Eusapia Palladino

Eusapia Palladino was a famous Italian spiritualist who tooled around Europe around the turn of the 20th Century giving séances and displays of levitating tables to the obviously gullible and to people who should have known better, like Pierre Curie.

She was married young to a conjurer, which should have been a bit of a clue, and maintained a coterie of supporters despite the number of times she was caught cheating. Her name became a byword for spiritualism. Hence ‘a touch of the old Palladino.’