Unfortunately, I think Doris Stokes earned them a bad name. Her trick was that many folks wrote to her asking about dead relatives and she would send them free tickets to her show, make a mental note of where they were sitting and what they'd said in their letters, then astound them by saying "someone over in this section recently lost a man, name begins with D, he'd been ill a long time?" etc. She charged a huge amount for private sittings, but made most money from filling theatres.