James Burns

Who was James Burns?

James Burns was a British Spiritualist, naturopath, journalist and publisher.

The son of a poor Ayrshire smallholder-craftsman, Burns became a gardener at Hampton Court in his late teens. He became a propagandist for temperance, and from 1858 to 1862 worked for a temperance publisher. Influenced by reading imported American spiritualist publications, and starting to distribute 'progressive and reformatory' literature to the local working population, Burns founded the Spiritual Institution in 1862, which operated from the same rooms as his 'Progressive Literature Agency'. In 1867 Burns founded Human Nature, a monthly publication which ran until 1877. In 1869 he brought out a halfpenny weekly, The Medium, which absorbed the provincial Daybreak, founded 1867, and was continued as The Medium and Daybreak until 1895.

Burns died in poverty, leaving debts to his son James Burns, Jr.