Cottingley Fairies
Cottingley Fairies
Cottingley Fairies
Cottingley Fairies
The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken
by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two
young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. In
1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years
old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on fairies
he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of
The Strand Magazine. Doyle, as a spiritualist, was enthusiastic about
the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of
psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the
images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked. The first of the five photographs, taken by
Elsie Wright in 1917, shows Frances
Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both Griffiths with the alleged fairies.
girls married and lived abroad for a time after they grew up, yet the
photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a
reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the UK. Elsie left open the
possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the
story.
In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs were faked, using cardboard cutouts of fairies
copied from a popular children's book of the time, but Frances maintained that the fifth and final photograph was
genuine. The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in the National Science and Media Museum in
Bradford, England.
Contents
1917 photographs
Initial examinations
1920 photographs
Publication and reaction
Gardner's final visit
Later investigations
Confession
Subsequent history
References
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading
External links
1917 photographs
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Elsie's father, Arthur, was a keen amateur photographer, and had set up his own
darkroom. The picture on the photographic plate he developed showed Frances
behind a bush in the foreground, on which four fairies appeared to be dancing.
Knowing his daughter's artistic ability, and that she had spent some time working Cottingley Beck, where
in a photographer's studio, he dismissed the figures as cardboard cutouts. Two Frances and Elsie claimed
months later the girls borrowed his camera again, and this time returned with a to have seen the fairies
photograph of Elsie sitting on the lawn holding out her hand to a 1-foot-tall (30 cm)
gnome. Exasperated by what he believed to be "nothing but a prank",[2] and
convinced that the girls must have tampered with his camera in some way, Arthur Wright refused to lend it to them
again.[3] His wife Polly, however, believed the photographs to be authentic.[2]
the fact that two young girls had not only been able to see fairies, which others had done, but had
actually for the first time ever been able to materialise them at a density sufficient for their images to be
recorded on a photographic plate, meant that it was possible that the next cycle of evolution was
underway.[6]
Initial examinations
Gardner sent the prints along with the original glass-plate negatives to Harold Snelling, a photography expert.
Snelling's opinion was that "the two negatives are entirely genuine, unfaked photographs ... [with] no trace whatsoever
of studio work involving card or paper models".[7] He did not go so far as to say that the photographs showed fairies,
stating only that "these are straight forward photographs of whatever was in front of the camera at the time".[8]
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Gardner had the prints "clarified" by Snelling, and new negatives produced, "more conducive to printing",[5][6] for use
in the illustrated lectures he gave around the UK.[6] Snelling supplied the photographic prints which were available for
sale at Gardner's lectures.[9][10]
Author and prominent spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned of the
photographs from the editor of the spiritualist publication Light.[11] Doyle had been
commissioned by The Strand Magazine to write an article on fairies for their
Christmas issue, and the fairy photographs "must have seemed like a godsend"
according to broadcaster and historian Magnus Magnusson. Doyle contacted
Gardner in June 1920 to determine the background to the photographs, and wrote
to Elsie and her father to request permission from the latter to use the prints in his
article. Arthur Wright was "obviously impressed" that Doyle was involved, and gave
his permission for publication, but he refused payment on the grounds that, if
genuine, the images should not be "soiled" by money.[12]
Gardner and Doyle sought a second expert opinion from the photographic company
The second of the five
Kodak. Several of the company's technicians examined the enhanced prints, and
photographs, showing Elsie
although they agreed with Snelling that the pictures "showed no signs of being
with a winged gnome
faked", they concluded that "this could not be taken as conclusive evidence ... that
they were authentic photographs of fairies".[13] Kodak declined to issue a certificate
of authenticity.[14] Gardner believed that the Kodak technicians might not have examined the photographs entirely
objectively, observing that one had commented "after all, as fairies couldn't be true, the photographs must have been
faked somehow".[15] The prints were also examined by another photographic company, Ilford, who reported
unequivocally that there was "some evidence of faking".[15] Gardner and Doyle, perhaps rather optimistically,
interpreted the results of the three expert evaluations as two in favour of the photographs' authenticity and one
against.[15]
Doyle also showed the photographs to the physicist and pioneering psychical researcher Sir Oliver Lodge, who
believed the photographs to be fake. He suggested that a troupe of dancers had masqueraded as fairies, and expressed
doubt as to their "distinctly 'Parisienne' " hairstyles.[14]
On October 4, 2018 the first two of the photographs, Alice and the Fairies and Iris and the Gnome, were to be sold by
Dominic Winter Auctioneers, in Gloucestershire. The prints, suspected to have been made in 1920 to sell at
theosophical lectures, were expected to bring £700-£1000 each.[16] As it turned out, 'Iris with the Gnome' sold for a
hammer price of £5,400 (plus 24% buyer's premium incl. VAT), while 'Alice and the Fairies' sold for a hammer price
of £15,000 (plus 24% buyer's premium incl. VAT).[17]
1920 photographs
Doyle was preoccupied with organising an imminent lecture tour of Australia, and in July 1920, sent Gardner to meet
the Wright family. Frances was by then living with her parents in Scarborough,[15] but Elsie's father told Gardner that
he had been so certain the photographs were fakes that while the girls were away he searched their bedroom and the
area around the beck (stream), looking for scraps of pictures or cutouts, but found nothing "incriminating".[18]
Gardner believed the Wright family to be honest and respectable. To place the matter of the photographs' authenticity
beyond doubt, he returned to Cottingley at the end of July with two Kodak Cameo cameras and 24 secretly marked
photographic plates. Frances was invited to stay with the Wright family during the school summer holiday so that she
and Elsie could take more pictures of the fairies.[18] Gardner described his briefing in his 1945 Fairies: A Book of Real
Fairies:
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I went off, to Cottingley again, taking the two cameras and plates
from London, and met the family and explained to the two girls the
simple working of the cameras, giving one each to keep. The cameras
were loaded, and my final advice was that they need go up to the glen
only on fine days as they had been accustomed to do before and tice
the fairies, as they called their way of attracting them, and see what
they could get. I suggested only the most obvious and easy
precautions about lighting and distance, for I knew it was essential
they should feel free and unhampered and have no burden of
responsibility. If nothing came of it all, I told them, they were not to
mind a bit.[19]
Frances and the Leaping
Fairy, the third photograph
Until 19 August the weather was unsuitable for photography. Because Frances and
Elsie insisted that the fairies would not show themselves if others were watching,
Elsie's mother was persuaded to visit her sister's for tea, leaving the girls alone. In her absence the girls took several
photographs, two of which appeared to show fairies. In the first, Frances and the Leaping Fairy, Frances is shown in
profile with a winged fairy close by her nose. The second, Fairy offering Posy of Harebells to Elsie, shows a fairy either
hovering or tiptoeing on a branch, and offering Elsie a flower. Two days later the girls took the last picture, Fairies and
Their Sun-Bath.[20]
The plates were packed in cotton wool and returned to Gardner in London, who sent an "ecstatic" telegram to Doyle,
by then in Melbourne.[21] Doyle wrote back:
My heart was gladdened when out here in far Australia I had your note and the three wonderful pictures
which are confirmatory of our published results. When our fairies are admitted other psychic
phenomena will find a more ready acceptance ... We have had continued messages at seances for some
time that a visible sign was coming through.[21]
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Sydney newspaper Truth on 5 January 1921 expressed a similar view; "For the true explanation of these fairy
photographs what is wanted is not a knowledge of occult phenomena but a knowledge of children."[19] Some public
figures were more sympathetic. Margaret McMillan, the educational and social reformer, wrote: "How wonderful that
to these dear children such a wonderful gift has been vouchsafed."[24] The novelist Henry De Vere Stacpoole decided
to take the fairy photographs and the girls at face value.[19] In a letter to Gardner he wrote: "Look at Alice's [Frances']
face. Look at Iris's [Elsie's] face. There is an extraordinary thing called Truth which has 10 million faces and forms – it
is God's currency and the cleverest coiner or forger can't imitate it."
Major John Hall-Edwards, a keen photographer and pioneer of medical X-ray treatments in Britain, was a particularly
vigorous critic:[26]
On the evidence I have no hesitation in saying that these photographs could have been "faked". I criticize
the attitude of those who declared there is something supernatural in the circumstances attending to the
taking of these pictures because, as a medical man, I believe that the inculcation of such absurd ideas
into the minds of children will result in later life in manifestations and nervous disorder and mental
disturbances.[19]
Doyle used the later photographs in 1921 to illustrate a second article in The Strand, in which he described other
accounts of fairy sightings. The article formed the foundation for his 1922 book The Coming of the Fairies.[8] As
before, the photographs were received with mixed credulity. Sceptics noted that the fairies "looked suspiciously like
the traditional fairies of nursery tales" and that they had "very fashionable hairstyles".[19]
By now Elsie and Frances were tired of the whole fairy business. Years later Elsie looked at a photograph of herself and
Frances taken with Hodson and said: "Look at that, fed up with fairies." Both Elsie and Frances later admitted that
they "played along" with Hodson "out of mischief",[27] and that they considered him "a fake".[24]
Later investigations
Public interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually subsided after 1921. Elsie and Frances eventually married and lived
abroad for many years.[28] In 1966, a reporter from the Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who was by then back
in England. She admitted in an interview given that year that the fairies might have been "figments of my
imagination", but left open the possibility she believed that she had somehow managed to photograph her
thoughts.[29] The media subsequently became interested in Frances and Elsie's photographs once again.[19] BBC
television's Nationwide programme investigated the case in 1971, but Elsie stuck to her story: "I've told you that
they're photographs of figments of our imagination, and that's what I'm sticking to".[29]
Elsie and Frances were interviewed by journalist Austin Mitchell in September 1976, for a programme broadcast on
Yorkshire Television. When pressed, both women agreed that "a rational person doesn't see fairies", but they denied
having fabricated the photographs.[27] In 1978 the magician and scientific sceptic James Randi and a team from the
Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal examined the photographs, using a "computer
enhancement process". They concluded that the photographs were fakes, and that strings could be seen supporting the
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fairies.[30] Geoffrey Crawley, editor of the British Journal of Photography, undertook a "major scientific investigation
of the photographs and the events surrounding them", published between 1982 and 1983, "the first major postwar
analysis of the affair". He also concluded that the pictures were fakes.[31]
Confession
In 1983, the cousins admitted in an article published in the magazine The
Unexplained that the photographs had been faked, although both
maintained that they really had seen fairies. Elsie had copied illustrations
of dancing girls from a popular children's book of the time, Princess
Mary's Gift Book, published in 1914, and drew wings on them.[32] They
said they had then cut out the cardboard figures and supported them with
hatpins, disposing of their props in the beck once the photograph had been
taken.[27] But the cousins disagreed about the fifth and final photograph,
which Doyle in his The Coming of the Fairies described in this way: One of Claude Arthur Shepperson's
illustrations of dancing girls, from
Seated on the upper left hand edge with wing well displayed Princess Mary's Gift Book
is an undraped fairy apparently considering whether it is
time to get up. An earlier riser of more mature age is seen on
the right possessing abundant hair and wonderful wings. Her
slightly denser body can be glimpsed within her fairy
dress.[33]
Both Frances and Elsie claimed to have taken the fifth photograph.[34] In a letter published in The Times newspaper
on 9 April 1983, Geoffrey Crawley explained the discrepancy by suggesting that the photograph was "an unintended
double exposure of fairy cutouts in the grass", and thus "both ladies can be quite sincere in believing that they each
took it".[10]
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In a 1985 interview on Yorkshire Television's Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, Elsie said that she and
Frances were too embarrassed to admit the truth after fooling Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes: "Two village kids
and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle – well, we could only keep quiet." In the same interview Frances said: "I never
even thought of it as being a fraud – it was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun and I can't understand to this day why
they were taken in – they wanted to be taken in."[32]
Subsequent history
Frances died in 1986, and Elsie in 1988.[27] Prints of their photographs of the fairies, along
with a few other items including a first edition of Doyle's book The Coming of the Fairies,
were sold at auction in London for £21,620 in 1998.[35] That same year, Geoffrey Crawley sold
his Cottingley Fairy material to the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in
Bradford (now the National Science and Media Museum), where it is on display. The
collection included prints of the photographs, two of the cameras used by the girls,
watercolours of fairies painted by Elsie, and a nine-page letter from Elsie admitting to the
hoax.[36] The glass photographic plates were bought for £6,000 by an unnamed buyer at a
London auction held in 2001.[37]
I hated those photographs from the age of 16 when Mr Gardner presented me with a bunch of flowers
and wanted me to sit on the platform [at a Theosophical Society meeting] with him. I realised what I was
in for if I did not keep myself hidden.[40]
The 1997 films FairyTale: A True Story and Photographing Fairies were inspired by the events surrounding the
Cottingley Fairies.[41] The photographs were parodied in a 1994 book written by Terry Jones and Brian Froud, Lady
Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book.[42]
In 2017 a further two fairy photographs were presented as evidence that the girls' parents were part of the conspiracy.
Dating from 1917 and 1918, both photographs are poorly executed copies of two of the original fairy photographs. One
was published in 1918 in The Sphere newspaper, which was before the originals had been seen by anyone outside the
girls' immediate family.[43]
References
Citations
1. Magnusson (2006), pp. 97–98
2. Magnusson (2006), p. 97
3. Prashad (2008), p. 42
4. Prashad (2008), p. 40
5. Magnusson (2006), pp. 98–99
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Bibliography
Ansley, William H. (2003), "Little, Big Girl: The Influence of the Alice Books and Other Works of Lewis Carroll on
John Crowley's Novel Little Big, or The Fairies' Parliament", in Turner, Alice K.; Andre-Druissi, Michael (eds.),
Snakes-Hands: The Fiction of John Crowley, Cosmos Books, pp. 165–203, ISBN 978-1-59224-051-7
Doyle, Arthur Conan (2006) [1922], The Coming of the Fairies, University of Nebraska Press, ISBN 978-0-8032-
6655-1
Magnusson, Magnus (2006), Fakers, Forgers & Phoneys, Mainstream Publishing, ISBN 1-84596-190-0
Prashad, Sukhadev (2008), World Famous Supernatural Mysteries, Pustak Mahal, ISBN 978-81-223-0559-3
Smith, Paul (1997), "The Cottingley Fairies: The End of a Legend", in Narváez, Peter (ed.), The Good People:
New Fairylore Essays, The University Press of Kentucky, pp. 371–405, ISBN 978-0-8131-0939-8
Further reading
Losure, Mary (2012), The Fairy Ring or Elsie and Frances Fool the World, Candlewick, ISBN 978-0-7636-5670-6
Griffiths, Frances Mary; Lynch, Christine (2009), Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies, JMJ Publications,
ISBN 978-1-899228-06-5
Bihet, Francesca (2013). "Sprites, spiritualists and sleuths: the intersecting ownership of transcendent proofs in
the Cottingley Fairy Fraud (http://eprints.chi.ac.uk/1167/)". In: Afterlife: 18th Postgraduate Religion and Theology
Conference, 8–9 March 2013, University of Bristol. (Unpublished)
Sanderson, S.F. (1973), "The Cottingley Fairy Photographs: A Re-Appraisal of the Evidence", Folklore, 84
(Summer)
External links
The Coming of the Fairies (https://archive.org/details/comingoffairies00doylrich) – scans of the original version of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book (1922)
The Case of the Cottingley Fairies (http://web.randi.org/uploads/3/7/3/7/37377621/jref13edmod_fairies_teacher_p
rint.pdf) at The James Randi Educational Foundation
Cottingley Fairies (https://web.archive.org/web/20031205042903/http://www.cottingley.net/fairies.shtml) at
Cottingley.Net – The Cottingley Network
Cottingley Fairies (http://www.cottingleyconnect.org.uk/fairies.htm) at Cottingley Connect
The Coming of the Fairies (https://librivox.org/search?title=The+Coming+of+the+Fairies&author=DOYLE&read
er=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_date&se
arch_page=1&search_form=advanced) public domain audiobook at LibriVox
Archival Material at Leeds University Library (https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/8705)
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using
this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia
Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
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