The smoke-filled room was packed when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took his seat.

It was a warm summer afternoon and tickets for the lecture at the Connaught Hall had been selling fast.

Many people were locked outside as the mayor, J Farquharson Whyte, chairman for the evening, made his introductory speech.

Councillor Whyte said spiritualism had never appealed to him but it was important that townsfolk should get their information on a public platform rather than through the doubtful atmosphere of a private seance.

Sir Arthur, who was born in Edinburgh in 1859, had relinquished the Catholic faith to follow spiritualism.

This is an extract of what he said to the people of Worthing on Friday, July 11, 1919: "I began to study this question in 1886. I have read hundreds of books on the subject and I have never lost an opportunity of attending a seance.

"When I was a young medical man I knew very little about the subject. I was a believer in materialism, that life ended in death. I could see no more reason why we could survive the death of our bodies than the flame could survive the candle after it has burnt out.

"Having these views, you can well imagine that nothing in this world seemed more absurd than spiritualism. When I read stories about mediums being hauled up before magistrates and heard stories of tables turning and chairs flying up into the air, I thought that was typical of the whole movement.

"Then one of my patients started developing an interest in table turning. When he asked me to sit with him at one of his seances I did so. I was certainly surprised at the results. The tables used to move and other things happened but how it was done I could not understand.

"It all seemed very ridiculous. I used at this time go to any number of seances. One thing that made a great impression on me was the automatic writing by a lady who was stopping with my family.

"She had lost three brothers out of four (during the war), and she used to converse with these in the most marvellous way.

"I realised what a great comfort it would be to many mourners if only these powers could be exercised. We may call it puerile that tables turn round or chairs go up in the air but if you saw it you would ask yourself My goodness! What is this?

"The first thing we ask our dear ones when we get in touch with them is 'what is death?' They all agree that death itself was a painless process and when they come out on the other side they find they are endowed with a body that is an exact replica of the body they had in life."

Sir Arthur said those contacted in the afterlife described it as an extraordinarily happy domain. People who on earth had humble existences, such as a servant girl or a working man, could develop talents in science, drama and music. The elderly shook off the constraints of age.

He preached religious tolerance, saying Catholics, Muslims and Buddhists were on different roads but they all led to the same destination.

Sir Arthur concluded: "I merely tell you what I know. What you do with it is your business."

The lecture was well received but the following Monday people heard a counter view from T Verrinder, from Kew, who believed Sir Arthur and his supporters had forsaken the Bible.

He said spiritualism was evil and had another name, demonology, adding that he might consider it "when Conan Doyle and three of his friends gathered around a stiffened corpse and by their spiritualistic powers brought it back to life."

Sir Arthur, who served as a doctor during the Boer War, died at his Crowborough home on July 7, 1930.

He now rests in a country churchyard at Minstead in Hampshire, under an oak tree.