experiment. W. H. Weeks took extensive measures to assure a sealed environment by placing his experiment inside a bell jar. He obtained the same results as Crosse, but due to the controversy that Crosse's experiment had sparked his work was never published. In February 1837 many newspapers reported that Michael Faraday had also replicated Crosse's results. However, this was not true. Faraday had not even attempted the experiment. Later researchers, such as fellow members of the London Electrical Society Henry Noad and Alfred Smee, were unable to replicate Crosse's results. Crosse did not claim that he had created the insects. He assumed that there were insect eggs embedded in his samples. Later commentators agreed that the insects were probably cheese mites or dust mites that had contaminated Crosse's instruments. It has been suggested that this episode was a source of inspiration for Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein, but this cannot have been the case, since Crosse's experiments took place almost 20 years after the novel was first published. The idea appears to have originated in the book The Man Who Was Frankenstein (1979) by Peter Haining. Mary Shelley did, however, know Crosse through a mutual friend, the poet Robert Southey. Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley reportedly attended a lecture by Crosse in London in December 1814, in which he allegedly explained his experiments with atmospheric electricity. However, Mary Shelley's diary speaks only of "Garnerin" as the lecturer. Similarly dubious is a claim that Edward W. Cox wrote a report of their visits to Fyne Court to see Crosse's work in the Taunton Courier in Autumn 1836. Percy had been dead for over a dozen years by then. Other interests Crosse also wrote a great many poems and enjoyed walking on the Quantock Hills, in which Fyne Court is set, "at all hours of day and night, in all seasons". Crosse advocated the benefits of education for the lower classes, argued against emigration, and supported a campaign by local farmers against falling food prices and high taxes during the 1820s. He was also active in party politics, speaking in support of friends at election meetings. Following the Battle of Waterloo Crosse boarded a ship at Exeter to see the captured Napoleon Bonaparte on the deck of near Plymouth. Crosse also served as a magistrate. Personal life Crosse married Mary Anne Hamilton in 1809. They had seven children, although three died in