Frederick Charles Hannen Swaffer was born in Lindfield, Sussex, England in 1879, the eldest of eight children. After receiving his education at Stroud Green Grammar School, Kent, he apprenticed at a local newspaper in Folkestone as a reporter. He joined the Daily Mail in 1902 and was employed there for the next seventeen years. He married Helen Hannah in 1904 and, despite several affairs, they remained married until her death in 1956.
Swaffer held several positions as a journalist. He edited the Northcliffe’s Weekly Dispatch and helped develop the Daily Mirror into a mass-market publication. He wrote several columns and became drama critic for the Daily Express and the Sunday Express in 1926. Some of his books included Northcliffe’s Return (1925), Really Behind the Scenes (1929), Hannen Swaffer’s Who’s Who (1929) and Inspiration (1929).
Swaffer’s interest in spiritualism began in the 1930s. He formed a mediumship circle in 1932 which met once a week for four decades. During the circles, visitors witnessed a great deal of physical phenomena, including direct voice, trumpet spectacles and materialization. The famed spirit guide, Silver Birch, made his first appearance in Hannon Swaffer’s Circle through an unknown medium at the time, Maurice Barbanel. Silver Birch changed the course in spiritualism through his many teachings that came through while Barbanel was in a deep trance.
During one circle, Silver Birch said, “The world will not be converted in a blinding flash like Saul on the road to Damascus. Gradually, the light of spiritual truths will break through, as more people become aware of the great knowledge and more instruments are available for the power of the Great White Spirit to use. You must remember that the things of the spirit require careful nurture and progress. Sudden conversions would not be enduring, and our work is intended to be permanent.
“Each soul that becomes an instrument for the Great Spirit, each soul that moves out of darkness into the light, out of ignorance into knowledge, out of superstition into truth, is helping to advance the world, for each one of these is a nail that is driven into the coffin of the world’s materialism.”
Barbanell, with Swaffer’s help, launched the Psychic News in 1932. At that time, his guide’s teachings had been heard only by the few guests attending Swaffer’s circle. Swaffer suggested that the teachings appear as a regular feature in the publication. Barbanell agreed under the conditions that he would not be named, and that his spirit guide’s name be change from Big Jump to Silver Birch. By the time their identities were revealed, Silver Birch’s teachings had been well established.
In the 1950s, Swaffer wrote a regular column in the Sunday paper, The People. He died in London at the age of eighty-two in 1962.
Additional reading:
Andrews, Linton, “Swaffer, Hannen (1879–1962)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2011
Driberg, Tom. 1974. The Life and Times of Hannon Swaffer. The Book Service, LTD.
Swaffer, Hannon. 1945. My Greatest Story. W.H. Allen, London
https://theothersidepress.com/the-hannen-swaffer-circle-1009
https://www.psychicnews.org.uk/articles/contribution-spiritualism