Evelyn Penrose the world's most successful dowser?

[BillSkeptic]

I am looking for information on the water diviner Evelyn Penrose (1882-1971). She was described by proponents as the most successful water diviner.

It is alleged that Penrose worked as a dowser for the British, Australian and Canadian governments.

Kenneth Roberts in his book The Seventh Sense (1953) says she was the "official government-employed dowser for British Columbia." Other sources say she was employed in 1931, but these ''sources'' are all paranormal books. I cannot find any reliable sources.

The paranormal proponents who have written about her usually write of her very positively. For example Francis Hitching in his book Dowsing: The Psi Connection (1978) writes:

During the years in which she worked in Canada, finding not only water, but also copper, silver, lead, and gold mines, and rich deposits of oil, she was calculated to have a success rate of more than 90 per cent.

But I cannot verify such claims.

Penrose wrote an autobiography Adventure Unlimited: A Diviner Travels the World (1958), I have not checked it out yet but it will obviously be heavily biased.

I guess my question is, does anyone know anything about Penrose, or of any skeptical information. I am interested in this person.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Mixed results here. (second article down)

http://www.bcfga.com/249/Body+Blows+to+Control

In the only records when she was employed by a district in British Columbia, she had no success. When the BC government hired her, SHE reported raging successes but the comments from even the satisfied folks aren't cited nor verified, and they cut her loose the following year. (Apparently this was during a drought in BC.)

 

[BillSkeptic]

Thank you for the link. I cannot verify any of her successes.

Penrose was a friend of Beverley Nichols, he mentions her in his book Powers That Be (1966), here is what he says:

The Minister of Finance in the Province of British Columbia is presumably a respectable person. We may assume that he does not prepare his budgets merely by gazing into crystals. The Attorney General of the Province may be granted a similar character and so may the Minister of Mines and the deputy Minister of Agriculture. If all these four gentlemen got into the witness box, of their own, volition, and announced to whom it may concern that Miss Penrose had performed these miracles in their province under their very noses, the most sceptical critic would sit up and take notice.

Well, that is precisely what these four gentlemen did. Their testimony deals with her work in Canada over a period of several years, not only in finding water but in prospecting for mineral and oils - sometimes on the spot, sometimes from a map, sometimes at a distance of thousands of miles. Ministers of state do not indulge in ecstasies, particularly on such controversial matters, in which public money is involved. But they went as far as they could.

Thus - from the Minister of the Mines: 'The tracings of Miss Penrose made over a map of the Cariboo district when she was using a pendulum in my office coincided exactly with the information received from engineers in the district under whom operations are being carried on.'

'I bespeak for her a hearing,' demanded the Minister of Finance. The Attorney General described her work in water-divining as 'very satisfactory'. He added: 'She was also asked, while employed on this work, to check up possibilities of oil being found in a certain section of the Province. It is to be noted that her reports entirely agreed with the views of geologists who had been employed in checking up the strata in the section of the province.

The Department of Agriculture was equally enthusiastic. 'Having personally accompanied Miss Penrose on both water - and oil-finding trip I am in a position to voice for her outstanding ability.' Most significant of all was the fact that solely on her advice, drilling and digging operations were initiated and that 'many satisfactory reports have been received after sinking the wells'.

Yet no specific dates, names or references are given. Where is the documentation for these claims? It is a mystery indeed. I am left to the conclusion that she exaggerated her claims and the above may be outright fiction.