November 21, 2023 • 28 mins
In the summer of 1917, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths convinced a whole lot of people, including the famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, they'd seen fairies neat their home -- and they had photographic evidence to prove it. After decades of keeping their ruse a secret, they admitted their "joke was to last two hours, and it has lasted 70 years.
Executive Producers: Maria Trimarchi and Holly Frey
Producer & Editor: Casby Bias
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
There are fairies at the bottom of our garden. It's
not so very very far away. You pass the gardener's
shed and you just keep straight ahead. I do so
hope they've really come to stay. Those lines begin the
poem There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden,
written by Rose Feileman and published in nineteen seventeen. It
turns out fairies were having a big year that year.
(00:36):
That summer, two young girls, Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths,
were playing near their home in Cottingley, near Bradford in
West Yorkshire, England, when they discovered fairies in their garden,
and they convinced many among us, including the famous Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, that fairies were real, with a series
of photos they took with the thought to be mythical creatures.
(00:57):
It took decades before they disclosed was all a hoax.
Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky and.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Holly Frye. Let's set the scene. Nine year old
Francis Griffiths and her mother Annie were staying with the
Wright family Holly and Arthur Wright and their sixteen year
old daughter Elsie in the village of Coddingly, and it's
there where Frances saw her first fairy. These two families
(01:24):
were related, Frances and Elsie were cousins, and they were
living together while Francis's father served in the First World War.
Near the home was a small wooded valley through which
Coddingly Beck flowed. A beck in case you did not know,
is a stream or a brook, usually with a stony bed,
and this one followed along the foot of their yard.
(01:47):
The cousins often played in that nearby Little Minie Valley
and claimed that they had seen fairies around the beck
almost daily when they were there. Their parents assumed this
was all tall tales, but the girls insisted.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
One day in July of nineteen seventeen, Elsie borrowed her
father's camera and took photos of Frances and what the
girls called the Beck fairies. Elsie's father, Arthur, an amateur
photographer with his own darkroom, developed their photos later that
day and he discovered the prince revealed strange, unidentified white shapes.
(02:23):
He described them as looking like quote sandwich papers or
maybe some sort of birds. But his daughter insisted they
had photographed fairies. About a month later, Francis photographed Elsie
with what the girls claimed was a gnome. Arthur questioned
the girls about what exactly they were doing down by
the stream, but they stuck to their story. They took
(02:46):
photos of what they saw at the stream, they said,
and they saw fairies. Arthur shrugged it off as kid's imaginations.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Elsie's mother, Polly, wasn't as sure as her husband that
the girls were lying, and she asked Arthur to search
the area around the beck. Surely he would either see
fairies himself if the girl's claims were real, or he
would be able to determine that this was all imaginative play.
Arthur did investigate, and he found nothing of value or importance.
(03:17):
He did not see any fairies. The writs did wonder
if the photos may have some novelty value, and Arthur
produced a few prints to show to family and a
few neighbors. In nineteen nineteen, Polly took Prince to a
lecture about fairies at a local meeting of the Theosophical
Society in Bradford. The Theosophical Society is a movement interested
(03:40):
in world religions and philosophies, and it encourages excitement about
the impossible. The photos made it to the attention of
one of the Society's leading members, Edward Gardner.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
That same year, Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became
aware of the photos while he was researching an article
about fairies and fairy life he hoped would enhance his
case for his long standing interest in spiritualism. Some recollections
of how he came to hear about the fairies suggest
he may have received a letter from English journalist, spiritualist
(04:14):
and friend Felicia Scatcherd informing him of some potentially interesting
photographs which might be proof of the existence of fairies
in Yorkshire. Whichever path the photos took to get to
his attention, he was intrigued. Doyle asked his friend and
prominent spiritualist, the very same Edward Gardner we just mentioned,
if he could find out what was going on in
(04:35):
the Yorkshire village of Coddingly. In no time, Gardner was
in the company of Elsie and Francis and looking at
a few photos, each showing very small female figures with
transparent wings. The girls claimed they'd first seen the fairies
on an earlier occasion and had gone back to the
stream with a camera to photograph them as proof. Gardner
(04:56):
was taken in and declared them genuine and obtained Prince
for to view.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
So let's back this up a little minute. Yes, this
is the very same Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote
sixty stories about the character Sherlock Holmes, nearly two hundred novels,
short stories, poems, historical books and pamphlets. He was, in
case you did not know, also a physician, and he
was also really interested in and a proponent of spiritualism.
(05:26):
In the mid eighteen eighties he began studying psychic phenomena,
and in nineteen sixteen announced that he had converted to spiritualism.
The movement was popular in the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth century, and it was based on a belief
that departed souls can interact with the living. Through this
lens Doyle interpreted the fairy photos as visible evidence of
(05:50):
psychic phenomena. Though the movement was trendy at the time,
his beliefs earned him a lot of criticism from friends
and peers. In fact, after the fairy Photos incident, some
people even whispered that he might be losing his cognitive
faculties As he aged.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Worried about the fairies started to get out. Both Gardner
and Doyle gave lectures on the photographs. Copies of them
were made and passed around at those lectures as well
as at Theosophical Society meetings and other conferences. They were
well received, but there were also detractors. British physicist and
writer Sir Oliver Lodge, for instance, immediately denounced them as
(06:31):
fakes upon seeing them. Doyle himself was a little skeptical
because he wasn't sure the creatures in the Prince were
actual fairies. Maybe he considered the girls were gifted mediums,
and he asked Gardner to return to Cottingly to investigate
the beck itself. There was, though, nothing remarkable, and Gardner
did not see any fairies. Now. As a side note,
(06:54):
if you're like us and you wondered why he couldn't
make that trip himself. Doyle was touring Australia lecturing about spiritualism.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
We're going to take a break here for a word
from our sponsors, and when we're back we'll talk about
what happened when the Cottingley Ferry photos were published in
the Strand magazine.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Welcome Back to Criminalia. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have
been convinced, but not everyone else was. Let's begin with
what the newspapers had to say about the Coddingley Fairies.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
There were skeptics, and that included the press. Newspaper reporters
and editors were not open to the possibility that two
young girls had photographed fairies. The City News, for instance,
stated that quote, it seems at this point that we
must believe either in the almost incredible mystery of the
fairy or in the almost incredible wonders of faked photographs.
(08:04):
Doyle carried on and remained intrigued. Yet there was something
about the photographs that he couldn't quite put his finger on,
just kept bothering him. He asked for the opinion of
experts from the Eastman Kodak Company. Their efforts were futile, though,
as he moved ahead as if the photos were genuine
without waiting for them to give him their final report.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And then Doyle officially gave credence to the hoax when
he published the now famous Coddingley Fairies photos accompanying an
article he penned about the fairies in the Christmas nineteen
twenty issue of the Strand magazine. To him and to
Gardner as well, the photos were a sign of hope,
and Doyle wrote quote, maybe it is an indication that
(08:49):
we're reaching the silver lining of the clouds when we
find ourselves suddenly presented with actual photographs of these enchanting
little creatures relegated long since to the realm of the
imaginary and the fanciful. To protect the girl's anonymity, when published,
the photographs were captioned with the names Alice and Iris.
It didn't take long before the magazine and Doyle both
(09:11):
were deluged with photographic evidence from others who had claimed
to have seen fairies. Doyle looked at every single photo
submission but determined the only genuine fairy photos were from
the coddingly Beck. Time magazine reported that fairy fever had
gripped the nation. This was a time when the general
(09:31):
public was weary from the First World War and seemed
to want to believe fairies might be improbable yet not impossible.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Following its publication in Britain, the article and its photos
went on to be published in Australia and in the
United States. The images, now seen around the world, sparked
some impassioned debate. Novelist Henry de Vere Stackpool, who insisted
the photographs were because they seemed to be so, stated quote,
(10:04):
look at Francis's face, look at Elsie's face. There is
an extraordinary thing called truth, which has ten million faces,
in forms it is God's currency, and the cleverest coiner
or forger can't imitate it. So to him, the girls
were telling the truth just because they looked like they
(10:25):
were telling the truth. Skeptics, though, including Elsie's father, noted
a few questionable things in the photos, including that the
fairies looked they looked like bits of paper. There were
other questions like why doesn't the fairy in the second
photo have wings when the other fairies do? And perhaps
(10:46):
my favorite, why is one of these fairies wearing the
latest French fashion?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
According to doctor Merrick Burrow, head of English and Creative
Writing at the University of Huddersfield, Despite relenting to quote
widespread skepticism, Doyle instead gave the girls a camera and
asked them to take more photos of the fairies. We
will note here though that some records suggest Gardner is
the one who lent the camera with marked plates to
(11:13):
prevent tampering. Either way, Doyle's support for the fairy photos
left the girls feeling less excited about their discovery and
rather quote painted into a corner because of it, Feeling
they couldn't say no, they took a second set of
images in August of nineteen twenty. Doyle went on to
write a book about the Coddingly Fairies and the Fairy affair.
(11:37):
In the Coming of the Fairies, published in nineteen twenty two,
he laid out the story of the photographs, their alleged prominence,
and the implications of their existence. He wrote, quote, I
have convinced myself that there is overwhelming evidence for the fairies,
and he also discussed with Edward Gardner the possibility of
a film on the subject. In Burrough's estimation, quote, I
(12:01):
do not think he was that interested in fairies per se,
but he was enormously invested in the idea that there
was more to the world than what we consider normal reality.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Doctor Burrow has also stated that Doyle was for sure
initially suspicious that these photos could be a hoax, and
he had fears that he was being set up to
debunk his beliefs in spiritualism and then to prove him
quote gullible. But according to Burrow for Doyle, quote, if
these photos proved the existence of fairies and that you
(12:34):
could photograph the supernatural, then they were a staging post
in the argument for spiritualism, and there's truth to that.
In his article in The Strand, Doyle wrote that it
would quote mark an epoch in human thought if these
fairies were proven to be real, and he also stated
that quote, after carefully going into every possible source of error,
(12:56):
a strong prima facy case has been built up for
their authenticity. He continued, quote The recognition of their existence
will jolt the material twentieth century mind out of its
heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit
that there is a glamour and a mystery to life.
Having discovered this, the world will not find it so
(13:18):
difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts,
which has already been so convincingly put before it.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
We are going to take a break for a word
from our sponsors, and when we're back we will talk
about the five fairy photos, their descriptions, and what the
fuss was all.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
About, welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about those fairy photos,
and let's also talk about the cousin's confessions sixty years
(14:00):
after they pulled off this hoax.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Let's talk about these photos. There were five. In his
book Fairies, The Coddingly Photos and their Sequel, published in
nineteen forty five, Edward Gardner described each one in the
chronological order the girls took them, along with statements the
girls made about them. So here we go. The first
photo in the series, known as Francis and the Fairies,
(14:24):
was taken in July of nineteen seventeen with a midge
quarter plate camera belonging to Elsie's father, Arthur. Plate cameras,
if you don't know about them, are cameras designed to
produce photos on glass or metal plates using plate holders
rather than film holders, and all five of the girl's
photos were taken with a plate camera. Gardner described this
(14:45):
photo as so the negative was a little overexposed. The
waterfall and rocks are about twenty feet distance behind Francis,
who was standing in shallow water inside the bank of
the Beck. The coloring of the fair was described by
the girls as shades of green, lavender and mauve, most
marked in the wings, and fading to almost pure white
(15:08):
in limbs and drapery.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The second photo in the series, known as Elsie and
the Gnome, was taken in September of that year, also
using Arthur's Midge quarter plate camera. Gardner described it like
this quote. Elsie was playing with the gnome and beckoning
it to come onto her knee. The Gnome leapt up
just as Francis, who had the camera, snapped the shutter.
(15:33):
He is described as wearing black tights, a reddish jersey,
and a pointed, bright red cap. Elsie said there was
no perceptible weight, though when on the bare hand, the
feeling is like a little breath. The wings were more
mothlike than the fairies, and of a soft, neutral tint.
Elsie explained that what seemed to be markings on his
(15:55):
wings are simply his pipes, which he was swinging in
his Grotte esque little left hand.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
The third photo, called Francis and the Leaping Fairy, was
taken a few years later, in August of nineteen twenty.
This photo was taken with a cameo quarter a quarter
plate camera with folding bellows, so if you remember, Doyle
gave them a camera and asked for more photos. These
final three photos are the result of that request. Gardner's
(16:23):
description was as follows. The fairy is leaping up from
the leaves below and hovering for a moment. It had
done so three or four times, rising a little higher
than before. Francis thought it would touch her face and
involuntarily tossed her head back. The fairy's light covering appears
to be close fitting. The wings were lavender in color.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
The fourth photo is known as Faery offering a posey
to Elsie, and it was also taken in August of
nineteen twenty, also with a cameo quarter camera, said Gardener.
Of this photo, the fairy is standing almost still pois
on the bush leaves. The wings were shot with yellow.
An interesting point is shown in this photograph. Elsie is
(17:08):
not looking directly at the sprite. The reason seems to
be that the human eye is disconcerting. If the fairy
be actively moving, it does not matter much, but if
motionless and aware of being gazed at, then the nature
spirit will usually withdraw and apparently vanish with fairy levers
the habit of looking at first a little sideways is common.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
The fifth and final photo in the series is known
as Fairies and their Sun Bath, and like the third
and fourth photos, was taken in August of nineteen twenty
with a cameo quarter camera of it. Gardner wrote quote,
this photo is especially remarkable as it contains a feature
quite unknown to the girls. The sheath or cocoon appearing
(17:52):
in the middle of the grasses had not been seen
by them before, and they had no idea what it was.
Fairy observers of Scotland and the New Forest, however, were
familiar with it and described it as a magnetic bath,
woven very quickly by the fairies and used after dull
weather in the autumn. Especially the interior seems to be
magnetized in some manner that stimulates and pleases.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
If you look at these photographs today, it's clear just
to the naked eye that they are faked. But many
come to Doyle's defense and in defense of the general
public too, for a few reasons for their belief with
two standouts. Doyle wanted to believe in something magical in
this world. He believed that if you treated others with
(18:38):
honesty and kindness, they would reciprocate. It is written that
this sometimes left him the butt of jokes or left
him taken advantage of. But it's also said of him
that if he thought you ingenuous or dishonest as a gentleman,
he would never let on. So even if he had
come to the conclusion that the girls were faking these
(18:58):
fairy sightings, he would not have outed their hoax. Note, however,
he always did consider them genuine.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Doyle died of a heart attack at age seventy one
in July of nineteen thirty. His last words spoken to
his wife were you are wonderful. The debate about the
fairy photos continued on for decades long after his death,
until finally someone spoke up about it. It actually wasn't
until nineteen seventy eight when James Randy, a magician and
(19:29):
scientific skeptic who frequently challenged paranormal and pseudo scientific claims,
pointed out that the fairyes scene in the girl's photographs
were strikingly similar to those found in the children's book
called Princess Mary's Gift Book, which had been published in
nineteen fifteen, shortly before the girls took their very first
fairy photo.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Elsie and Francis had made a pact that they would
never confess how they had taken their photos, and even
Arthur Wright, who developed them, had no no idea what
the secret was. Said Burrow of the photos, quote, there
were a series of minor deceptions that in themselves would
not really have amounted to anything until the involvement of
(20:12):
Conan Doyle, probably the world's foremost popular author with an
interest in spiritualism. Burrow added, quote, when the girls took
the photos, there were a few prints made at the
time by the family, but that would have been it.
Without Doyle. I imagine they would have been lost in
a drawer somewhere, just a quirky family story. But of
(20:33):
course we know that instead they became famous when Doyle
published a feel good story about fairy life.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It wasn't until the early nineteen eighties when the fairy
affair was eventually entirely debunked by Jeffrey Crawley, the editor
of the British Journal of Photography, who undertook the investigation
and in the end concluded, yes, they were faked. It
was also in the early nineteen eighties when the girls
themselves can best the photographs were not real. The whole thing,
(21:03):
they explained, was to get back at their parents, who
had teased them and didn't believe they saw fairies, but
that the joke got out of hand when Doyle and
Gardner became interested. Out of respect for the famous Doyle,
they had agreed they wouldn't reveal the truth until after
those involved had passed away.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Elsie confessed during an interview for The Unexplained magazine that
the fairies were truthfully just paper cutouts. She had explained
that she sketched the fairies using Princess Mary's Gift Book
as her inspiration, and made paper cutouts from those sketches. So, indeed,
James Randy was entirely correct. These fairies did turn out
(21:42):
to be taken from the pages of Princess Mary's Gift Book.
The girls held these cutouts in place with hat pins
during their photo shoots. In fact, if you look closely
at the second photo we've talked about, the one of
Elsie in the Know, you can see the tip of
a hat pin smack dab in the middle of that
alleged creature. Said Elsie of the whole thing quote. The
(22:05):
joke was to last two hours, and it has lasted
seventy years.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Speaking to the BBC in nineteen eighty three, Francis stated, quote,
I never even thought of it as being a fraud.
It was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun.
I can't understand to this day why people were taken in.
They wanted to be taken in. People often say to me,
don't you feel ashamed that you made all of these
poor people look like fools? They believed in you, but
(22:33):
I do not, because they wanted to believe. Time magazine
noticed and reported that Francis often remarked on how none
of the experts who talked to her ever asked her
what she considered to be the most important questions, and
those are these One what were the fairies doing? Two?
How did they appear? And three why could only she
(22:57):
see them? Although Frances and Elsie eventually did admit their
photos were faked, Francis always maintained that they had really
seen fairies in the back. In fact, until her death,
she maintained that one of the most famous photographs most
reports suggest it's the fifth and final photo, was actually real.
Maybe it was, Maybe it Wasn't you know?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
What is real? This yummy bogus Bevy which you know,
if you drink enough, you might see me don't drink
that much.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Does it include absinth?
Speaker 1 (23:33):
No, although I did think about it right Absinth closely
associated with fairy.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
But it's the obvious choice, the choice.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And I think what I'm doing here is not obvious.
And also I have to give a shout out to
listener and now my friend Libby who mentioned to me
recently like, hey, it would be cool if we had
a few more tequila recipes. You're getting a very inspired
tequila drink today, but it comes with some surprises which
hopefully people will enjoy. I will tell you what drink
(24:03):
this looks like at the end. But here is how
you're gonna start. This is not to pour into your
shaking tin yet, but into like a small glass some receptacle.
Put two ounces of Reposado tequila, and into that you
are going to mix a barspoon of sweetened macha powder
(24:25):
and just stir it in.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
There's the first unexpected ingreading.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
There's your surpriser rights. In case you have never gone looking,
Macha powder is pretty easy to find in most supermarkets
these days. If you for some reason can't find it
in your supermarket, I found it in mind, no problem.
You can order it online and it's super easy to
find and it's very delicious. You can do many things
of this. For this, you only need one barspoon, so
(24:49):
that's like about a teaspoon. This is a measure with
your heart situation a little bit. But you're gonna give
that a good stir and then just let it sit
while you prep the rest to the drink, and we'll
stir it again to make sure it's well incorporated at
the end before we add it into your shaking tin.
With just a bunch of ice. You're gonna put three
quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, one quarter of
(25:10):
an ounce of a gave syrup, and then three quarters
of an ounce of a vanilla liqueur like Liquor forty
three or Galiano makes a vanilla liqueur as well. And
then you are gonna shake shake this once you add
that tequila in, because like I said, just stir it
before you add it in. You just want to make
sure all the powders dissolve. Put it all together, take
(25:31):
shake you want it so cold, strain it over ice
into a colin's glass and top it with just like
a little bit like an ounce of lemon lime soda.
This looks like a Madori sour, but it tastes completely different.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah. I can't imagine that any of the flavors overlapped
there at.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
All, not a bunch of all. You have a little
a little citrus in there that's friends with the Madori sour,
and that's about it. But it is a very interesting
flavor because of the macha, which is of course a
green tea powder, but the other components make it not
really taste very green tea. It tastes like something very different.
(26:11):
This is one I will say I'm not joking when
I say shake it until it is ice cold. I
initially didn't have it quite cold enough and it didn't
taste as yummy, and then with a little I was like, oh,
let me toss it back in the tin and I'll
reshake it. And then it was suddenly like, oh, this
is delicious. It just needs to be very cold, so delicious.
(26:31):
I'm calling this the Beck Fairy. This is one that
is very easy to make as a mocktail. You're gonna
make a couple of tweaks, so in lieu of tequila,
you're literally just gonna make your two ounces of macha
using the macha powder as directed on your thing, so
you have essentially like macha water, and then keep the
(26:53):
lemon juice. You're gonna do just a vanilla syrup in
lieu of a vanilla liqure. And because you're pretty so
at this point you could skip that agave syrup you
don't really need it, and then make it the same
way into the collins glass with ice, top it with
a little lemon lime soda. Off to the races. Off
to the glen to look at some fairies, gnomes, fairies
(27:15):
and gnomes. The whole gnome with wings thing really threw
me here, but different kind of gnomes than I was
accustomed to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I've never seen a gnome personally, so I don't know
about their wing situation that you know of, right that
I know of that I know of.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Maybe you're just not perceiving the world.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
You need to go read some noil.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, don't listen. If you have enough back fairies, you'll
see nomes. Always drink responsibly. Please. I'm not encouraging people
to get blotto, but I do hope if you make
this that you really like it. It's an unusual and
fun drink. It has that note of tartness to it,
but it's also smoothed out by the vanilla liqueur and
it's just an interesting drink. I really like it. We
(27:57):
are so thankful that you have spent this time with
us listening to this story of fairies and hoaxery, even
though it may not have been intended to become one
of those, but we intend to always have fun, so
we hope you did, and we will be right back
here next week with more fun. Criminalia is a production
(28:23):
of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
There are fairies at the bottom of our garden. It's
not so very very far away. You pass the gardener's
shed and you just keep straight ahead. I do so
hope they've really come to stay. Those lines begin the
poem There Are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden,
written by Rose Feileman and published in nineteen seventeen. It
turns out fairies were having a big year that year.
(00:36):
That summer, two young girls, Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths,
were playing near their home in Cottingley, near Bradford in
West Yorkshire, England, when they discovered fairies in their garden,
and they convinced many among us, including the famous Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, that fairies were real, with a series
of photos they took with the thought to be mythical creatures.
(00:57):
It took decades before they disclosed was all a hoax.
Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarky and.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
I'm Holly Frye. Let's set the scene. Nine year old
Francis Griffiths and her mother Annie were staying with the
Wright family Holly and Arthur Wright and their sixteen year
old daughter Elsie in the village of Coddingly, and it's
there where Frances saw her first fairy. These two families
(01:24):
were related, Frances and Elsie were cousins, and they were
living together while Francis's father served in the First World War.
Near the home was a small wooded valley through which
Coddingly Beck flowed. A beck in case you did not know,
is a stream or a brook, usually with a stony bed,
and this one followed along the foot of their yard.
(01:47):
The cousins often played in that nearby Little Minie Valley
and claimed that they had seen fairies around the beck
almost daily when they were there. Their parents assumed this
was all tall tales, but the girls insisted.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
One day in July of nineteen seventeen, Elsie borrowed her
father's camera and took photos of Frances and what the
girls called the Beck fairies. Elsie's father, Arthur, an amateur
photographer with his own darkroom, developed their photos later that
day and he discovered the prince revealed strange, unidentified white shapes.
(02:23):
He described them as looking like quote sandwich papers or
maybe some sort of birds. But his daughter insisted they
had photographed fairies. About a month later, Francis photographed Elsie
with what the girls claimed was a gnome. Arthur questioned
the girls about what exactly they were doing down by
the stream, but they stuck to their story. They took
(02:46):
photos of what they saw at the stream, they said,
and they saw fairies. Arthur shrugged it off as kid's imaginations.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Elsie's mother, Polly, wasn't as sure as her husband that
the girls were lying, and she asked Arthur to search
the area around the beck. Surely he would either see
fairies himself if the girl's claims were real, or he
would be able to determine that this was all imaginative play.
Arthur did investigate, and he found nothing of value or importance.
(03:17):
He did not see any fairies. The writs did wonder
if the photos may have some novelty value, and Arthur
produced a few prints to show to family and a
few neighbors. In nineteen nineteen, Polly took Prince to a
lecture about fairies at a local meeting of the Theosophical
Society in Bradford. The Theosophical Society is a movement interested
(03:40):
in world religions and philosophies, and it encourages excitement about
the impossible. The photos made it to the attention of
one of the Society's leading members, Edward Gardner.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
That same year, Scottish author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became
aware of the photos while he was researching an article
about fairies and fairy life he hoped would enhance his
case for his long standing interest in spiritualism. Some recollections
of how he came to hear about the fairies suggest
he may have received a letter from English journalist, spiritualist
(04:14):
and friend Felicia Scatcherd informing him of some potentially interesting
photographs which might be proof of the existence of fairies
in Yorkshire. Whichever path the photos took to get to
his attention, he was intrigued. Doyle asked his friend and
prominent spiritualist, the very same Edward Gardner we just mentioned,
if he could find out what was going on in
(04:35):
the Yorkshire village of Coddingly. In no time, Gardner was
in the company of Elsie and Francis and looking at
a few photos, each showing very small female figures with
transparent wings. The girls claimed they'd first seen the fairies
on an earlier occasion and had gone back to the
stream with a camera to photograph them as proof. Gardner
(04:56):
was taken in and declared them genuine and obtained Prince
for to view.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
So let's back this up a little minute. Yes, this
is the very same Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who wrote
sixty stories about the character Sherlock Holmes, nearly two hundred novels,
short stories, poems, historical books and pamphlets. He was, in
case you did not know, also a physician, and he
was also really interested in and a proponent of spiritualism.
(05:26):
In the mid eighteen eighties he began studying psychic phenomena,
and in nineteen sixteen announced that he had converted to spiritualism.
The movement was popular in the late nineteenth century and
early twentieth century, and it was based on a belief
that departed souls can interact with the living. Through this
lens Doyle interpreted the fairy photos as visible evidence of
(05:50):
psychic phenomena. Though the movement was trendy at the time,
his beliefs earned him a lot of criticism from friends
and peers. In fact, after the fairy Photos incident, some
people even whispered that he might be losing his cognitive
faculties As he aged.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Worried about the fairies started to get out. Both Gardner
and Doyle gave lectures on the photographs. Copies of them
were made and passed around at those lectures as well
as at Theosophical Society meetings and other conferences. They were
well received, but there were also detractors. British physicist and
writer Sir Oliver Lodge, for instance, immediately denounced them as
(06:31):
fakes upon seeing them. Doyle himself was a little skeptical
because he wasn't sure the creatures in the Prince were
actual fairies. Maybe he considered the girls were gifted mediums,
and he asked Gardner to return to Cottingly to investigate
the beck itself. There was, though, nothing remarkable, and Gardner
did not see any fairies. Now. As a side note,
(06:54):
if you're like us and you wondered why he couldn't
make that trip himself. Doyle was touring Australia lecturing about spiritualism.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
We're going to take a break here for a word
from our sponsors, and when we're back we'll talk about
what happened when the Cottingley Ferry photos were published in
the Strand magazine.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Welcome Back to Criminalia. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle may have
been convinced, but not everyone else was. Let's begin with
what the newspapers had to say about the Coddingley Fairies.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
There were skeptics, and that included the press. Newspaper reporters
and editors were not open to the possibility that two
young girls had photographed fairies. The City News, for instance,
stated that quote, it seems at this point that we
must believe either in the almost incredible mystery of the
fairy or in the almost incredible wonders of faked photographs.
(08:04):
Doyle carried on and remained intrigued. Yet there was something
about the photographs that he couldn't quite put his finger on,
just kept bothering him. He asked for the opinion of
experts from the Eastman Kodak Company. Their efforts were futile, though,
as he moved ahead as if the photos were genuine
without waiting for them to give him their final report.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
And then Doyle officially gave credence to the hoax when
he published the now famous Coddingley Fairies photos accompanying an
article he penned about the fairies in the Christmas nineteen
twenty issue of the Strand magazine. To him and to
Gardner as well, the photos were a sign of hope,
and Doyle wrote quote, maybe it is an indication that
(08:49):
we're reaching the silver lining of the clouds when we
find ourselves suddenly presented with actual photographs of these enchanting
little creatures relegated long since to the realm of the
imaginary and the fanciful. To protect the girl's anonymity, when published,
the photographs were captioned with the names Alice and Iris.
It didn't take long before the magazine and Doyle both
(09:11):
were deluged with photographic evidence from others who had claimed
to have seen fairies. Doyle looked at every single photo
submission but determined the only genuine fairy photos were from
the coddingly Beck. Time magazine reported that fairy fever had
gripped the nation. This was a time when the general
(09:31):
public was weary from the First World War and seemed
to want to believe fairies might be improbable yet not impossible.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Following its publication in Britain, the article and its photos
went on to be published in Australia and in the
United States. The images, now seen around the world, sparked
some impassioned debate. Novelist Henry de Vere Stackpool, who insisted
the photographs were because they seemed to be so, stated quote,
(10:04):
look at Francis's face, look at Elsie's face. There is
an extraordinary thing called truth, which has ten million faces,
in forms it is God's currency, and the cleverest coiner
or forger can't imitate it. So to him, the girls
were telling the truth just because they looked like they
(10:25):
were telling the truth. Skeptics, though, including Elsie's father, noted
a few questionable things in the photos, including that the
fairies looked they looked like bits of paper. There were
other questions like why doesn't the fairy in the second
photo have wings when the other fairies do? And perhaps
(10:46):
my favorite, why is one of these fairies wearing the
latest French fashion?
Speaker 2 (10:51):
According to doctor Merrick Burrow, head of English and Creative
Writing at the University of Huddersfield, Despite relenting to quote
widespread skepticism, Doyle instead gave the girls a camera and
asked them to take more photos of the fairies. We
will note here though that some records suggest Gardner is
the one who lent the camera with marked plates to
(11:13):
prevent tampering. Either way, Doyle's support for the fairy photos
left the girls feeling less excited about their discovery and
rather quote painted into a corner because of it, Feeling
they couldn't say no, they took a second set of
images in August of nineteen twenty. Doyle went on to
write a book about the Coddingly Fairies and the Fairy affair.
(11:37):
In the Coming of the Fairies, published in nineteen twenty two,
he laid out the story of the photographs, their alleged prominence,
and the implications of their existence. He wrote, quote, I
have convinced myself that there is overwhelming evidence for the fairies,
and he also discussed with Edward Gardner the possibility of
a film on the subject. In Burrough's estimation, quote, I
(12:01):
do not think he was that interested in fairies per se,
but he was enormously invested in the idea that there
was more to the world than what we consider normal reality.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Doctor Burrow has also stated that Doyle was for sure
initially suspicious that these photos could be a hoax, and
he had fears that he was being set up to
debunk his beliefs in spiritualism and then to prove him
quote gullible. But according to Burrow for Doyle, quote, if
these photos proved the existence of fairies and that you
(12:34):
could photograph the supernatural, then they were a staging post
in the argument for spiritualism, and there's truth to that.
In his article in The Strand, Doyle wrote that it
would quote mark an epoch in human thought if these
fairies were proven to be real, and he also stated
that quote, after carefully going into every possible source of error,
(12:56):
a strong prima facy case has been built up for
their authenticity. He continued, quote The recognition of their existence
will jolt the material twentieth century mind out of its
heavy ruts in the mud, and will make it admit
that there is a glamour and a mystery to life.
Having discovered this, the world will not find it so
(13:18):
difficult to accept that spiritual message supported by physical facts,
which has already been so convincingly put before it.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
We are going to take a break for a word
from our sponsors, and when we're back we will talk
about the five fairy photos, their descriptions, and what the
fuss was all.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
About, welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about those fairy photos,
and let's also talk about the cousin's confessions sixty years
(14:00):
after they pulled off this hoax.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Let's talk about these photos. There were five. In his
book Fairies, The Coddingly Photos and their Sequel, published in
nineteen forty five, Edward Gardner described each one in the
chronological order the girls took them, along with statements the
girls made about them. So here we go. The first
photo in the series, known as Francis and the Fairies,
(14:24):
was taken in July of nineteen seventeen with a midge
quarter plate camera belonging to Elsie's father, Arthur. Plate cameras,
if you don't know about them, are cameras designed to
produce photos on glass or metal plates using plate holders
rather than film holders, and all five of the girl's
photos were taken with a plate camera. Gardner described this
(14:45):
photo as so the negative was a little overexposed. The
waterfall and rocks are about twenty feet distance behind Francis,
who was standing in shallow water inside the bank of
the Beck. The coloring of the fair was described by
the girls as shades of green, lavender and mauve, most
marked in the wings, and fading to almost pure white
(15:08):
in limbs and drapery.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
The second photo in the series, known as Elsie and
the Gnome, was taken in September of that year, also
using Arthur's Midge quarter plate camera. Gardner described it like
this quote. Elsie was playing with the gnome and beckoning
it to come onto her knee. The Gnome leapt up
just as Francis, who had the camera, snapped the shutter.
(15:33):
He is described as wearing black tights, a reddish jersey,
and a pointed, bright red cap. Elsie said there was
no perceptible weight, though when on the bare hand, the
feeling is like a little breath. The wings were more
mothlike than the fairies, and of a soft, neutral tint.
Elsie explained that what seemed to be markings on his
(15:55):
wings are simply his pipes, which he was swinging in
his Grotte esque little left hand.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
The third photo, called Francis and the Leaping Fairy, was
taken a few years later, in August of nineteen twenty.
This photo was taken with a cameo quarter a quarter
plate camera with folding bellows, so if you remember, Doyle
gave them a camera and asked for more photos. These
final three photos are the result of that request. Gardner's
(16:23):
description was as follows. The fairy is leaping up from
the leaves below and hovering for a moment. It had
done so three or four times, rising a little higher
than before. Francis thought it would touch her face and
involuntarily tossed her head back. The fairy's light covering appears
to be close fitting. The wings were lavender in color.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
The fourth photo is known as Faery offering a posey
to Elsie, and it was also taken in August of
nineteen twenty, also with a cameo quarter camera, said Gardener.
Of this photo, the fairy is standing almost still pois
on the bush leaves. The wings were shot with yellow.
An interesting point is shown in this photograph. Elsie is
(17:08):
not looking directly at the sprite. The reason seems to
be that the human eye is disconcerting. If the fairy
be actively moving, it does not matter much, but if
motionless and aware of being gazed at, then the nature
spirit will usually withdraw and apparently vanish with fairy levers
the habit of looking at first a little sideways is common.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
The fifth and final photo in the series is known
as Fairies and their Sun Bath, and like the third
and fourth photos, was taken in August of nineteen twenty
with a cameo quarter camera of it. Gardner wrote quote,
this photo is especially remarkable as it contains a feature
quite unknown to the girls. The sheath or cocoon appearing
(17:52):
in the middle of the grasses had not been seen
by them before, and they had no idea what it was.
Fairy observers of Scotland and the New Forest, however, were
familiar with it and described it as a magnetic bath,
woven very quickly by the fairies and used after dull
weather in the autumn. Especially the interior seems to be
magnetized in some manner that stimulates and pleases.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
If you look at these photographs today, it's clear just
to the naked eye that they are faked. But many
come to Doyle's defense and in defense of the general
public too, for a few reasons for their belief with
two standouts. Doyle wanted to believe in something magical in
this world. He believed that if you treated others with
(18:38):
honesty and kindness, they would reciprocate. It is written that
this sometimes left him the butt of jokes or left
him taken advantage of. But it's also said of him
that if he thought you ingenuous or dishonest as a gentleman,
he would never let on. So even if he had
come to the conclusion that the girls were faking these
(18:58):
fairy sightings, he would not have outed their hoax. Note, however,
he always did consider them genuine.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Doyle died of a heart attack at age seventy one
in July of nineteen thirty. His last words spoken to
his wife were you are wonderful. The debate about the
fairy photos continued on for decades long after his death,
until finally someone spoke up about it. It actually wasn't
until nineteen seventy eight when James Randy, a magician and
(19:29):
scientific skeptic who frequently challenged paranormal and pseudo scientific claims,
pointed out that the fairyes scene in the girl's photographs
were strikingly similar to those found in the children's book
called Princess Mary's Gift Book, which had been published in
nineteen fifteen, shortly before the girls took their very first
fairy photo.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Elsie and Francis had made a pact that they would
never confess how they had taken their photos, and even
Arthur Wright, who developed them, had no no idea what
the secret was. Said Burrow of the photos, quote, there
were a series of minor deceptions that in themselves would
not really have amounted to anything until the involvement of
(20:12):
Conan Doyle, probably the world's foremost popular author with an
interest in spiritualism. Burrow added, quote, when the girls took
the photos, there were a few prints made at the
time by the family, but that would have been it.
Without Doyle. I imagine they would have been lost in
a drawer somewhere, just a quirky family story. But of
(20:33):
course we know that instead they became famous when Doyle
published a feel good story about fairy life.
Speaker 2 (20:41):
It wasn't until the early nineteen eighties when the fairy
affair was eventually entirely debunked by Jeffrey Crawley, the editor
of the British Journal of Photography, who undertook the investigation
and in the end concluded, yes, they were faked. It
was also in the early nineteen eighties when the girls
themselves can best the photographs were not real. The whole thing,
(21:03):
they explained, was to get back at their parents, who
had teased them and didn't believe they saw fairies, but
that the joke got out of hand when Doyle and
Gardner became interested. Out of respect for the famous Doyle,
they had agreed they wouldn't reveal the truth until after
those involved had passed away.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Elsie confessed during an interview for The Unexplained magazine that
the fairies were truthfully just paper cutouts. She had explained
that she sketched the fairies using Princess Mary's Gift Book
as her inspiration, and made paper cutouts from those sketches. So, indeed,
James Randy was entirely correct. These fairies did turn out
(21:42):
to be taken from the pages of Princess Mary's Gift Book.
The girls held these cutouts in place with hat pins
during their photo shoots. In fact, if you look closely
at the second photo we've talked about, the one of
Elsie in the Know, you can see the tip of
a hat pin smack dab in the middle of that
alleged creature. Said Elsie of the whole thing quote. The
(22:05):
joke was to last two hours, and it has lasted
seventy years.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Speaking to the BBC in nineteen eighty three, Francis stated, quote,
I never even thought of it as being a fraud.
It was just Elsie and I having a bit of fun.
I can't understand to this day why people were taken in.
They wanted to be taken in. People often say to me,
don't you feel ashamed that you made all of these
poor people look like fools? They believed in you, but
(22:33):
I do not, because they wanted to believe. Time magazine
noticed and reported that Francis often remarked on how none
of the experts who talked to her ever asked her
what she considered to be the most important questions, and
those are these One what were the fairies doing? Two?
How did they appear? And three why could only she
(22:57):
see them? Although Frances and Elsie eventually did admit their
photos were faked, Francis always maintained that they had really
seen fairies in the back. In fact, until her death,
she maintained that one of the most famous photographs most
reports suggest it's the fifth and final photo, was actually real.
Maybe it was, Maybe it Wasn't you know?
Speaker 1 (23:22):
What is real? This yummy bogus Bevy which you know,
if you drink enough, you might see me don't drink
that much.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Does it include absinth?
Speaker 1 (23:33):
No, although I did think about it right Absinth closely
associated with fairy.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
But it's the obvious choice, the choice.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
And I think what I'm doing here is not obvious.
And also I have to give a shout out to
listener and now my friend Libby who mentioned to me
recently like, hey, it would be cool if we had
a few more tequila recipes. You're getting a very inspired
tequila drink today, but it comes with some surprises which
hopefully people will enjoy. I will tell you what drink
(24:03):
this looks like at the end. But here is how
you're gonna start. This is not to pour into your
shaking tin yet, but into like a small glass some receptacle.
Put two ounces of Reposado tequila, and into that you
are going to mix a barspoon of sweetened macha powder
(24:25):
and just stir it in.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
There's the first unexpected ingreading.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
There's your surpriser rights. In case you have never gone looking,
Macha powder is pretty easy to find in most supermarkets
these days. If you for some reason can't find it
in your supermarket, I found it in mind, no problem.
You can order it online and it's super easy to
find and it's very delicious. You can do many things
of this. For this, you only need one barspoon, so
(24:49):
that's like about a teaspoon. This is a measure with
your heart situation a little bit. But you're gonna give
that a good stir and then just let it sit
while you prep the rest to the drink, and we'll
stir it again to make sure it's well incorporated at
the end before we add it into your shaking tin.
With just a bunch of ice. You're gonna put three
quarters of an ounce of lemon juice, one quarter of
(25:10):
an ounce of a gave syrup, and then three quarters
of an ounce of a vanilla liqueur like Liquor forty
three or Galiano makes a vanilla liqueur as well. And
then you are gonna shake shake this once you add
that tequila in, because like I said, just stir it
before you add it in. You just want to make
sure all the powders dissolve. Put it all together, take
(25:31):
shake you want it so cold, strain it over ice
into a colin's glass and top it with just like
a little bit like an ounce of lemon lime soda.
This looks like a Madori sour, but it tastes completely different.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah. I can't imagine that any of the flavors overlapped
there at.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
All, not a bunch of all. You have a little
a little citrus in there that's friends with the Madori sour,
and that's about it. But it is a very interesting
flavor because of the macha, which is of course a
green tea powder, but the other components make it not
really taste very green tea. It tastes like something very different.
(26:11):
This is one I will say I'm not joking when
I say shake it until it is ice cold. I
initially didn't have it quite cold enough and it didn't
taste as yummy, and then with a little I was like, oh,
let me toss it back in the tin and I'll
reshake it. And then it was suddenly like, oh, this
is delicious. It just needs to be very cold, so delicious.
(26:31):
I'm calling this the Beck Fairy. This is one that
is very easy to make as a mocktail. You're gonna
make a couple of tweaks, so in lieu of tequila,
you're literally just gonna make your two ounces of macha
using the macha powder as directed on your thing, so
you have essentially like macha water, and then keep the
(26:53):
lemon juice. You're gonna do just a vanilla syrup in
lieu of a vanilla liqure. And because you're pretty so
at this point you could skip that agave syrup you
don't really need it, and then make it the same
way into the collins glass with ice, top it with
a little lemon lime soda. Off to the races. Off
to the glen to look at some fairies, gnomes, fairies
(27:15):
and gnomes. The whole gnome with wings thing really threw
me here, but different kind of gnomes than I was
accustomed to.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
I've never seen a gnome personally, so I don't know
about their wing situation that you know of, right that
I know of that I know of.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
Maybe you're just not perceiving the world.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
You need to go read some noil.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, don't listen. If you have enough back fairies, you'll
see nomes. Always drink responsibly. Please. I'm not encouraging people
to get blotto, but I do hope if you make
this that you really like it. It's an unusual and
fun drink. It has that note of tartness to it,
but it's also smoothed out by the vanilla liqueur and
it's just an interesting drink. I really like it. We
(27:57):
are so thankful that you have spent this time with
us listening to this story of fairies and hoaxery, even
though it may not have been intended to become one
of those, but we intend to always have fun, so
we hope you did, and we will be right back
here next week with more fun. Criminalia is a production
(28:23):
of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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