Helen Duncan: Was she Britain's last witch?
In 1944, Scottish medium Helen Duncan was tried under the Witchcraft Act 1735 — but what she faced was far from a historically conventional witchcraft trial.
Image: Helen Duncan, 'Britain' Last Witch' | Public Domain
Witches? Did they ever really exist? These days, few people would think so. However, during the ‘witch craze’ of the early modern era, thousands of people were deemed guilty of witchcraft and consequently sentenced to death.
Witchcraft accusations were especially prevalent in Essex. Several of the highest-profile witchcraft trials held in this particular county are spotlighted in Sky HISTORY’s Witches of Essex.
Today, the very concept of witchcraft trials feels incredibly archaic. So, how is it that a Scottish woman called Helen Duncan in the early 20th century came to be known as ‘Britain’s last witch’? Sky HISTORY investigates what made her own witchcraft trial, held in 1944, very different to the Tudor and Stuart-era norms.
Were witchcraft trials really still ‘a thing’ in the 1940s?
Yes, sort of. Though witchcraft was seen as genuine in Tudor times, this mindset had shifted significantly by the Georgian era. Hence the Witchcraft Act 1735, which criminalised the pretense of witchcraft.
The idea was to prosecute people who would falsely claim to demonstrate magical powers for moneymaking purposes. In the run-up to World War II, psychic mediums unable to prove their psychic ability would definitely fall into this category.
Mediums saw a surge of popularity during the interwar period. Many families had lost loved ones in the First World War and desperately wanted to reconnect with them. At the time, mediums appeared to offer them precious opportunities to do so.
Who was Helen Duncan?
Helen Duncan was born on 25th November 1897 in the Scottish town of Callander. She is said to have started exhibiting psychic abilities during childhood, when she was nicknamed ‘Hellish Nell’ due to her erratic behaviour.
According to legend, the young Helen once warned a local doctor not to make a particular car trip he had been planning. He disregarded the warning and subsequently perished in a road accident.
Helen developed her stage act in the 1920s. Was ‘act’ the right word for it? Arguably yes, even if we assume that Helen truly did have psychic powers (to this day, supporters continue to contend that she did).
What did Helen Duncan’s séances usually involve?
Helen would tour the country with her séances, where she purported to do more than simply communicate with attendees’ deceased relatives. Her widely publicised USP was to also produce ectoplasm, enabling physical manifestations of these spirits to materialise before the audiences’ eyes.
Audience members were reportedly able to not only hear their departed relatives speaking but also touch their ectoplasmic forms. Helen’s séances found popularity up and down the country — even as her credibility became increasingly suspect.
Cracks start emerging in Helen Duncan’s act
In 1928, photographer Harvey Metcalfe turned up at one of Helen’s séances and took a series of flash photographs. These revealed the materialised spirits to actually be dolls cobbled together in amateurish fashion.
Meanwhile, investigations in the early 1930s revealed that the ‘ectoplasm’ consisted of everyday materials like cheesecloth and paper. It was surmised that Helen would swallow these before regurgitating them at séances.
Why was Helen Duncan put on trial?
In 1933, Helen was tried and convicted of fraudulent mediumship under the Vagrancy Act 1824. However, authorities were even more alarmed when, at a séance in late 1941, she revealed that the British battleship HMS Barham had sunk.
It had indeed been sunk by a German submarine in November 1941, but this was not widely known at the time of the séance. In 1944, after evidence emerged that Helen was continuing to practice fraudulent mediumship, she was convicted again.
This time, though, it was under the Witchcraft Act 1735 — enabling prosecutors to imprison her for nine months. By going down this route, prosecutors were able to prevent Helen from leaking other wartime secrets potentially damaging to British morale.
Why is Helen remembered as ‘Britain’s last witch’?
As clarified earlier, one major tenet of the Witchcraft Act 1735 was to punish people for false allegations of witchcraft. So, even by the terms of this 18th-century legislation, Helen Duncan wasn’t a witch.
Neither was she strictly the last person in Britain to be convicted under this Witchcraft Act. That little piece of history was instead made by Jane Rebecca Yorke later in 1944. However, Helen Duncan’s trial garnered much more publicity.
Helen Duncan also remains one of the last women in Britain to be subjected to a witchcraft trial. To take a much deeper dive into the history of alleged witchcraft, just subscribe to the Sky HISTORY Newsletter.
