Helen Duncan was Charged with the 1735 Witchcraft Act
When the press started the smears, any story was made up and there were a lot of people who were willing to stand on their heads to denounce the ways of any seance, which they were indoctrinated by their religions into believing was evil. Thankfully not as we know now, that it is natural for a Physical Medium to be used in such a manner as it is only proving to us all that life continues after our so called death.
What is it the press say : Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story.
Helen Duncan sat for the London Psychic Laboratory, the research department of the London Spiritual Alliance. a great many times. These were followed in the psychic press by an eager public. In these scrutinized seances Helen produced massive quantities of ectoplasm at each planned and tested gathering. A lot of specimens were obtained by the scientists for analysis, human figures of adults and children appeared Clothed in the ectoplasm, also movements of objects beyond the reach of Helen were observed within each controlled situation. Mrs Duncan was placed nude into a sleeved sack with stiff buckram fingerless gauntlets sewn to the sleeves of her suit. The sack was then sewn in at the back and fastened with tapes and cords to the chair. At the end of the sitting the Medium was often found outside the bag, the seals, tapes and the stitching remaining intact. But as the wider press got wind of the seances that were being monitored and there were no fraud at all to be seen, they started a smear campaign. [what should be realized here, is the press was mainly owned by alleged God fearing people who went to church throughout the week and every Sunday, and the priest had control over their flock at this time, they were not allowed to think for themselves]. This is when the politicians and the authorities took notice of what was happening around Helens seances even though a lot had been to many a seance but had not said so publicly, they needed the peoples votes and the authorities had to keep quiet.If you think this is a bit far fetched. Look at the instance of Mrs Helen Duncan and the way she died through the hands of the Christian authorities in England. She was deliberately hounded by the authorities f
rom the 1930's until she died in 1956. But through all this Helen never stopped working hard for the Spirit World, sadly always in constant fear of her seances being interrupted, yet she carried on until the last one where the police again broke into her seance, and caused chaos which ultimately killed her. Please try to read the full stories that are now in print about her life and don't take too much notice of a lot of the negative propaganda on the net. One book about her is "My Living Has Not been In Vain", by Mary Armour, the other one that comes to mind is "Two Worlds of Helen Duncan" by Gena Brealey and Kay Hunter.In 1956 Helen Duncan the Physical Medium, was severely injured and consequently died by the deliberate, forced intervention by the police into one of her Physical Materialisation seances.
A seance was being held in a private room upstairs in a Nottingham chiropodist�s home, the police forced entry gave a massive shock to Helen who was in the cabinet, in an unconscious Trance State, and producing ectoplasm (so "Albert" her guide, who would come through, [he was talking through Helen at the time of the break up of the seance] talk to the audience through Independent Direct Voice box before the Materialization started). Helen was deathly grey, unconscious and bleeding from the mouth when the police carried her out of the cabinet into a separate room and laid her flat out on a couch. The doctor was called, the police at first wanted to take Helen down to the police station, the doctor refused to let them, so the police wanted him to strip her and examine her for masks and muslin cloth in ALL her orifices even in the state she was in. She was also in great pain the police again asked the doctor to come down to the station with her, the doctor again refused. They again tried to insist on taking her down to the police station, the doctor said "I will have no part of it, she is in deep shock," "Can t you see she is dying." "She is a diabetic and has a heart problem." "If you move her she will die". She died thirty-six days later, I now believe as a direct result of that massive shock to her human bodily system. I can see this death was caused by internal bleeding and psychic burns, knowing what I do now.
All because Helen Duncan was using her gift, the powers from God, the Divine Spirit to comfort people and it was in conflict with the all powerful Christian establishment.
Under this ancient rule Helen Duncan and her innocent sitters were accused of pretending 'to exercise or use human conjuration', that through the agency of Helen Duncan, spirits of deceased dead persons should appear to be present'.
But, lest this single charge may falter, the authorities scoured their dusty law precedents for further charges and they found them. One such was the Larceny Act which accused her of taking money 'by falsely pretending she was in a position to bring about the appearances of these spirits of deceased persons'.
The prosecution were determined to prove Helen Duncan was a fraud. Her trial took place barely a few months before the famous D-Day landings and lasted for seven grueling days. Spiritualists everywhere were up in arms that one of their most treasured and gifted demonstrators should be treated in such a tawdry manner. A defence fund was quickly raised. It was used to bring witnesses from all over the world to testify to her genuine gifts. Because of this her case rapidly became a cause celebre which attracted daily headlines in tabloid and broadsheets alike.
One telling development that this was no ordinary case was that in a rare example of cross border co-operation both the Law Societies (senior legal bar councils) of England and Scotland jointly and simultaneously declared this case to be a travesty of justice.
As a debunking exercise the case failed miserably. Skeptics must have winced at the daily reporting of case after case where 'dead' relatives had materialised and given absolute proof of their continued existence. One Kathleen McNeill, wife of a Glaswegian forgemaster, told how she has attended such a seance at which her sister appeared. Her sister had died some a few hours previously, after an operation, and news of her death could not have been known. Yet Albert, Helen Duncan's guide, announced that she had just passed over. And, at a subsequent seance, some years later Mrs. McNeill's father strode out of the cabinet and came within six feet of her to better display his single eye, a hallmark of his earthly life.
By the penultimate day of this ridiculous trial, the defence was ready to call their star witness Alfred Dodd, an academic and much respected author of works on Shakespeare's sonnets. Alfred told the court that during 1932 and 1940 he had been a regular guest at Helen Duncan's home seances. At one of these sittings his grandfather had materialised, a tall, corpulent man with a bronzed face and smoking cap, hair dressed in his customary donkey-fringe. After speaking with his grandson the Spirit then turned to his friend Tom and said; "Look into my face and into my eyes. Ask Alfred to show you my portrait. It is the same man".
Two equally respected journalists, James Herries and Hannen Swaffer then took their places in the Old Bailey witness box - a place where for hundreds of years many a murderer has given evidence and many a witness has pointed an accusing finger. The chain smoking Swaffer, who had already won acclaim as the acerbic uncrowned father of Fleet Street (home of England's newspaper quarter) and co-founder of the Spiritualist weekly "Psychic News", told the court that anyone who described ectoplasm as "butter muslim" would be a child. Under a red light in a seance room it would look yellow or pink whilst these spirit forms all displayed a white appearance".
James Herries, himself a Justice of the Peace, a much respected psychic investigator of some 20 years standing and the chief reporter of the prestigious and influential "Scotsman" broadsheet affirmed that he had seen Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famed author of the Sherlock Holmes books, himself materialise at one of Helen Duncan's seances. He had especially noted the distinctive Doyle rounded features, moustache and equally unmistakable gravelly voice.
But, wisely or otherwise, the defence had decided that the best test of Helen Duncan's genuine gifts were for her to give a demonstration of physical phenomena whilst in trance from the very witness box of England's Central Criminal Courts. This suggestion really did cause a frightened flurry in the ivory dovecots of the establishment. If she pulled it off, they debated, then instead of the censure they sought, her cause would be spread throughout the land and even beyond. And this would mean that the famed British legal system adopted by so many former colonies - including America - would be held to total ridicule.
Hurried conferences with the best legal minds were held throughout the night. Their solution was to reject this offer and suggest instead that Mrs. Duncan be called as a witness - thus giving the prosecution an opportunity to cross examine this ordinary Scottish housewife and, in doing so, attempt to destroy her credibility. But Helen's defence lawyers saw through this ploy. They pointed out that Mrs. Duncan could not testify since she was in a trance state during these seances and could not, therefore, discuss what had transpired.
The jury only took half an hour to reach their verdict; Helen and her co-defendants were found Guilty of conspiracy to contravene that ancient 1735 Witchcraft Act but Not Guilty on all other charges.
Portsmouth's chief of police then described this new 'criminal's' background. Mrs. Duncan was married to a cabinet maker and had a family of six children ranging from 18-26 and she had been visiting Portsmouth for some five years. He then described her as "an unmitigated humbug and pest" and revealed that in 1941 she had been reported for announcing the loss of one of His Majesty's ships before the fact had been publicly known.
The presiding judge announced a weekend's delay whilst he considered sentence. Helen herself left the dock weeping in her broad Scottish dialect; "I never hee'd so mony lies in a' my life".
The following Monday morning the judge declared that the verdict had not been concerned with whether 'genuine manifestations of the kind are possible . . .this court has nothing whatever to do with such abstract questions'. However he interpreted the jury's findings to mean that Helen Duncan had been involved in plain dishonesty and for this reason he therefore sentenced her to nine months imprisonment.
The shocked Spiritualist movement immediately demanded a change in the law. They felt that she had been prosecuted to stop any leakage of classified wartime information. As one of many, many examples during 1943 and once more in that ungrateful city of Portsmouth, Helen Duncan had given a seance during which a sailor materialised reporting that he had gone down with His Majesty's Ship "Barham", whose loss was not officially announced until three months later.
But, the defence right of appeal to the House of Lords, Britain's highest court of appeal, was denied. The establishment had achieved its objective and certainly did not want one single inch of further publicity. Helen was sent back to London's Holloway prison, that Victorian monstrosity for female prisoners still being used today.
It was not only the best legal minds in the country that felt this case had been a major miscarriage of justice. So too did her prison warders. They refused to 'bang her up'. For the entire nine months of her unjust incarceration, Helen Duncan's prison cell door was never once locked! What's more, she continued to apply her psychic gifts as a constant steam of warders and inmates alike found their way to her cell for spiritual upliftment and guidance.
And many senior Spiritualists who were close to Helen report, it was not only prisoners and staff who made pilgrimage to the dreaded Holloway Goal. So too did some of her other more notable sitters, including Britain's Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill himself.
Despite her declaration with in a few months she felt that strong call from the Spirit World to continue her work and was soon spending more time than ever in trance state. Perhaps too much so, for the quality of her seances since imprisonment appeared to have had deteriorated, even to the point where Spiritualism's governing National Union actually withdrew her diploma at one stage .
Helen's Spiritualist friends say that during his visits to her cell, Prime Minister Churchill made promises of making amends to Helen. True or speculative, it is a fact that in 1951 the damning 1735 Witchcraft Act which had been used to imprison Helen was finally repealed. In its place came the Fraudulent Mediums Act and some four years later in 1954 Spiritualism was officially recognised as a proper religion by formal Act of Parliament. And Spiritualists everywhere knew why and they rejoiced that whilst frauds would be properly prosecuted the authorities, especially the police, would stop harassing true working Mediums.
They were wrong. In November 1956 police raided a seance in the midlands city of Nottingham. They grabbed the presiding medium, strip searched her and took endless flashlight photographs. They shouted at her that they were looking for beards, masks and shrouds. But they found nothing.
The medium was Helen Duncan and in their ignorance the police had committed the worst possible sin of physical phenomena; that a medium in trance must NEVER, ever be touched. As the Spirit World's teachers have patiently explained so many times when this happens the ectoplasm returns to the medium's body far too quickly and can cause immense - sometimes even fatal - damage.
And so it was in this case. A doctor was summoned and discovered two second degree burns across Helen's stomach. She was so ill that she was immediately taken back to her Scottish home and later rushed to hospital.
Five weeks after that police raid she was dead.
Back to The Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951
