J'Accuse: An Examination of the Hodgson Report of 1885

Vernon Harrison's J'Accuse is a peer reviewed reassessment, published in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, of the 1885 Hodgson Report, the investigation that had accused Theosophical Society founder Helena Blavatsky of fabricating the Mahatma Letters. Harrison was an experienced document examiner, and his paper directly challenges Richard Hodgson's original forensic handwriting analysis on technical grounds, arguing the original investigation was methodologically flawed. Its authority rests on that specific forensic expertise and on publication through the SPR's own peer reviewed journal, the same body that produced the original report a century earlier. Its limit is that it is one specialist's reassessment of a contested century old case rather than a final settlement, and Theosophical historians continue to debate the Mahatma Letters' authorship, so cite it as a serious documented challenge to the original verdict rather than as having conclusively overturned it.