Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly try. Today we
Speaker 1: are going to talk about Helen Duncan, who is sometimes
Speaker 1: described as Scotland's last witch or as the last person
Speaker 1: imprisoned for witchcraft in Britain. Sometimes people are like a
Speaker 1: little more precise than that and call her the last
Speaker 1: person to be tried under the UK's seventeen thirty five
Speaker 1: Witchcraft Act. None of that is quite correct, though all
Speaker 1: of them are wrong in slightly different ways. We, of course,
Speaker 1: we'll be talking about that. One of the many wild
Speaker 1: things about the story, though, is that it really did
Speaker 1: involve the Witchcraft Act of seventeen thirty five, but it
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen forty four. Who didn't love a little
Speaker 1: archaic law being applied to modern times. So. Helen Duncan
Speaker 1: was born Victoria Helen McFarlane on November in Colander, Scotland,
Speaker 1: which is roughly thirty five miles that's about fifty six
Speaker 1: kilometers north of Glasgow. She was the fourth of eight
Speaker 1: children born to Archibald McFarlane and Isabelle retree Archibald worked
Speaker 1: as a slater, that is, a person who slates roofs.
Speaker 1: Helen had a flair for the supernatural and the dramatic
Speaker 1: from a very early age. She would make these portentous
Speaker 1: statements about other people's impending doom. She said that she
Speaker 1: could see and talk to spirits. She was also headstrong,
Speaker 1: people didn't think of her as particularly feminine. All of
Speaker 1: this together earned her the nickname Hellish Nell while she
Speaker 1: was still a child. Sources are very contradictory about whether
Speaker 1: this was sort of a lightly teasing and affectionate nickname,
Speaker 1: or if it was a real condemnation of her behavior.
Speaker 1: In some accounts, there were mediums on both sides of
Speaker 1: the family, and Helen's parents didn't try to discourage her
Speaker 1: as long as she wasn't making predictions or talking about
Speaker 1: spirits around people who might disapprove. But in other accounts,
Speaker 1: this behavior went against the family's religious beliefs, and Helen's
Speaker 1: parents told her she was going to be burned at
Speaker 1: the stake if she kept it up. Helen left school
Speaker 1: when she was a teenager. She got a job serving
Speaker 1: meals at a hotel. She got pregnant in nineteen fourteen
Speaker 1: when she was about sixteen, and at that point her
Speaker 1: parents did kick her out. Helen moved to the coastal
Speaker 1: city of Dundee, where she gave birth to a daughter
Speaker 1: named Isabella in nineteen fifteen. In Dundee, Helen worked at
Speaker 1: a mill and as an auxiliary nurse at the Dundee
Speaker 1: Royal Infirmary, and it was there that she met Henry
Speaker 1: Edward Duncan. He was the they're of one of her
Speaker 1: co workers, and he had been discharged from the army
Speaker 1: after developing rheumatic fever. Helen said the first time they
Speaker 1: met it had been in her dreams. They got married
Speaker 1: on May nineteen sixteen and moved to Edinburgh, including Isabella.
Speaker 1: They had six children who survived to adulthood. Helen and
Speaker 1: Henry were both chronically ill, and the family often really
Speaker 1: struggled financially. Henry tried to start his own business as
Speaker 1: a cabinet maker, which Helen helped him with. She also
Speaker 1: took a job at a bleach factory to try to
Speaker 1: help make ends meet, but then Henry had a heart attack,
Speaker 1: which he survived, but afterward he wasn't able to work anymore.
Speaker 1: They're already tight budget got even tighter, and Helen started
Speaker 1: conducting seances in the evenings to try to earn a
Speaker 1: little more money. Henry did what he could to encourage
Speaker 1: her and to manage her career. When we've talked about
Speaker 1: the spiritualist movement on the show before, we have usually
Speaker 1: been talking about things that happened a little bit earlier
Speaker 1: than this, in the nineteenth or very early twentieth century.
Speaker 1: Previous episodes have covered nineteenth century figures like the Sisters
Speaker 1: Fox and Madame Blovotsky, and spiritualism has come up in
Speaker 1: episodes about other people who lived during the same time,
Speaker 1: including Mother Rebecca Cox Jackson and Sojourner Truth. But spiritualism
Speaker 1: didn't end with the Victorian era. It was still going
Speaker 1: strong after the devastation of World War One in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen flu pandemic as people tried to reconnect with
Speaker 1: loved ones who had died. So when Duncan started offering
Speaker 1: her services as a medium in the nineteen twenties, she
Speaker 1: had plenty of potential customers. In six the Duncan family
Speaker 1: moved from Edinburgh back to Dundee and Helen started to
Speaker 1: really focus on her work as a medium. She specifically
Speaker 1: became a materialization medium. That's somebody who's spirit channeling process
Speaker 1: also included physical manifestations, in this case producing ectoplasm from
Speaker 1: her body. If this ectoplasm also enabled a medium to
Speaker 1: perform some kind of telekinesis, it was described as teleplasm,
Speaker 1: and that comes up in accounts of Helen Also. Duncan
Speaker 1: seances evolved over time, but they basically went like this.
Speaker 1: One corner of the room would be separated off from
Speaker 1: the rest of the space with hanging curtains, and this
Speaker 1: served as the medium's cabinet. It could also be an
Speaker 1: actual cabinet, or a closet or an alcove, just some
Speaker 1: space that could be separated by a curtain. She would
Speaker 1: pass around a set of clothing for the people attending
Speaker 1: the seance or the sitters to inspect. If the sitters
Speaker 1: were satisfied that the clothes were not concealing anything or
Speaker 1: suspicious in some way, she would take some of the
Speaker 1: women into another room where they could watch as she
Speaker 1: changed into that set of clothes. These women could also
Speaker 1: inspect Duncan's hair and body to make sure that she
Speaker 1: wasn't hiding something. Once all of that was done, Duncan
Speaker 1: would take a seat in the cabinet. After the curtains
Speaker 1: were closed in front of her and the room was
Speaker 1: lit with a dim red light, she would go into
Speaker 1: a trance, and when the curtain opened again, spirit guides
Speaker 1: would manifest hovering close to her. She had two primary guides,
Speaker 1: they were Albert and Peggy, and they would carry messages
Speaker 1: from the other side for various sitters in the room.
Speaker 1: Other spirits also manifested from time to time as well,
Speaker 1: and sometimes Duncan would manifest large amounts of white, whispy ectoplasm.
Speaker 1: Although Duncan had devoted supporters from the very beginning, it
Speaker 1: did not take long for people to point out that
Speaker 1: these manifestations were fake. They could look quite convincing under
Speaker 1: that dim red light, especially to spiritualists who already believed
Speaker 1: in things like spirit manifestation. But in eight photographer Harvey
Speaker 1: Metcalf took flash photos during a seance that Duncan conducted
Speaker 1: in her home, apparently with her permission, and what he
Speaker 1: captured looked almost laughably bad. Yeah, they did not hold
Speaker 1: up under a camera flash like. In one of the photos,
Speaker 1: Duncan is in a chair, blindfolded and she has a
Speaker 1: length of what looks like rolled gauze leading from her
Speaker 1: nose to a figure that's hovering over her shoulder. This
Speaker 1: figure has very squared off shoulders like maybe it's really
Speaker 1: fabric draped over a coat hanger, and its face looks
Speaker 1: a lot like the head of a Punch and Judy
Speaker 1: puppet made of paper mache. And another the figure is
Speaker 1: similarly positioned with this gauzy rope leading out from under
Speaker 1: Duncan's blindfold to drape around a boxy white form that
Speaker 1: has a very dull like head. Duncan's critics also included
Speaker 1: other spiritualists. The London spiritualist A Lion, carried out an
Speaker 1: investigation this fan from October of nineteen thirty to June
Speaker 1: of nineteen thirty one. Duncan participated in this investigation, traveling
Speaker 1: to London and being paid a flat fee for the
Speaker 1: roughly fifty seances that she conducted over those months. Investigators
Speaker 1: examined everything about them, her clothes, the ectoplasm, the information
Speaker 1: that she conveyed. They took X rays and at one
Speaker 1: point had her swallow methylene blue to try to figure
Speaker 1: out if she was swallowing and regurgitating the substance that
Speaker 1: she said was ectoplasm. This did not work because she
Speaker 1: didn't produce any ectoplasm after swallowing the die. After the
Speaker 1: first few seances that Duncan conducted as part of this investigation,
Speaker 1: the London Spiritualist Alliance seems to a thought that she
Speaker 1: might actually be genuine, but the organization ultimately concluded that
Speaker 1: she was a fraud. They did not find definitive proof
Speaker 1: of where the ectoplasm came from, but they thought most
Speaker 1: likely the scenario was that she was swallowing it before
Speaker 1: the seance and then regurgitating it. Different pieces of ectoplasm
Speaker 1: that they examined seemed to have been made from different recipes,
Speaker 1: but they incorporated things like cheesecloth, egg white and toilet paper.
Speaker 1: I read this prior to us recording, but somehow hearing
Speaker 1: that set aloud makes me want to regurgitate things. It's
Speaker 1: just like the thought of swallowing that and then bringing
Speaker 1: it back up is gross. I'm not a fan, no uh.
Speaker 1: Psychic researcher Harry Price conducted his own investigation through his
Speaker 1: National Laboratory of Psychical Research in May nine one, paying
Speaker 1: Duncan fifty pounds for a series of seances. He was
Speaker 1: skeptical from the start, saying that he had heard of
Speaker 1: Duncan through the spiritualist press, but quote, as I do
Speaker 1: not believe one tenth of what I read in the
Speaker 1: spiritualist press, I was not particularly thrilled. Price also concluded
Speaker 1: that Duncan was a fraud, with her teleplasm being made
Speaker 1: up of egg white mixed with various other ingredients. He
Speaker 1: also took photos of Duncan during a seance, one of
Speaker 1: which showed her draped in what appeared to be cheesecloth.
Speaker 1: Price also described an effort to X ray Duncan's stomach
Speaker 1: during a seance. Cheesecloth would not appear on an X ray,
Speaker 1: but if there was a safety pin or some other
Speaker 1: solid object used to keep all that together, that might
Speaker 1: show up. But when it was time to do the
Speaker 1: X rays, Duncan, purportedly in a trance, became agitated and
Speaker 1: physically aggressive and refused to cooperate. Don't don't swallow safety pins,
Speaker 1: you don't, don't, don't, don't do it. Duncan consented to
Speaker 1: all of these investigations. It was paid for her work
Speaker 1: as a medium during them, although her husband made the
Speaker 1: arrangements for Prices investigation, so it's not totally clear how
Speaker 1: much agency she had in that instance, but beyond that,
Speaker 1: these tests and examinations were degrading and invasive. Prices account
Speaker 1: repeatedly describes him and other men investigating quote, every orifice
Speaker 1: of her body, and his descriptions of her body and
Speaker 1: her weight are really dehumanizing. Although the results of these
Speaker 1: investigations were reported in newspapers, Duncan's most ardent supporters were
Speaker 1: not deterred. But not too long after this she ran
Speaker 1: into bigger problems than just negative newspaper coverage, and we
Speaker 1: will get into that after a sponsor break. In spite
Speaker 1: of multiple investigations concluding that she was a fake, Helen
Speaker 1: Duncan still had a lot of support into the nineteen forties,
Speaker 1: and she really was not unique in that regard. In
Speaker 1: the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a lot of people
Speaker 1: and organizations were investigating mediums, and a lot of those
Speaker 1: investigations concluded that nothing supernatural was going on. Sometimes there
Speaker 1: was some very clear evidence of fakery, like the sounds
Speaker 1: of knocking ghosts being made by the medium hitting the
Speaker 1: underside of the table with a stick, or in the
Speaker 1: case of Helen Duncan photographs of these very puppet like
Speaker 1: constructions and ectoplasm that was obviously made of cheese cloth
Speaker 1: and toilet paper. But this really did not dissuade a
Speaker 1: lot of spiritualists. They naturally distrusted people and organizations who
Speaker 1: were devoting themselves to debunking mediums. Even if a medium
Speaker 1: confessed that they've been faking their work, people found explanations
Speaker 1: that let them keep believing, like the confession had been
Speaker 1: coerced and it wasn't true, or the person was a
Speaker 1: real medium but had faked the say once that one
Speaker 1: time because they wanted so badly to help usitter reconnect
Speaker 1: with the loved one on the other side. In a
Speaker 1: high profile example, Harry Hudini and Arthur Conan Doyle bonded
Speaker 1: over their shared interest in spiritualism, but when Houdini became
Speaker 1: convinced that it was not real and started doing demonstrations
Speaker 1: of phony seance techniques on stage, Doyle continued to insist
Speaker 1: that he really was psychic, calling him quote the greatest
Speaker 1: physical medium of modern times. Houdini is going to appear
Speaker 1: again this October. Uh There has been quite a bit
Speaker 1: of psychological research into this during recent decades to understand
Speaker 1: why many people double down on incorrect beliefs even when
Speaker 1: presented with incontrovertible evidence to the contrary. Beyond that the
Speaker 1: field of photography had been evolving for more than a
Speaker 1: century by the time Harvey Metcalf took those photos of
Speaker 1: Helen Duncan, but mass marketed cameras had only been around
Speaker 1: for about thirty years. People didn't necessarily trust photographs, and
Speaker 1: as we talked about in our previous episode on William
Speaker 1: Mummler's Spirit at Photography, people had already taken photos that
Speaker 1: were then investigated for being deceptive. So even though there
Speaker 1: were these photos of Duncan's seances, which are laughable to
Speaker 1: a modern viewer, that didn't necessarily change people's minds. Duncan's
Speaker 1: first fraud conviction also did not necessarily change people's minds.
Speaker 1: This happened after a seance she conducted in Edinburgh in
Speaker 1: ninety three. A sitter named sen Mall grabbed the manifestation
Speaker 1: of Peggy, the spirit guide and found that she was
Speaker 1: made from a knitted undervest. Mall reported this to the
Speaker 1: police and Duncan was arrested, tried, convicted of fraud and
Speaker 1: ordered to pay a fine of ten pounds or serve
Speaker 1: a month in prison. After this, Duncan kept doing seances,
Speaker 1: and despite that fraud conviction, she became increasingly popular. She
Speaker 1: traveled all over Great Britain, particularly favoring hostal towns, and
Speaker 1: as World War two began, more and more people sought
Speaker 1: her help to try to speak to their loved ones
Speaker 1: who had been killed. In late May of one, Brigadier
Speaker 1: roy C. Firebrace attended one of Duncan's seances. Firebrace was
Speaker 1: an astrologer. After the war, he would go on to
Speaker 1: help found the Astrological Association of Great Britain. During this seance,
Speaker 1: one of Duncan's spirit guides said that a Royal Navy
Speaker 1: ship had just been sunk. Firebrace didn't know of any
Speaker 1: such thing happening, and when he checked with other people
Speaker 1: in the Royal Navy after the seance, they hadn't either.
Speaker 1: But the next day he learned that the battle cruiser
Speaker 1: h MS Hood had exploded after being struck by the
Speaker 1: German battleship Bismarck at the Battle of Denmark, straight killing
Speaker 1: all but three of its crew of more than fourteen hundred.
Speaker 1: Something similar happened at another seance in Portsmouth. About six
Speaker 1: months later, Duncan relate a message from a sailor named Sid,
Speaker 1: whose mother was one of the sitters. Sid had been
Speaker 1: aboard the HMS bar Um Queen Elizabeth Glass battleship, and
Speaker 1: Sid said the ship had been sunk. His mother, of course,
Speaker 1: was distraught, and she contacted the Admiralty about it. Once again.
Speaker 1: The bar Um really had been sunk on November. The
Speaker 1: ship had been struck by torpedoes from a German U
Speaker 1: boat off the coast of Egypt. The ship had been
Speaker 1: hit by three of the four torpedoes fired at it,
Speaker 1: and it had exploded and sunk in under five minutes.
Speaker 1: More than eight hundred fifty of the hundred fifty sailors
Speaker 1: aboard had been killed. The Admiralty had really tried to
Speaker 1: keep this quiet. They weren't sure if the German high
Speaker 1: command knew about the sinking, and if they didn't, Brittain
Speaker 1: surely did not want them to find out. British authorities
Speaker 1: were also deeply concerned about the effect that the news
Speaker 1: of a sunken battleship and so much loss of life
Speaker 1: would have had on morale, both for the military and
Speaker 1: for the public sources contradict on whether the sailor's next
Speaker 1: of kin were notified promptly or whether that didn't happen
Speaker 1: for several weeks. Either way, once the families heard, they
Speaker 1: were told to keep it a secret. One source even
Speaker 1: claims that the Royal Navy sent fake holiday messages on
Speaker 1: the deceased sailor's behalf before informing anybody that they had
Speaker 1: actually been killed. I could not find verification of that,
Speaker 1: but it did come up in one of those sources
Speaker 1: that I used for this episode. Regardless, though Britain did
Speaker 1: not publicly announced that the ship had been sunk until January,
Speaker 1: more than two months after it happened, after German media
Speaker 1: had reported that it had happened, and also months after
Speaker 1: it had come up in this seance. Although believers saw
Speaker 1: this as evidence that Helen Duncan really was communicating with
Speaker 1: people from beyond, others saw it as evidence that there
Speaker 1: was an information league happening somewhere in the Royal Navy.
Speaker 1: The Royal Navy Command Headquarters is in Portsmouth, and Portsmouth
Speaker 1: was the bomb's home port, and even with efforts to
Speaker 1: keep things quiet, there were a lot of people who
Speaker 1: knew that the bar Room had been sunk, both within
Speaker 1: the Royal Navy and outside of it. In addition to
Speaker 1: all the sailors aboard all the other ships in the
Speaker 1: convoy who witnessed that sinking, and everyone in the command
Speaker 1: structure who would have heard about it, and everyone who
Speaker 1: was part of the decision to keep it quiet, and
Speaker 1: everyone who helped fake holiday messages home if that really happened.
Speaker 1: The ship's explosion and sinking were captured on film by
Speaker 1: a newsreel reporter from British Pathay, so it's likely that
Speaker 1: thousands of people actually knew about this sinking, and that's
Speaker 1: a lot of people to keep a secret, a lot
Speaker 1: of people, and a lot of them concentrated in Smith,
Speaker 1: where Helen Duncan was. There are also some discrepancies about
Speaker 1: exactly what it was that Duncan said during the seance,
Speaker 1: and some accounts she volunteered the name of the HMS
Speaker 1: bar Hum and in others that came from more of
Speaker 1: a cold read asking questions of this sailor's mother until
Speaker 1: she mentioned the ship's name. It's widely concluded that these
Speaker 1: two seances, especially the second one, motivated British authorities to
Speaker 1: try to keep Helen Duncan quiet during the planning of
Speaker 1: the d D invasion of Normandy, and that is why
Speaker 1: she was tried under the Witchcraft Act. Planning for d
Speaker 1: D started in nine and it was absolutely critical that
Speaker 1: it be kept secret. Duncan had become enormously popular and
Speaker 1: if she revealed some secret information in a seance, it
Speaker 1: was going to be a serious problem. Talk more about that.
Speaker 1: After another quick sponsor break in January of nineteen forty four,
Speaker 1: Helen Duncan conducted a series of seances at the Master
Speaker 1: Temple Psychic Center in Portsmouth, England. The Master Temple Psychic
Speaker 1: Center was a space above Homer's drug Store and it
Speaker 1: was registered as a church. Homer's drug Store was run
Speaker 1: by Ernest Homer and Elizabeth Jones. They weren't technically married,
Speaker 1: but they lived and worked together as a couple, and
Speaker 1: most people just called them Mr. And Mrs Homer. They
Speaker 1: were spiritualists. They donated any money they earned from spiritualist
Speaker 1: events that they hosted above their shop to various charities
Speaker 1: and spiritualist causes. They paid Helen Duncan a hundred and
Speaker 1: four pounds for a week of seances, which she conducted
Speaker 1: with the help of her assistant, Francis Brown. On January fourteenth,
Speaker 1: nine four, two officers from the Royal Navy attended one
Speaker 1: of these seances, a Lieutenant Worth and a Urgin Lieutenant Fowler.
Speaker 1: Duncan claimed to manifest one of the men's mother and sister,
Speaker 1: but both of those people were actually alive. It is
Speaker 1: possible that she had meant this message for someone else
Speaker 1: in the room. The sitters had assigned seats, but there
Speaker 1: had been some shuffling. I will just take a moment
Speaker 1: to note that we are aware that in Britain people
Speaker 1: say that left in it, but we are not British.
Speaker 1: On the nineteen Worth went back for another seance, and
Speaker 1: this time he was accompanied by a War Reserve Police officer.
Speaker 1: During this seance, one of these men switched on the
Speaker 1: main light and opened up the curtain to the medium's cabinet.
Speaker 1: They found Duncan standing there barefoot, which she had this
Speaker 1: piece of white material. Police were outside waiting for a signal,
Speaker 1: and when Worth blew a whistle to summon them, they
Speaker 1: came barging in. They wanted to get that material as
Speaker 1: evidence that it wasn't really ectoplasm, but it disappeared generally
Speaker 1: believed that it got like passed from hands in hand
Speaker 1: among the sitters and somebody secreted it away. Her account
Speaker 1: was that it got absorbed back into her body. There
Speaker 1: are also reports that there was a hat band that
Speaker 1: had purportedly been manifested from one of the sailors aboard
Speaker 1: the bar room, but it was printed with HMS bar
Speaker 1: um when it should have just said HMS and not
Speaker 1: the name of the ship, and that proved that it
Speaker 1: was fake. After this police raid, Helen Duncan, Francis Brown,
Speaker 1: and Mr and Mrs Homer were all arrested. This was
Speaker 1: apparently big enough news that the BBC interrupted a report
Speaker 1: on a Russian advance on the Eastern Front to talk
Speaker 1: about it. At first, all four of them were charged
Speaker 1: under the Vagrancy Act of eighteen twenty four, or an
Speaker 1: Act for the Punishment of Idle and Disorderly Persons and
Speaker 1: robes and Vagabonds in that part of Great Britain Old England.
Speaker 1: At this point, this was the act most often used
Speaker 1: to prosecute people who were conducting seances. Section four of
Speaker 1: it read, in part quote every person pretending or professing
Speaker 1: to tell fortunes, or using any subtle craft, means or
Speaker 1: device by Palmer Street, or otherwise to deceive and impose
Speaker 1: on any of His Majesty's subjects, shall be deemed a
Speaker 1: rogue and a vagabond within the true intent and meaning
Speaker 1: of this Act. So Duncan, Brown and the Homers were
Speaker 1: by far not the only people to be charged under
Speaker 1: this law. In the nineteen forties and other times too,
Speaker 1: because of the ongoing war, there were a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were prosecuted, charged with basically taking advantage of
Speaker 1: grieving families to give them fake mediumship under this act.
Speaker 1: Part of the Vagrancy Act are still the books, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways. It is a law that
Speaker 1: criminalizes poverty and homelessness, but most infractions of it were
Speaker 1: considered to be relatively minor. The maximum sentence for offenses
Speaker 1: related to fortune telling was three months in prison, and
Speaker 1: most people just paid a fine. In spite of that,
Speaker 1: Duncan was jailed for four days until being released on bail.
Speaker 1: As we said before, it's generally understood that the point
Speaker 1: of all this was to try to make sure that
Speaker 1: Duncan would not be able to blab some kind of
Speaker 1: secret intelligence related to the D Day invasion that would
Speaker 1: require more than a fine and more than three months
Speaker 1: in jail, and that is where the Witchcraft Act of
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty five comes in. This was an act to
Speaker 1: repeal the statute made in the first year of the
Speaker 1: reign of King James the First entitled an Act against Conjuration,
Speaker 1: Witchcraft and dealing with Evil and Wicked Spirits, except so
Speaker 1: much thereof as repeals an Act of the fifth year
Speaker 1: of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth against Conjurations, enchantments and Witchcrafts,
Speaker 1: And to repeal an Act passed in the Parliament of
Speaker 1: Scotland in the ninth Parliament of Queen Mary, entitled Anent
Speaker 1: tous Witchcrafts, for and for punishing such persons as pretends
Speaker 1: to exercise or use any kind of witchcraft sorcery, enchantment
Speaker 1: or conjuration. Under this Witchcraft Act, a person could be
Speaker 1: sentenced to a fine and imprisonment for up to a year,
Speaker 1: along with having to stand in the pillory for an
Speaker 1: hour every quarter, although at this point the pillory had
Speaker 1: been abolished in England for more than a century. To
Speaker 1: be extremely clear, if someone was tried for violating the
Speaker 1: Witchcraft Act of five, they were not being tried for witchcraft.
Speaker 1: It was not possible to try someone for witchcraft under
Speaker 1: the Witchcraft Act of seven five. In fact, the Act
Speaker 1: outlawed trying people for witchcraft. Quote No prosecution, suit or
Speaker 1: proceedings shall be commenced or carried on against any person
Speaker 1: or persons for witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration, or for
Speaker 1: charging another with any such offense, in any court whatsoever
Speaker 1: in Great Britain. Instead, this Act targeted people who quote
Speaker 1: pretend to exercise or use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment,
Speaker 1: or conjuration, or to undertake to tell fortunes, or pretend,
Speaker 1: from his or her skill or knowledge in any occult
Speaker 1: or crafty science, to discover where, or in what manner,
Speaker 1: any goods or chattel's supposed to have been stolen or
Speaker 1: lost maybe found. In other words, this was built around
Speaker 1: the idea that witchcraft was not real, and that the
Speaker 1: people who claimed to be witches or sorcerers or enchanters
Speaker 1: or conjurors or fortune tellers were defrauding people. This act
Speaker 1: was a response to the horrifying witch trials that had
Speaker 1: taken place in the UK and elsewhere, especially during the
Speaker 1: seventeenth and early eighteen centuries, at which point witchcraft itself
Speaker 1: was illegal under those laws that the Witchcraft Act repealed.
Speaker 1: We have talked about those earlier laws and the witch
Speaker 1: hunts connected to them in previous episodes of the show,
Speaker 1: including our episode on Matthew Hopkins, who builled himself as
Speaker 1: the witch Finder General, which we ran as a recent
Speaker 1: Saturday classic. So the Witchcraft Act of seventeen thirty five
Speaker 1: repealed the Kingdom of Great Britain's laws that framed witchcraft
Speaker 1: is real and replaced them with one that framed witchcraft
Speaker 1: as pretend. Duncan, Brown and the Homers were charged with
Speaker 1: seven crimes, including in fractions of the Witchcraft Act. Those
Speaker 1: charges were connected to Duncan purporting Quotes to exercise or
Speaker 1: use a kind of conjuration, and that, through the agency
Speaker 1: of Helen Duncan's, spirits of deceased persons should appear to
Speaker 1: be present in such a place as Helen Duncan was
Speaker 1: then in, and that the said spirits were communicating with
Speaker 1: living persons then present. There were also charges under the
Speaker 1: Larceny Act because Duncan had taken money quote by falsely
Speaker 1: pretending that she was in a position to bring about
Speaker 1: the appearances of the spirits of deceased persons, and they
Speaker 1: were all charged with quote, affecting a public mischief. All
Speaker 1: these charges were connected to the seances that had taken
Speaker 1: place on January fourteenth and nineteenth, which we've already talked about,
Speaker 1: as well as when she conducted on the seventeen that
Speaker 1: was attended by a dock worker known as Mr Burrell,
Speaker 1: and he was a medium himself, but did not find
Speaker 1: Duncan's manifestations to be convincing at all. This trial began
Speaker 1: on March twenty three, ninety four, in Court four of
Speaker 1: the Central Criminal Court a k. The Old Bailey before
Speaker 1: Recorder of London, Sir Gerald Dodson. That building had been
Speaker 1: damaged in the blitz. The public gallery was closed, but
Speaker 1: people thronged the entire area and packed into the accessible
Speaker 1: areas of the building to try to get a look.
Speaker 1: The trial and its aftermath were widely reported all over
Speaker 1: the UK and in the United States. All for defendants
Speaker 1: pleaded not guilty, and at the start of the trial,
Speaker 1: prosecutor John Maud stressed that they were not being tried
Speaker 1: as witches. Quote, I want to make it abundantly clear
Speaker 1: at the very commencement of this prosecution that this is
Speaker 1: in no way connected with witchcraft. It is in no
Speaker 1: way aimed at the honest beliefs, whatever they may be,
Speaker 1: of any man or woman. What it is aimed at
Speaker 1: is something quite different. It is aimed at just ordinary
Speaker 1: common fraud. Meanwhile, the defense was led by Barrister ce Lowsby,
Speaker 1: who was a spiritualist and whose services were arranged by
Speaker 1: the Spiritualists National Union. His defense was built around calling
Speaker 1: nearly fifty witnesses to attest to Duncan seances being the
Speaker 1: real thing. This involved a very long chain of people
Speaker 1: recounting what they had seen at seances going all the
Speaker 1: way back to the early nineteen thirties, and all of
Speaker 1: the various things that they said she'd manifested or had
Speaker 1: told them while on the stand. Portsmouth's Chief Constable Arthur
Speaker 1: West referenced the bar Um sinking saying quote. On one
Speaker 1: occasion in ninety one, she was reported as having transgressed
Speaker 1: the security laws again in a naval connection, when she
Speaker 1: foretold the loss of one of His Majesty's ships, long
Speaker 1: before the fact was made public. I can only describe
Speaker 1: this woman as an unmitigated humbug who can only be
Speaker 1: regarded as a pest to a certain section of society.
Speaker 1: The trial went on for seven days, and at the
Speaker 1: end of the recorder instructed the jury to simplify the
Speaker 1: issue and deliberate only on the charges related to the
Speaker 1: Witchcraft Act, to ignore the others. After deliberating for less
Speaker 1: than half an hour, the jury found all four defendants guilty.
Speaker 1: You could argue that what her defense really did was
Speaker 1: established that she had been doing this illegal thing for
Speaker 1: more than a decade with a whole lot of witness testimony.
Speaker 1: Duncan was sentenced to nine months in prison. Her assistant,
Speaker 1: Francis Brown, was sentenced to four months in prison. Brown
Speaker 1: had shown Lieutenant Worth some spirit photos and support of
Speaker 1: Duncan's claim to be a medium, so she was considered
Speaker 1: to have committed a fraud of her own. The homers
Speaker 1: were bound over. In other words, they were released under
Speaker 1: the condition that they had to maintain good behavior and
Speaker 1: not reoffend. Don't hire any more mediums to come and
Speaker 1: hang out of your place. If this really was all
Speaker 1: an intentional effort to keep Duncan quiet through the Normandy invasion,
Speaker 1: Prime Minister Winston Churchill does not seem to have been
Speaker 1: aware of it. On April third, nine, apparently after reading
Speaker 1: news coverage of the trial, he sent a memo to
Speaker 1: the Home Secretary, Herbert Morrison, which read quote, let me
Speaker 1: have a report on why the Witchcraft Acts seventeen thirty
Speaker 1: five was used in a modern court of justice? What
Speaker 1: was the cost of this trial to the state? Observing
Speaker 1: that witnesses were brought from Portsmouth and maintained here in
Speaker 1: this crowded London for a fortnight, and the recorder kept
Speaker 1: busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery, to the detriment of
Speaker 1: necessary work in the courts. The defendants attorneys filed an appeal,
Speaker 1: but in part because it took so incredibly long to
Speaker 1: transcribe the testimony of all those many defense witnesses that
Speaker 1: did not happen for months. By the time the appeal
Speaker 1: was heard, Francis Brown had already completed her sentence with
Speaker 1: time off for good behavior. The convictions were upheld, though
Speaker 1: Duncan was returned to Holloway Prison. The prison was damaged
Speaker 1: in a bombing in the summer of nineteen forty four
Speaker 1: while Duncan was still incarcerated. There She reportedly conducted seances
Speaker 1: from her cell, and she was released on September twenty two,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, having served about six months. She was not,
Speaker 1: as it is widely reported, the last person tried for
Speaker 1: violating the Witchcraft Act. That seems to be Jane Rebecca
Speaker 1: York of Forrest Gate in east Ham, who was tried
Speaker 1: in late nineteen forty four, also in the Old Bailey,
Speaker 1: in the same court and with the same prosecutor as
Speaker 1: Duncan had been. Apparently, what got York in bad enough
Speaker 1: trouble to face charges under the Witchcraft Act instead of
Speaker 1: the Vagrancy Act included impersonating Queen Victoria. Although she was convicted,
Speaker 1: York was not jailed because of her age she was
Speaker 1: in her seventies. She paid a fine of five pounds.
Speaker 1: Duncan's conviction and jail sentence have been credited with sparking
Speaker 1: a movement to repeal the Witchcraft Act, in part because
Speaker 1: it could be read as outlawing spiritualism across the board,
Speaker 1: and the words of d ABD. Collins, writing in the
Speaker 1: Modern Law Review in July of nine, quote now by
Speaker 1: the invocation of an obsolete statute which was framed with
Speaker 1: entirely different ideas. The practice of mediumship has in effect
Speaker 1: been made illegal, and here and there police consider it
Speaker 1: their duty to try to put a stop to it.
Speaker 1: The Witchcraft Acts and the relevant parts of the Vagrancy
Speaker 1: Act were repealed under the Fraudulent Medium's Act of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty one, or an Act to repeal the Witchcraft Act
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty five and to make in substitution for certain
Speaker 1: provisions of Section four of the Vagrancy Act. Four express
Speaker 1: provision of the punishment of persons who fraudulently purport to
Speaker 1: act as spiritualistic mediums or to exercise powers of telepathy, clairvoyance,
Speaker 1: or other similar powers. Under this new law, a person
Speaker 1: was guilty of an offense if they quote a with
Speaker 1: intent to deceive, purport to act as a spiritualistic medium,
Speaker 1: or exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar powers,
Speaker 1: or be and purporting to act as a spiritualistic medium
Speaker 1: or to exercise such powers, as Alford said, uses any
Speaker 1: fraudulent device, in other words, spiritualism acting as a medium.
Speaker 1: There were only a crime if carried out with the
Speaker 1: intent to deceive. Later on, the law specified that a
Speaker 1: person could only be convicted of this offense if they
Speaker 1: had taken money or something else of value in exchange
Speaker 1: for doing this. So if you genuinely believed that you
Speaker 1: can talk to spirits, that was no longer a crime,
Speaker 1: but if you faked people out about it and took
Speaker 1: their money, it was. Even after these changes in the law,
Speaker 1: Helen Duncan was arrested at least one other time in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, although this time she did not face charges,
Speaker 1: but some of her family pointed to this arrest as
Speaker 1: causing a rapid decline in her health. She died just
Speaker 1: a few months later, on December six, ninety six, at
Speaker 1: the age of fifty nine. Her cause of death was
Speaker 1: diabetes and heart failure. She was cremated and her ashes
Speaker 1: were scattered at a cemetery in Calendar. The Fraudulent Mediums
Speaker 1: Act was repealed under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading
Speaker 1: Regulations in two thousand eight, but aside from the sections
Speaker 1: related to fortune telling, many other provisions of the Vagrancy
Speaker 1: Act are still on the books. That act is currently
Speaker 1: under review. As we said earlier, parts of it essentially
Speaker 1: criminalized homelessness without doing any thing to address the causes
Speaker 1: of homelessness. The UK government has expressed an intent to
Speaker 1: repeal this law, but only after analyzing how it's repeal
Speaker 1: would affect things like law enforcement and what they should
Speaker 1: include in a different law to take its place. Some
Speaker 1: of Duncan's descendants have also taken up an effort to
Speaker 1: get her posthumously pardoned. The Scottish Parliament rejected a petition
Speaker 1: to do so in two thousand eight. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: totally sure if that effort is still ongoing. There used
Speaker 1: to be a website about it, but that website it's
Speaker 1: no longer there. Do you have listener mail to take
Speaker 1: us out of this medium discussion? I do? I do?
Speaker 1: This is from Lauren. Lauren wrote, Hello, This will be
Speaker 1: more of a comment and less of a letter. But
Speaker 1: when I was in college undergrad for chemical engineering, I
Speaker 1: was an undergraduate researcher a k A glorified dishwasher in
Speaker 1: an environmental engineering lab at my school. Grad student I
Speaker 1: was working with was trying to use ozone to remove
Speaker 1: medicinal waste from waste water that arrived either through people
Speaker 1: flushing their medicine down the toilet or urine. This was
Speaker 1: certainly targeting one particular drug or type of drug. But
Speaker 1: to be quite honest, I barely understood what was going
Speaker 1: on then and it's been several years since so, but
Speaker 1: I was listening to the behind the scenes episode on
Speaker 1: this and when y'all were talking about it, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to interrupt and say, yes, it's still an issue
Speaker 1: and still is an issue for so many other drugs
Speaker 1: than just antibiotics. Thanks so much for the podcast. It
Speaker 1: makes doing all the paperwork at my job more bearable.
Speaker 1: And it's so sorry for the complete lack of grammar.
Speaker 1: It's possibly the Internet speak flush engineer's complete lack of
Speaker 1: communication skills I possess. I did not notice any lack
Speaker 1: of grammar, so there's no need to apologize for that.
Speaker 1: Um it was indeed still comprehensible. And then attached is
Speaker 1: a terrible picture of my kittie, Oliver and his new
Speaker 1: fault bow tie. I love a kiddie in a bow tie.
Speaker 1: It is an adorable picture, so thank you Lauren. Of course,
Speaker 1: this followed our episode on penicillin and a brief discussion
Speaker 1: we had about um penicillin and other drugs in wastewater UM,
Speaker 1: and we sort of had a like unscripted discussion I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, I think it's still a problem. It's
Speaker 1: definitely still a problem. Some drugs can be removed from
Speaker 1: the wastewater through wastewater treatment, some of them can't, like
Speaker 1: not all of them are, and then it makes its
Speaker 1: way back into the ecosystem, not just into like the
Speaker 1: drinking water in people's homes, but everywhere. Um so, yes,
Speaker 1: it's a whole, big, ongoing issue. So thank you again, Lauren.
Speaker 1: We're sending this email and the great cat picture if
Speaker 1: you would like to send us a note. We're at
Speaker 1: History Podcast at i heeart radio dot com. We're all
Speaker 1: over social media, missing history that story. I'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest,
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