Hello my pumpkins,
I hope this post finds you in a chunky knit sweater as Autumn (or Fall, for my American readers) settles itself around you. If I were to say the name Hellish Nell to you, would it mean anything? What if I was to tell you, she was the last person to be charged with Witchcraft in the UK? Sound interesting? Then settle back, get cosy and ignore what you think is the sound of creaking floorboards.
Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium born in 1897. She earned the nickname Hellish Nell in childhood due to her bolshie behaviour and dire prophecies. She married a man named Henry Duncan and was a mother to six children. Her husband was supportive of her supposed clarivoyancy and from the year of 1928 she progressed from clairvoyant to physical medium by offering seances.
Nell claimed that she was able to permit spirits to enter her body and materialise them as ectoplasm. And pretty soon she was holding seances on a regular basis. Arthur Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes, even spoke highly of her abilities. As the years passed, people questioned her ability and in 1931 the London Spiritualist Alliance examined her method. They even conducted tests on the ectoplasm she materialised.
It was this, that proved to be the start of her undoing. They found that the ectoplasm was actually cheesecloth mixed with egg whites, that Nell would swallow and later regurgitate during the seances. Despite reports of her being a fraud, the world would soon be at war. World War II would carry an unbelievable amount of casualties and due to this, people fled to mediums to hear from their loved ones, one last time. Nell was one of them.
In November of 1941 she held a séance in Portsmouth and claimed to be visited by the spirit of a sailor who told her of the sinking of a battleship named the HMS Barham. The news of this soon made Nell a person of interest to the Navy, because the sinking of the ship wasn’t made public knowledge, only the families of the casualties had been informed. In fact, the sinking wasn’t announced publicly until late January of 1942.
In 1944 as the pressure and casualties of the war mounted, people were desperate for an end in sight and for that to happen, the British had to be smart and keep everything top secret. Two Lieutenants attended a séance of Nell’s undercover and were shocked and disgusted by what they saw, so they reported her to the police. In late January of the same year, Nell was arrested (along with her ectoplasm) and charged under the Vagrancy Act of 1824. However the authorities regarded this a more serious crime and so charged her with Section 4 of the Witchcraft Act 1734.
Whilst not on trial for being a “witch” she was accused, and found guilty of “pretending to exercise or use human conjuration” The case had numerous defence witnesses and the trial was a media sensation at the time. Grotesque cartoons of witches on broomsticks, dotted the newspapers.
She was found guilty and sentenced to nine months in Holloway Prison. Being that the Witchcraft Act wasn’t repealed until 1951, Helen Duncan was the last known woman to be imprisoned under it’s terms.
Cheesecloth ecotplasm aside, there were people who claimed they had attended numerous seances held by Nell, and found her skills both believable and impressive. And don’t forget, she did know about the sinking of the HMS Burham despite it not being public knowledge.
By all accounts she was quite popular in prison and even held seances for her cellmates. And despite her promise on her release from prison in 1945, that she wouldn’t do them anymore, she continued to carry out seances until her death in 1956. Relatives of Helen are still ongoing in their campaign to have her posthumously pardoned of witchcraft charges.
It’s hard to know for sure if Hellish Nell was a fraud who preyed on the poor during a time of immeasurable loss? Or if she was someone who used parlour tricks to accentuate her true talents with Clairvoyancy?
It’s really interesting and kind of mind blowing to me how it was only 70 years ago that the Witchraft Act was repealed. And that a woman served prison time because of it. Was it fear of men? Or fear of something bigger?
I’d love to hear your comments on this, so please free to leave one below.
Stay spooky!
👻LWG👻
☽ SpookyGee ☾ 