when a Mrs. Ludwig from nearby Pittstown poisoned herself with an ounce of arsenic. Local rumors circulated that family troubles were the cause and that "Mrs. Ludwig thought that her husband did not treat her as a husband ought to." Mr. Ludwig, however, denied "all of the above and claims that the cause was due to what Mrs. Dr. Stanley, the fortuneteller who was driven out of Wilkes-Barre recently, had told Mrs. Ludwig that Mr. Ludwig would desert her and that she would never see him again."