Why the Creator of Sherlock Holmes Fell for Fake Fairies
Arthur Conan Doyle was a man of science, a trained physician, and the creator of a timeless character who has become synonymous with reason and evidence, the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. Yet, he was also a fervent believer in Spiritualism, and in 1920, he publicly declared that photographs appearing to show fairies frolicking in the woods near Yorkshire were genuine.
Today we find it hard to reconcile that Conan Doyle would fall for a prank dreamed up by two young cousins with overactive imaginations and a camera. At the time, many of his friends and family members were also disappointed by his beliefs. But he not only believed the hoax, he defended his stance to the day he died in 1930.
How could this happen? We could say his involvement with Spiritualism predisposed him to believing in supernatural occurrences, and that is true. Confirmation bias played a huge role in his defense of the photographs. And, the previous few years had been emotionally stressful for Conan Doyle. Both his son Kingsley and his favorite brother Innes had died of pneumonia during the Spanish flu outbreak after surviving their military service the Great War. His mother Mary, whom he was very close to, was in frail health. He wanted to believe there was more to life than could be easily seen.
But on a deeper level, it was precisely Conan Doyle’s faith in science that led him to Spiritualism in the first place, and the technological advances in the turn of the 20th century only deepened his belief that we could know the unknown through science.
The Fairy Photos
Conan Doyle was preparing for a lecture trip to Australia when he first encountered the two photos. The first depicted a girl, now known to be 16-year-old Elsie Wright, seated on the ground and holding out her right hand to what appears to be a winged, human-like creature. The second photo shows another girl, Elsie’s cousin, 10-year-old Frances Griffiths. She is gazing into the camera while four winged female creatures dressed in flowing gowns dance around her. One is playing a musical instrument.
(I can’t publish the photos because they are still under copyright in the United Kingdom, where they were made. Nevertheless, others have published them and they can easily be found online. Here’s a link.)
The photos had been taken in 1917 by Elsie and Frances near the Wrights’ home in the village of Cottingley, West Yorkshire. The girls had been saying for some time that they had seen fairies and gnomes in the woods, but the adults dismissed the claims as child’s play. One day, Elsie borrowed a camera from her father and the girls went off into the woods. When Elsie’s father Arthur Wright processed the photographic plates in his own darkroom, he saw the fairies appear as the photos developed. He believed the girls had played an elaborate prank.
But Mrs. Polly Wright was more credulous and showed the photos to others. Eventually, they landed in the hands of Edward L. Gardner, a member of the Theosophical Society of London and an acquaintance of Conan Doyle.
Neither man was willing to accept the photos as genuine until they had been checked out. In a gesture reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle put the pictures literally under a magnifying glass. He wrote in the July 1920 issue of The Strand that he “studied long and earnestly with a high-power lens.” But he wasn’t going to rely on his own observations. He wrote, “Being by nature of a somewhat sceptical turn, I felt that something closer was needed before I could feel personal conviction and assure myself that these were not thought-forms conjured up by the imagination or expectation of the seers.”
Conan Doyle and Gardener decided to have the photographs examined by a series of experts. Here again, their conclusions were influenced by confirmation bias; they accepted the opinions of people who agreed with them and rejected other possibilities. Conan Doyle trusted the expertise of photographer Harold Snelling, who had 30 years of experience. Snelling declared that the photos showed no sign of double exposure and were “genuine unfaked photos.” Conan Doyle wrote of Snelling, “He laughs at the idea that any expert in England could deceive him with a faked photo.”
Experts at the Kodak camera company said the photographs “showed no signs of being faked.” But they did not rule out the possibility that they were illusions created by careful staging. Other experts the men consulted had a similar opinion. With props and lighting, the photos could be created in any photographic studio, they said.
As it turned out, that’s similar to how it happened, though the cousins staged the photos in the open air, not in a studio. One girl placed cut-out drawings of fairies around the other girl, and then took a picture. Then, they switched places and poses. But the truth came to light decades later. In 1978, a researcher named James Randi found drawings of fairies that looked very much like the ones in the photos in a book called Princess Mary’s Gift Book, published in 1914. As it happens, Elsie was a talented drawer and worked part-time at a printing company.
The evidence Conan Doyle examined was correct: there had been no retouching and no double exposure. But the fake wasn’t technological; it was simpler than that.
He Wanted to Believe
Why was Conan Doyle so susceptible to such a trick? Coincidentally, he’d had a connection to the legend of fairies throughout his life. His father and his uncle were both artists, and his uncle was fond of drawing fairies. At the time Conan Doyle first learned of the Cottingley photos, he had been collecting stories from people who claimed they had seen fairies, gnomes, or other strange creatures. Through his belief in Spiritualism, his mind was open to the possibility of other forms of life.
The Spiritualism movement began in the mid-1800s, just at the time when scientific knowledge was rapidly expanding and new technologies were making the seemingly impossible a reality. Some scholars contend that belief in the unseen was a backlash to the discoveries of science; this is true to an extent. But within the practice of Spiritualism was also the wish for investigation and evidence. Innovations in technology were viewed as paths to uncover the hidden world Spiritualists yearned to know. In particular, photography was often (and still is) used to capture images of ghosts and spirits.
It’s understandable, then, that Conan Doyle was drawn to Spiritualism: he felt science offered him the tools to prove or disprove the phenomena. Besides, many of the people he met who were into the movement were respected professionals in British society. He attended séances with Alfred Drayson, a retired general and amateur astronomer. He was also acquainted with Oliver Lodge, a well-known researcher into psychic occurrences. Lodge was an honored physicist whose work had contributed to the development of wireless technology.
The growing technology of wireless telegraphy, later to become radio, seemed to be proof that there was more to reality than the physical world. Conan Doyle wrote about it in 1919, in an article published in The Daily Mail. In defending the practice of holding séances in the dark, he wrote, “It is highly probable that all genuine psychic phenomena have their origin in the ether, which is the means of conveying light. It has been found that wireless, telegraphy, which also acts by ether, goes considerably farther by night than by day.”
At the time, it was believed that wireless signals or radio waves traveled through an unseen, mysterious space or substance called ether. The connection was logical: If wireless could transmit signals through ether, why not messages from the dead?
And it was messages from the dead that chiefly concerned Conan Doyle. He believed he connected to his deceased son Kingsley through a medium in the fall of 1919. Where his Catholic faith had failed him, he found renewed hope in Spiritualism. He had learned of Kingsley’s death while on his Australian trip, right before he was due on stage for a lecture. He wrote: “Had I not been a Spiritualist, I could not have spoken that night … I knew my son had survived the grave, and that there was no need to worry.”
Science and Fairies
Conan Doyle receive much criticism from his public declarations that the Cottingley fairies were real, but he was undeterred. His reaction was to recommend more tests. He wrote, “If I am myself asked whether I consider the case to be absolutely and finally proved, I should answer that in-order to remove the last faint shadow of doubt I should wish to see the result repeated before a disinterested witness.”
This happened, though the witnesses could hardly be called disinterested. Gardner sent the Elsie and Frances marked photographic glass plates and asked them to take new photos of the fairies. The girls obliged. They took additional three photos and sent them back to Gardner to be developed. Once again, Gardner found no evidence of double exposure or retouching. In 1921, Gardner also visited the site of the photos with a man who claimed to be a clairvoyant. The man declared he saw many fairies there.
In the March 1921 issue of The Strand, Conan Doyle published a second article about fairies called “The Evidence for Fairies.” This was the piece he had been working on before the Cottingley photos surfaced. In the article, he not only made his case for the existence of fairies but suggested that it would be science that would provide the evidence. “Intelligent supposition based on the available evidence is the pioneer of science,” he wrote.
References
Conan Doyle, A. “The Evidence for Fairies.” The Strand, March 1921. Reprinted at https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=The_Evidence_for_Fairies#The_Evidence_for_Fairies
Conan Doyle, A. “Fairies Photographed.” The Strand, December 1920. Reprinted at https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Fairies_Photographed
Conan Doyle, A. A Life in Letters. Edited by Jon Lellenberg, Daniel Stashower, & Charles Foley. Penguin Books, 2007
Conan Doyle, A. “Reply to Critic of His Séance.” The Daily Mail, 19 February 1919. Reprinted at https://www.arthur-conan-doyle.com/index.php?title=Sir_A._Conan_Doyle._Reply_to_Critic_of_his_S%C3%A9ance
James Randi Educational Foundation. The Case of the Cottingley Fairies. 2012. https://web.randi.org/
