AFC – Arthur Findlay College, Stansted Hall.
DL- Douglas Lawrence.
EHB – Mrs Emma Hardinge Britten.
GH – Gordon Higginson, SNU president 1970 to 1993.
SNU – Spiritualists’ National Union.

Dem- mental mediumship demonstration.
DV – Direct Voice communication.
Flint – Independent Direct Voice medium Leslie Flint.
LFET – Leslie Flint Educational Trust.
STF – Spiritual Truth Foundation.

Major events on the recordings are listed with the time from start of recording. A few have track numbers as in commercial CDs so the times are from start of each track. Many Leslie Flint séances only contain personal contacts featuring unknown sitters so content details may be somewhat limited with these recordings.

In accordance with the practice and wishes of the late Douglas Ronald Lawrence, his late wife, and his living son Barry Lawrence, no restrictions are placed on copying or republishing the recordings that were originally the copyright of Douglas Ronald Lawrence. Recordings that are copyright of the Leslie Flint Educational Trust or those originally copyright of Mr Alfred Scarfe, are subject to their respective conditions. In the case of Mr Alfred Scarfe, my investigations suggest that they are probably now ‘orphan works’.

Unverified dates are followed by a question mark. As there is evidence that many of the reels of tapes have been re-recorded several times, the dates on the tape boxes cannot be guaranteed so have been omitted. However, many of the recordings include an announcement at the beginning confirming the date of recording.

All the recordings have been processed using iZotope RX Advanced software (as used by major sound studios) to improve audio clarity by reducing background noise and other problems plus helping to partly compensate for the technical limitations of the equipment available at the time of the recordings. For recordings up to T059, it may be possible with recordings that are difficult to follow to further improve clarity using the latest version, RX9 or RX10 Advanced, as used on the later two batches.

Some recordings are duplicated and where this has been discovered the tapes are cross-referenced. A few other recordings contain just an extract of a full recording appearing on other tapes.

All the original recordings are on reels of ¼ inch tape and in various stages of deteioration with some very fragile. The fast majority were originally recorded at 3.5 in/sec with a few at 1.75 or 7.5 in/sec. All the recordings were digitised at 3.5 in/sec and then digitally processed for speed correction and equalisation. The digital format used was MP3 being quite sufficient considering the restricted bandwidth and dynamic range of the original analogue recordings. Recordings up to T026 were originally digitised in WAV format (CD quality) but then converted to MP3 as using the loss-less WAV format didn’t offer any advantage over the compressed MP3 format for the clarity improving software. Some of the recordings are of poor sound quality.

Due to various factors beyond the control of the tape recorder operator, some of the analogue recordings were not recorded, or re-recorded, at standard recording tape speeds thus producing a significant effect on the pitch of voices. Where there was a noticeable speed error and evidence of what the speed error was, corrections were made in the digital processing. These corrections depended on measuring the deviation in frequency of the mains hum on the recordings from what it should have been at 50Hz.
The corrections made cannot be precise due to the limitations of analogue equipment of that era (wow and fluttered that these days are termed Phase Noise). A few of the recordings contain mains hum at more than two frequencies, indicating that multiple re-recordings had occurred. Only partial correction to make dialogue sound normal has been attempted in these cases. Laurence’s voice deepened over the decades so could not be used to tape correct speed errors.

Many of the recordings were made at the York Lodge Church or at Leslie Flint’s Paddington home, London. The Paddington recordings may be identified by underground train noise (substantially reduced by processing). The titles of some recordings indicate other venues across the country, but a few venues are unknown.

Tapes numbered up to T026 were found at the Arthur Finlay College, Stansted Hall. Tapes T029 to T059 mainly at the York Lodge Church in Reading, or at Barry Lawrence’s residence. Tapes numbering from 100 onwards were all found later over a period of time in storage at Barry Lawrence’s home.
Several tapes were originally only recorded on one side, which could be Side 1 (S1) or Side 2 (S2). Where no Side is listed, then only Side 1 was recorded. Some recordings were found with Side 2 at the start, as indicated by a green or white lead-in tape at the end of the recording. However, many tapes had lost their lead-in and red coloured end tapes so designation was assumed to be as found unless the content gave clues to which was side 1.

Several reels of tape had to be baked at 50C for 4 hours to thoroughly dry out the tapes and then re-digitised to remove squeal or screech type sounds. This not only appears on recordings but could be audible as the tape passed through the tape guides and heads, or even rubbing against the walls of the reels. This is known to occur with certain polymers used in the manufacture of recording tape – but not discovered until storing tapes for long periods in environments without air conditioning in a temperate climate.
Some tapes may have small amounts of squeal left on them that has been missed. If significant, can be removed by further baking if requested. In processing the tapes, only samples were carefully listened to as the audio cleaning up process relied mainly on visually examining the waveform timeline and the frequency spectrum of the audio signals.

Throughout this document, Spiritualistic terminology is used in the descriptions of events and phenomena. So ‘Spirit’ communicators, be they in seances or trance demonstrations, are treated as such and not referred to as ‘alleged’ spirit communicators. No claims or comments are made as to the genuineness or otherwise of the phenomena.