Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr

For more information on Thomas West 12th Baron De La Warr, visit Britannica.com.

West, Thomas and Carl August West, pseudonyms of J. Schreyvogel.

British expert in radionics, a subject related to radiesthesia and dowsing, and which uses an apparatus to identify claimed subtle radiation in humans and objects. The primary use of the tool was to diagnose illnesses. Born on August 19, 1904, in Southwick, Sussex, England, and educated at Brighton Technical College, De La Warr served as a captain with the British army in the Royal Engineers. De La Warr was best known for his device that was developed from the black box of Albert Abrams but used the method of stroking a rubber pad with the fingers instead of tapping the abdomen of a patient. The rubber detector pad was set in a frame with a wire circuit connection to a box containing various knobs and dials. A blood sample from the patient was placed in this circuit, and the rubber pad was stroked by the operator's finger until it indicated a "sticking" sensation at various dial readings. It was claimed that the dial markings denoted various pathological conditions of the patient whose blood sample was being tested.

In addition to diagnosis of disease, the apparatus was used for absent treatment of the patient by "correcting wave forms," sometimes in conjunction with exposure of a photographic plate inserted in the box, resulting in a kind of "psychic photo-graph." There was no conventional electric or magnetic circuit in black boxes, so their inventors (including De La Warr) were often charged with fraud.

De La Warr founded a research laboratory at Oxford, England, Delawarr Laboratories, and developed various black boxes for medical purposes, including the thought energy detector, an art appreciation apparatus, the Psychoplot, and the vibrograph, which detects molecular changes. He also experimented with photographs related to radiation from blood samples. His theories about subtle radiation are presented in detail in the book New Worlds Beyond the Atom (1956).

He received considerable support from a variety of eminent individuals, including Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard, Methodist minister Leslie Weatherhead, and Kenneth Walker (a student of Georgei I. Gurdjieff). None had medical credentials nor could their enthusiasm stop the medical community from condemning De La Warr's work (as it had earlier denounced Abrams's).

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2008)

Lord De La Warr.

Arrival of De La Warr at Jamestown

Thomas West, 3rd (or 12th) Baron De La Warr (July 9, 1577 – June 7, 1618) was the Englishman after whom the bay, river and, consequently, a American Indian people and U.S. state, all later called "Delaware", were named.

There have been two creations of Baron De La Warr, and West came from the second. He was the son of Thomas West, 2nd Baron De La Warr, of Wherwell Abbey in Hampshire, and his wife, Anne daughter of Sir Francis Knollys and Catherine Carey. West received his education at Queen's College, Oxford. He served in the army under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, and, in 1601, was charged with supporting Essex's ill-fated insurrection against Queen Elizabeth, but he was acquitted of those charges.^[1] He succeeded his father as Baron De La Warr, in 1602, and became a member of the Privy Council.^[2]

After the Powhattans murdered the colony's governor, Lord Ratcliffe, and attacked the colony in the first First Anglo-Powhatan War, Lord De La Warr headed the contingent of 150 men who landed in Jamestown, Virginia on June 10, 1610, just in time to persuade the original settlers not to give up and go home to England. As a veteran of English campaigns against the Irish, De La Warr employed "Irish tactics" against the Indians: troops raided villages, burned houses, torched cornfields, and stole provisions; these tactics,identical to those practiced by the Powhatans themselves, proved effective. He had been appointed governor-for-life (and captain-general) of Virginia, and he outfitted their three ships and recruited and equipped those men at his own expense. Leaving his deputy Sir Samuel Argall (circa 1580 – circa 1626) in charge, Lord De La Warr returned to England and published a book about Virginia, The Relation of the Right Honourable the Lord De-La-Warre, of the Colonie, Planted in Virginia, in 1611. He remained the nominal governor, and he had received complaints from the Virginia settlers about Argall's tyranny in governing them for him, so Lord De La Warr set sail for Virginia again in 1618, to investigate those charges. He died en route, and it was thought for many years that he had been buried in the Azores or at sea.^[1]

In 2006, recent research had concluded that his body was brought to Jamestown for burial. A grave site thought by researchers to contain the remains of Captain Bartholomew Gosnold may instead contain those of Baron De La Warr. [1]

Peerage of England
Preceded by Thomas West	Baron De La Warr 1602–1618	Succeeded by Henry West

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b} Stephen, Leslie (1899). Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. LX, pp. 344-45. New York: The Macmillan Company.
2. ^ Fiske, John (1897). Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, Vol. I, pp. 146-47. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)