By Fleur O’Reilly
As the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Arthur Conan Doyle was considered one of the smartest men in England in 1917. Yet he, like many others, was drawn in by the Cottingley Fairies and became a firm defender of their existence. More than a hundred years on, what were these ‘fairies’, and why did they capture the public?
The Cottingley Fairies Hoax was a series of photos taken by cousins Frances Griffith and Elsie Wright in their garden that were quickly propelled into fame. These images supposedly featured the two girls alongside fairies they had captured. Whilst the first photo the girls produced in 1917 was treated as a joke by Elsie’s father, in 1919 their mother presented the image, and a second that had been produced a few months after, at a lecture on the occult. From there the two photos were propelled into the public limelight, attracting the attention of the public.
These photos accompanied a trend of belief in the occult, which acted as a way for many to cope with the aftermath of the First World War. Historian David Nash explained that these beliefs threatened to become more popular than the Anglican Church at one point. A chief archaeologist at Glastonbury Abbey, Frederick Bligh Bond, claimed in 1918 that his excavations were guided by the spirits of sixteenth-century monks. His book became popular, calling for Glastonbury to be a memorial to the war dead as a gateway to the dead. These views, and this rejection of science and logic, can be seen in the popular belief in the curse of Tutankhamun.
Conan Doyle was one of many who were open to believe in the existence of fairies as an escape from the horrors of the war and was perhaps also looking for a distraction from the loss of his son in 1918 from the Spanish Flu. It has been theorised that the photos only fooled those who wanted to be fooled. As a long-time spiritualist, Conan Doyle prompted the two girls to take three more photos of the fairies before publishing an article justifying his belief of their images. It is believed that the photos would not have had such prominence had it not been for the author’s involvement and defence of the images.
The Cottingley Fairies photos were only convincingly exposed as a hoax in 1978 by James Randi, who proved that the fairies featured greatly resembled those found in children’s book Princess Mary’s Gift Book. In 1983 Elsie finally confessed to the photos being a hoax, although Frances continued to state that the fifth photo was genuine until her death in 1986. The girls had indeed faked the photos; they simply cut out the prints of the fairies and took photos, as Elsie’s father had originally suspected. Nonetheless, the hoax continues to hold a grip on many, with the photos selling for more than £50,000 at auction in 2019.
Bibliography
BBC. “Cottingley Fairies: How Sherlock Holmes’s creator was fooled by a hoax.” 2020. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-55187973
BBC. “Cottingley Fairies Photos Sell for £50,000.” 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-
Nash, David. “The Rise of Spiritualism after WW1.” 2020. History Extra.
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