The Witch Trial of World War Two

In 1944, Helen Duncan, better known as ‘Hellish Nell’, found herself on trial under a centuries-old witchcraft law. But who was she, what had she done, and how did a medium who claimed to speak to the dead end up in the dock at the Old Bailey? View the image described in this episode here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Helen_Duncan_fake_ectoplasm_B.jpg#/media/File:Helen_Duncan_fake_ectoplasm.jpg Edited by Tim Arstall. Produced by Tomos Delargy. Senior Producer is Freddy Chick. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener surveyhere https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/6FFT7MK. All music from Epidemic Sounds. After Dark is a History Hit podcast. History Hit is part of Little Dot Studios, a Certified B Corp™ Voting is now open for the Listener's Choice Award at this year's Podcast Awards. Click to place your vote on the Spotify mobile app: https://open.spotify.com/s/xhg6PJa Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 2:44Anthony Delaney?

  As the Second World War raged across the globe, back home in Britain, a courtroom at London's Old Bailey, a rather different battle unfolded. Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium known as Helleschnell, claimed she could summon spirits and communicate with the dead. But when she caught the attention of the authorities, she found herself at the centre of a most extraordinary legal battle. And her alleged crime would be prosecuted through an act that invoked 18th century witchcraft. Today, we're uncovering the extraordinary story of Helleschnell.

• 3:24Anthony Delaney?

  Welcome to After Dark.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.

• 3:47Anthony Delaney?

  And I'm Anthony.

• 3:48Speaker 00

  And on After Dark, we have explored many a witch trial. More often than not, they're grim tales of persecution unfolding centuries ago, when accusations of witchcraft could cost someone their life. But this week's story is a little different, because this witch trial took place, surprisingly, in the middle of the 20th century, while the Second World War was raging.

• 4:12Anthony Delaney?

  In 1944, Helen Duncan, better known as Helleschnell, found herself on trial under a centuries-old witchcraft law. But who was she? What had she done? And how did a medium who claimed to speak to the dead end up in the dock at the Old Bailey? That's what we're talking about today on After Dark. Paddy Melling.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  I can't believe it's taken us this long to do Helleschnell.

• 4:35Anthony Delaney?

  I know.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  We get her requested a lot.

• 4:37Anthony Delaney?

  I definitely sent a picture of that into the group chat at one stage, going, we need to do this. But that was probably about two years ago. Like, just, how long have we been doing this podcast?

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Our group chat is just me and Anthony screenshotting stuff like this, please.

• 4:49Anthony Delaney?

  This one, this one.

• 4:50Speaker 00

  We literally, our producers have to diligently then put it into a spreadsheet and like check that it's suitable to do. And we're just like, this, this, we want to do this one. Give me a little bit of an introduction to the person, the legend, the woman known as Helleschnell, please.

• 5:03Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm, legend, keep that in mind. There's a lot going on there with this.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  It wasn't accidental.

• 5:08Anthony Delaney?

  No. She is born Helen McFarlanein in 1897.

• 5:13Speaker 00

  McFarlanein?

• 5:14Anthony Delaney?

  I know, yeah.

• 5:15Speaker 00

  Interesting name.

• 5:16Anthony Delaney?

  I've never heard that before.

• 5:17Speaker 00

  No, I've never heard that.

• 5:18Anthony Delaney?

  Good for her. She's born into a working-class family, and her father is a cabinet maker. They are in Calender, which is known as the gateway to the Highlands. So it sounds very picturesque.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  Have you been to Calender before?

• 5:31Anthony Delaney?

  Not Calender specifically, I don't think. I've been to the Highlands in many different guises, but...

• 5:36Speaker 00

  In many different guises. I'm imagining you now like in different disguises, different characters.

• 5:41Anthony Delaney?

  Agatha Christie, Walter Scott.

• 5:43Speaker 00

  A Jacobite.

• 5:45Anthony Delaney?

  All of them.

• 5:45Speaker 00

  Great, lovely.

• 5:46Anthony Delaney?

  And apparently, this nickname, Helleschnell, comes from the fact that she was, when she was young, and it was, she was, you know, bold or naughty, and she was unruly and all those kind of things.

• 5:57Speaker 00

  Oh, interesting.

• 5:58Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I always had thought that. It was like a press thing from later in life.

• 6:02Speaker 00

  But do you think that's one of those things that retrospectively, that's been applied to her?

• 6:05Anthony Delaney?

  I do. Because there's also stories around her that her classmates and her mother were supposedly freaked out by these prophecies she would have as a child. But like, that's not coming from the time. It's coming from after the fact, when we get to know her.

• 6:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you know, this is something that we see a lot with stories of this kind. Well, actually, often with people like murderers, hoaxers, fraudsters, lots of different people within that sort of remit who, you know, often when they're written about, it's like, oh, this all goes back to their childhood. That's such a sort of key element of this, the way that we tell these stories, right?

• 6:40Anthony Delaney?

  We like it to be neat, don't we?

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. But, okay, let's take this at face value for a moment. So she, she's known as Helleschnell growing up, supposedly. How is she going to become relevant in the world? She's just a young, slightly naughty gal from the Highlands.

• 6:55Anthony Delaney?

  That's quite a selling point, isn't it? She's just a young, slightly naughty. Describes me in many ways. She is, she comes to attention through the kind of movement towards spiritual mediumism, or mediumship, in the early 20th century. And we've spoken about this before, haven't we, in the rise of the wars?

• 7:16Speaker 00

  I actually hate this period for the mediums.

• 7:18Anthony Delaney?

  Because of this?

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's disgusting. It frustrates me so much. I mean, we'll talk about her specific case, but I just, you know, whenever we do anything that was sort of Arthur Conan Doyle, or... I find it amazing and irritating that people are sort of taken in by this, and sad that they are because of, you know, everything that's going on in the world and the fact the world must have felt like it was, it was literally on fire in this moment. I just, the people who do this kind of thing, I find them so distasteful, particularly in this moment in history.

• 7:54Anthony Delaney?

  Well, one of the things, I mean, I agree with you. That, yeah, absolutely. It's this idea that death is surrounding you to such an extent, and in such a violent and sudden way, that these loved ones are taken from you, that there must be some way that you can, you can reach out and touch them. Now, okay, that feels like we're leaping a little bit, right? Because we need to come back to Helen specifically here, because there's some context to how she gets into that world.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  Okay, yes, yeah.

• 8:23Anthony Delaney?

  Is important. I don't think it excuses anything that happens, but let's just set that scene as well, right? So she's 16, she becomes pregnant, and she, we don't know who that father is. It's 1914. She is forced to move to Dundee because of this, so probably removing her from that more rural community where shame, stigma might be attached to her.

• 8:44Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 8:45Anthony Delaney?

  And then she ends up working in a hospital, and later, the most glamorous place anyone could ever work, in a bleach factory.

• 8:51Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 8:52Anthony Delaney?

  I don't know why that's...

• 8:53Speaker 00

  Probably not great for pregnancy.

• 8:54Anthony Delaney?

  Well, no. Well, she may have had the child by now, because...

• 8:57Speaker 00

  Oh, well, expose her to the bleach.

• 8:59Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, who cares? Then the next thing that we have is that she's married to a man called Henry Duncan. So this is where that surname comes in. And this is in, is it March or May? May, 1916.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Oh, that's interesting. So hold on. So she's had a baby. We know that she's pregnant in 1914, and then she's married in 1916. I mean, is there a world in which it is Henry Duncan's child, and he simply hasn't been on the scene because he's been away at war during that time?

• 9:24Anthony Delaney?

  No. So this is...

• 9:25Speaker 00

  Oh, it's very much not.

• 9:26Anthony Delaney?

  We know it's a different man.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Okay. But also a man in this moment, and this probably wasn't that unusual, really, but maybe, I don't know, maybe it was a man who was willing to take on that child?

• 9:39Anthony Delaney?

  In Henry, in the

• 9:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:40Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. He knows. He's aware of the situation that he's very willing to take on that.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  Interesting. Okay.

• 9:46Anthony Delaney?

  He is a soldier and he was wounded in World War One.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 9:50Anthony Delaney?

  Like her father, he is a cabinetmaker by trade, but because of the injuries he sustained during World War One, he can't earn a living.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  Ah.

• 10:00Anthony Delaney?

  So what you might be starting, and they have, over the course of the next few years, five further children, and now we have six in total, including the child from the first relationship that Helen had when she was 16.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  It's the smell of bleach when she comes home. He loves them.

• 10:14Anthony Delaney?

  It's the smell of bleach. It does it for him. And so now Henry starts to say, you know, I wonder if there's a way that, you know, those magical powers that you supposedly have. I wonder if there's a way that-

• 10:28Speaker 00

  Could we monetise that, please, darling?

• 10:29Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Open your TikTok account and let's start getting some passive income.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Oh, my God. Everything is content.

• 10:35Anthony Delaney?

  Everything is content.

• 10:36Speaker 00

  Go on, then. How is content creator Helen Chanel going to rise to the challenge?

• 10:42Anthony Delaney?

  Well, she goes from being a clairvoyant, which is somebody who can like potentially see into the future, who might be making predictions.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  A bit sort of like, don't go to church next Sunday because a orange is going to fall off the scarn to your head or something.

• 10:57Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah. Really like, you know, doing that to then, remember, we talked about the context of mediumship, and it's on the rise in the interwar period and during the wars, of course. But because people have that desperation to reach out to the vast amount of millions ultimately of people that are killed.

• 11:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:18Anthony Delaney?

  This can happen.

• 11:18Speaker 00

  And she's had five children, so we must be into the twenties by now.

• 11:21Anthony Delaney?

  We are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's in 1926 that she makes that kind of leap into mediumship from just clairvoyant, just clairvoyants, but you know, she goes, she diversifies her skill set, shall we say.

• 11:32Speaker 00

  Now, we're talking about this in quite cynical terms.

• 11:36Anthony Delaney?

  Yes.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  Is there a world in which

• 11:38Anthony Delaney?

  Yes.

• 11:39Speaker 00

  she believes she has these powers? And do people around her believe that she does? As in, does Henry, for example, do her children?

• 11:45Anthony Delaney?

  So there's a world in which some people do, or maybe that there's an extent to which she believes she has some powers.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 11:56Anthony Delaney?

  But what, I'm going to describe what happens when she makes that leap, what happens in her seances. And then I just think there's, there's no way we can say that she's not an absolute fraud.

• 12:07Speaker 00

  Before-

• 12:08Anthony Delaney?

  Spoiler.

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Before I did After Dark, I really didn't talk about seances that often.

• 12:15Anthony Delaney?

  Why would you have need?

• 12:16Speaker 00

  They, they didn't come up that often for me. And now I feel like they're in my life a lot.

• 12:21Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Would you go to one?

• 12:22Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, I've been to one.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  Oh, you've been?

• 12:25Anthony Delaney?

  I've stood in an-

• 12:26Speaker 00

  Oh, no, was this when you, was this in your twenties? No.

• 12:29Anthony Delaney?

  It was, it'd been in my twenties, yeah.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  I feel like you've told us before, but go-

• 12:31Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, I probably have.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Please, please do, yeah.

• 12:33Anthony Delaney?

  I was in the, oh, God, what's it called? Like, it's the old school, the old something in Mylend. And it was part of like a ghost hunting evening, but there was a medium who held a seance in the dark, in the basement of this old school.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Question, at that stage in your life, were you open to it? Or were you like, this is bullshit by entertaining?

• 12:50Anthony Delaney?

  I was 50/50.

• 12:51Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 12:52Anthony Delaney?

  And I was intrigued.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  Now you'd be like 90/10.

• 12:55Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, 85, 50 now. Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Okay, so that's room.

• 13:01Anthony Delaney?

  I was definitely open to the belief of it.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:03Anthony Delaney?

  Then. I don't think I would be as-

• 13:04Speaker 00

  Did anything happen?

• 13:05Anthony Delaney?

  I mean, the medium that was there, a lot was happening with, with that person. And it was dramatic and violent and loud and, and actually scary. Because I remember thinking to myself in the moment going, regardless of what this is, this is either somebody with an acute mental health issue, or there's somebody communicating with somebody from the other side of, of life. So either way, it's uncomfortable.

• 13:29Speaker 00

  It's quite a frightening thing to be in proximity to.

• 13:31Anthony Delaney?

  I don't think any, and we were all standing in a circle. And that particular person, the, the medium was lurching across the circle. But the conceit was that they had to be in contact, we were all in contact in the circle, linking arms. And so we had a body that was lurching, a body, but you know, a person that was lurching across the thing. So it was like-

• 13:48Speaker 00

  I don't love that.

• 13:49Anthony Delaney?

  It was a lot. It was a lot. Now, you couldn't help but be affected by it in whatever way. Some people were crying. And I was like, the, the, either way, this is uncomfortable. Either way, this is, this is not a good thing.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  So what happens at Nell's seances then? Talk me through that.

• 14:05Anthony Delaney?

  She's not in an old schoolhouse in Mylend, but she is in her own house.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Which is not unusual for mediums in this period.

• 14:13Anthony Delaney?

  But I will say, it does give one access and information with which they might be able to manipulate their surroundings more intimately because they are so aware of them, you know? So they're taking place in her own house. And when the guests enter, they go into a dark room. Again, my, as I was in a dark room, actually, now that we're thinking, like, it was pitch black. You could barely see each other in the, in the circle.

• 14:38Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 14:39Anthony Delaney?

  And she has some weird rituals that, well, actually, they seem weird to us. But in the context of the 1920s and 30s, they're not actually that weird at all. Because what she says she can do is produce ectoplasm from her mouth. And this is supposed to be, as we've, we've talked about this on After Dark in different episodes before, it is a mass of spiritual energy that would form into the physical embodiment of the dead spirit. And now remember, it's, I think it's, we need to bear in mind how dark this room would have been.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  Yes. I think that's a good caveat because we have photographs of this ectoplasmic production.

• 15:23Anthony Delaney?

  Aha. And it's interesting that you say production because-

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:28Anthony Delaney?

  Describe what we're seeing here.

• 15:30Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I think it's, it's good to bear in mind that this is in reality happening almost in the pitch black. And so you, you wouldn't be seeing the, the details that we are. Okay. So I'm looking at two photographs and these will be available online. And in them, there is Helen Chanel herself, who is seated in a chair. There is what looks to be a man sat next to her in each of these images, and he's holding on to her wrist. Oh, and there's someone holding on the other side as well. So she's part of a kind of circle. As you said, from your experience of like all the bodies being connected, this is a circle. She's blindfolded and then coming out of her face.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  And by that, I mean, from underneath her eyes, it's meant to be potentially from out of her mouth, out of her nose, is a white substance that is manifesting next to her as a spectral figure now.

• 16:23Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm.

• 16:25Speaker 00

  This is-

• 16:27Anthony Delaney?

  Have you seen Punch and Judy?

• 16:28Speaker 00

  Yeah. This, this is Punch and Judy dressed up in a shroud. And there's some, the, the sort of tube that's coming out of her to these, what are clearly sort of puppets, looks like, did you ever, for Halloween or a party, dress up as a, a cat or any kind of creature with a tail? Where you would use an old pair of tights and shove it full of either screwed up piece of paper or tissue?

• 16:53Anthony Delaney?

  Sure, sure.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Or cotton wool to make that, that it's giving, it's giving homemade Halloween outfit.

• 16:59Anthony Delaney?

  It's inconceivable to me that if somebody encountered this in full light, that they would ever think.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  They'd be like, oh, it's the Punch and Judy show. I thought we went to a seance, darling.

• 17:10Anthony Delaney?

  What on earth is this? It is, it is comical.

• 17:14Speaker 00

  But again, this is in almost near pitch black.

• 17:16Anthony Delaney?

  I think it's the only thing we have going for, you know what I mean? That's the only thing to be said for this is-

• 17:21Speaker 00

  I would like to say as well, that the, I mean, the photography of mediums producing ectoplasm is like a big genre in this moment. And there are some really great photos. I think from memory, I think I knew someone who was doing a PhD on the photography of seances in the early 20th century, which was really interesting.

• 17:38Anthony Delaney?

  I definitely took a, a seminar on that in my PhD, during my PhD.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. It's a really interesting kind of genre of photography, you know, exists kind of in its own right. And you do see some where you're like, oh, that, I mean, you don't think, wow, that must be real. But there, you can see there's clearly been an effort to make it seem real. These look like they're from a children's party.

• 18:00Anthony Delaney?

  Terrible, right?

• 18:01Speaker 00

  They're, they're really poor.

• 18:02Anthony Delaney?

  I can't even entertain these.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  And the, the puppets have these kind of, well, love to me, like to be wooden, painted faces. And it's interesting, actually, now I'm just thinking about this, that they're, they look wooden. Because we know her husband was a cabinetmaker and obviously he can't practice his trade because of injuries. But I wonder if he is making sort of masks

• 18:18Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  for these spectral puppets.

• 18:20Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, it's, that's a really good point. They do look wooden, certainly. And, and there is some making involved.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  So we know that these aren't very realistic. She's going to get called out. She's, she's going to have to be. We know an investigation is coming up. We're going to go to a quick ad break. When we return, we're going to be finding out who comes for Helen Chanel and who is going to discover the truth.

• 18:54Anthony Delaney?

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• 21:40Anthony Delaney?

  Well, we're back with Harry Price, Maddie, and you may remember that name from the Borley Rectory hauntings.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  Old Harry Price, the famous psychological researcher, a sort of celebrity ghost hunter of the 20th century, right? He's the person who sort of professionalises ghost hunting, if that is such a thing.

• 22:00Anthony Delaney?

  And I think it's worth remembering, as we talk about him and his attitude towards Helen Schnell, that he has his own dodgy practices and he's not the most upstanding gentleman in the entire world. Exactly. So like, let's bear that in mind, just it's important context. At the same time, he obtains a sample of her supposed ectoplasm and he gets a chemist to analyse what it's made of.

• 22:29Speaker 00

  I mean, I think that's fascinating that she allows him to take a sample. Does she not think, oh no?

• 22:34Anthony Delaney?

  Now, you just said there, and it's true, there are so many details like this missing from the story. You just said she allowed him. We don't actually know that she allowed him. Now, I don't know that she didn't. She may have had, but it just, I wonder if, because it says he gets...

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Is he leaning across in the séance and just snipping a bit off?

• 22:51Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, exactly. So what, and we do know that later, there are other people in these séances that grab the ectoplasm during the séance. So it's not out of reach. And as you can see in these pictures, like actually, in the pitch black, all he'd have to do is reach across. It's within hand's reach of some of the audience. So I wonder...

• 23:07Speaker 00

  So he acquires a sample?

• 23:10Anthony Delaney?

  And the chemist determines that what we're dealing with is cheesecloth. Do you know what cheesecloth is? I didn't know before this, I had to kind of...

• 23:17Speaker 00

  Cloth for wrapping cheese and/or other foods, a sort of...

• 23:21Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Thin hygienic, like a muslin or something?

• 23:24Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, it is that. I just didn't know what it was made of, which is like paper mixed with egg whites and toilet paper, just all kind of, the same elements of toilet paper, all just kind of mushed together. So it's this hybrid-y, weird thingy, but it is used to...

• 23:39Speaker 00

  I can't think what that texture would be.

• 23:42Anthony Delaney?

  So for me, it's very, it's like very ephemeral. It's like, it can go quickly.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Like rice paper or something?

• 23:48Anthony Delaney?

  Almost, I think, maybe a little bit stronger than that because it needs to withstand some handling and whatever. But like, it does feel like it might disappear, which is also kind of ghostly in itself, right? There is a temporariness to it. But that's what the chemist determined it is.

• 24:00Speaker 00

  But it ain't coming out of now.

• 24:02Anthony Delaney?

  But it ain't coming out of now. This is one thing that was happening, right? But it's not the whole picture because with this particular, she was able to ingest or swallow it. Like, I say swallow, but actually, maybe sometimes there's a bit of storage going on. And that would happen before the séance.

• 24:18Speaker 00

  How bad or good is your gag reflex?

• 24:21Anthony Delaney?

  Because... Oh, it's all right, it's all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  I'm not going to say the catchphrase.

• 24:26Anthony Delaney?

  Leave it, let, just drop it there.

• 24:28Speaker 00

  We'll just park that.

• 24:29Anthony Delaney?

  Keep going. But then she would regurgitate. Then she would regurgitate this.

• 24:34Speaker 00

  I could not do that, I couldn't.

• 24:36Anthony Delaney?

  In front of the guests.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  I mean, I think that's interesting, right? Because she needs to provide some kind of performance in which her body is doing something. This needs to be, you know, something is erupting from her. And so I can see why she would do this as a practice. You're really trying not to do it.

• 24:51Anthony Delaney?

  No, I'm fine, I'm good, Maddie, I'm a professional, I can get on with this.

• 24:55Speaker 00

  Sure, yeah. She's regurgitating what is essentially cheesecloth.

• 24:59Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, it's so stupid, isn't it?

• 25:01Speaker 00

  It's, I mean, it's so silly to us. Harry Price debunks it.

• 25:05Anthony Delaney?

  At least, well, he has his, he knows that it's not a thing. But, but maybe you're right in your, your theory as well about, did she give him some of it? Because she also does initially agree to have further testing because he's like, right, well, this is coming from you. So we need to do an X-ray on you to determine what exactly is inside you that's coming out. And, and she goes to the X-ray, we know that for a fact. So to some extent...

• 25:31Speaker 00

  I mean, again, I'm thinking about her belief in this.

• 25:34Anthony Delaney?

  Sure, well, okay, yes, good. Nonetheless, I have a little passage here from you, for you to read as to what happens once she is in the situation where the X-ray is about to happen.

• 25:46Speaker 00

  Okay, okay.

• 25:46Anthony Delaney?

  So give a little read of that.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  She jumped up and gave him a smashing blow on the face. What? Which sent him reeling. Then she went for Dr. William Brown, who was present. He dodged the blow. Mrs. Duncan, that's Helen Schnell, without the slightest warning, dashed out into the street, had an attack of hysteria and began to tear her séance garment to pieces. She clutched the railings and screamed and screamed. Helen's husband tried to pacify her. It was useless. Okay, Helen.

• 26:18Anthony Delaney?

  So she went, but now I will say, things do get a bit nasty because if you just turn over the page there, there's just one more sentence I want you to read about how...

• 26:28Speaker 00

  So this is, this is Price's account?

• 26:29Anthony Delaney?

  They're describing her after this. Now, look, she hasn't endeared themselves, but he gets a little bitchy. Yeah, go on, read it.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Oh my God, okay. This is rife with misogyny. Could anything be more infantile than a group of grown up men wasting time, money and energy on the antics of a fat female crook?

• 26:50Anthony Delaney?

  Listen, even if he had said, female crook, the antics of a female crook, why did we have to call her fat?

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:58Anthony Delaney?

  Why did we have to do that?

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Exactly. And, you know, this idea of juxtaposing that with these grown up men, these learned grown up men. Oh, God.

• 27:07Anthony Delaney?

  Wasting time.

• 27:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is why I can't be doing a Harry Price. Okay. Yeah, I mean, he's, I think that's interesting because he's a grown ass man who's running around trying to prove himself.

• 27:18Anthony Delaney?

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 27:19Speaker 00

  So, you know, and he's been criticised for his investigation of Borley Rectory and the way that he goes about that. And I think he rents the house for like a year and he invites people there. And it's, it's all very kind of performative and interesting. Is what Helen is doing so far, apart from punching people in the face... Is what she's doing causing any real harm to anyone? I mean, she's presumably providing some comfort to people who want to believe it's real. Is this criminality, though?

• 27:45Anthony Delaney?

  Well, it doesn't stop her. She certainly keeps going and she certainly keeps, you know, you'd imagine-

• 27:52Speaker 00

  And people keep attending the seances.

• 27:53Anthony Delaney?

  Absolutely. There's an audience for this because we know that in, on the 6th of January in 1933, she evokes the spirit, there's another incident and she evokes the spirit of a little girl called Peggy. And this is when, I mentioned before, a guest reached, reaches out and tries to grab the little girl and the lights were turned on and she was revealed, the little girl was revealed to be made from a fabric under vest. And because people felt duped, the police were then called and Helen ended up being fined £10 because of this fake spirit thing.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 28:33Anthony Delaney?

  And fraudulent mediumship.

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Okay, so she's done for fraud, basically.

• 28:36Anthony Delaney?

  So she's done for fraud, yeah.

• 28:37Speaker 00

  Because money is changing hands.

• 28:39Anthony Delaney?

  Yes, yeah. And so she, you know, she's getting caught out quite a bit, actually. But I do want to preface this by saying, or contextualise this by saying, right, if that happened today, and we do see examples of it happening today, I think one of the most famous examples is probably Derek O'Kora in terms of Most Haunted, when Dr Kieran O'Keefe, who's a parapsychologist, he planted information during one of his kind of walk rounds in a thing that was an anagram of Derek is a faker. And he made up a name, I can't think, it was Reeve Crayford or something like that. And he planted it amongst the crew on this, on the TV show Most Haunted. And Derek produced the name, planted name that Kieran O'Keefe had planted amongst the crew.

• 29:24Speaker 00

  Interesting.

• 29:25Anthony Delaney?

  So suddenly, and then there was a whole conversation around, well, you know, I'm on TV, there's a lot of pressure on me to produce this thing, it's not my fault, I sometimes have to, you know. Or I think there was another time where they were talking about, oh, you know, if that name is out there, I might pick up on that name. That's how, I can't filter truth from whatever, I'm just getting what I'm getting.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  I'm just picking up the vibes, yeah, okay.

• 29:46Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. So, but that kind of ruined his career. It certainly got him taken off that show. In the context of 1933, that might be making, making the rounds locally, but it's not going on social media, it's not making headline news, it's for now, it is relatively contained. So she can still continue on doing this to a certain extent. Now, at this point, we've got Helen who's chancing her arm. What is your take on her? What are your feelings around her right now in this moment?

• 30:16Speaker 00

  I mean, I find it difficult because, I mean, she's obviously a fraud. She is obviously, you could argue, exploiting people's grief, their despair in a, into war period. I mean, they don't know it's an into war period, they don't know it's coming yet. But, you know, post-war, post First World War period. But she also lives in that context, right? She's not separate from it. She is also surrounded by death and tragedy. Her husband has been wounded in the war. She has brought her children up in this post-war world of, of horror and misery and, you know, maimed men coming back from the front, et cetera, et cetera. Does she believe what she's doing? I don't think so. I'm very interested, though, in people who enact these kind of performances, the extent

• 30:56Speaker 00

  to which they believe or are open to themselves as being conduits. And I think there always has to be some, I'm not saying that she does believe what she's doing and obviously, you know, she's very actively faking elements of her performance. And so she believes in herself and her ability to sort of transport people in some way and to create a scene that is all encompassing and engaging and exciting and terrifying. And I think that in and of itself is interesting, particularly for a housewife of the working class in this moment. You know, we're across Britain in the immediate years after the First World War, still calling for women's suffrage, you know, and women have been in the workplace in munitions factories

• 31:40Speaker 00

  and now they've had to go back to the home because men are returning from the front and taking up those jobs again. And, you know, the role of women is, is shifting, it's complicated, there's resentment by men coming back who can't do the jobs they did previously because they're wounded and find women in their place, et cetera, et cetera. There's resentment from women who are having to go back into those domestic roles. I sort of think, good for her for chancing her hand. It is exploitative. I wouldn't want to come across her. I think she's a strange person. Would I want to be in one of those seances and see her do this? I'd be quite fascinated, too. I think it's complicated.

• 32:18Anthony Delaney?

  Well, it's about to become even more complicated because we've had this brush with the law where she's getting a fine and, okay, it's, it's a decent amount of money, like 10 quid.

• 32:29Speaker 00

  It's like a little local scandal, right? It's like, oh, okay, she's been wrapped on the knuckles for being a bit naughty.

• 32:33Anthony Delaney?

  But we're going national now. It is during the 1940s.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  Oh, we're in the 40s now, I think.

• 32:38Anthony Delaney?

  We're in the 40s. So, yeah, she's still doing it, by the way, like, she's still going despite all of this.

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Well, there's another world war on now, there's another, there's more, yep, more call for talking to the dead.

• 32:48Anthony Delaney?

  And we're in November 1941 and Helen holds a seance in Portsmouth, so she is travelling to do this. This isn't in her house this time.

• 32:57Speaker 00

  That's a fascinating escalation, isn't it?

• 33:00Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, and actually, it's not unique to 1941. She's been, she is booked, she's booked and blessed. She's, she's out on the road at times. So, yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 33:09Anthony Delaney?

  So she's got a reputation, even if it's relatively contained within these circles.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  Well, it's not going to stay that way.

• 33:14Anthony Delaney?

  No, it's not.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  So she's in Portsmouth?

• 33:16Anthony Delaney?

  She is. And she's having a seance and she's doing a bit of clairvoyance. And this is where things go very awry for her because she says that the British ship HMS Barham has been sunk.

• 33:31Speaker 00

  Now, this is the turning point.

• 33:33Anthony Delaney?

  This is the turning point because this eventually gets back to the government because they had kept it a secret from the Germans because they didn't want them strategically to know that they had-

• 33:47Speaker 00

  Lost a ship.

• 33:48Anthony Delaney?

  -secreted and that they'd lost a ship. So they hadn't released that to public knowledge and-

• 33:55Speaker 00

  Okay, so she, she has partied information that is a government secret, state secret during wartime, you know, there are posters everywhere, loose lips, sink ships.

• 34:05Anthony Delaney?

  Literally, in this case.

• 34:06Speaker 00

  Do not, yeah, do not talk about stuff if you are home on shore leave from a ship, if you are, you know, home from the army, if you're home from the air force, shut up, do not tell your women and children at home anything. But equally, there are people, we're in Portsmouth, there are people waiting desperately for news of loved ones who have gone out to sea in this case.

• 34:27Anthony Delaney?

  They have. And importantly, those people that they're waiting for are not coming back because in that sinking, 861 men have been killed. It's a big casualty number. So we're talking about-

• 34:39Speaker 00

  861?

• 34:41Anthony Delaney?

  Yes. And although they kept it a secret, this is key, although they kept it a secret from the nation, the government, I mean, every family of those 861 people were told and-

• 34:55Speaker 00

  So that's, that's then thousands of people who do know, presumably a lot of them in the Portsmouth area.

• 35:00Anthony Delaney?

  Right, this is what I'm thinking. It's gonna, you're gonna have people who probably are from there, it's a naval, it's a naval base, it's all of those things.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:08Anthony Delaney?

  And so, say even at a bare, bare minimum for every person that died.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  We should say, by the way, for international listeners, that Portsmouth is a city on the south coast of England.

• 35:14Anthony Delaney?

  Very good, yes, it is. And it is, say for instance, a bare minimum, and this would be way too conservative, that for every one of those 861 people that died, two people knew.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  Exactly, yeah.

• 35:28Anthony Delaney?

  And it, come on, it's going to be 10 people for everyone.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  This is news across, across the city, basically.

• 35:32Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. It's everywhere in that city. So, but anyway, we don't know for sure.

• 35:38Speaker 00

  But it's been whispered, it's been privately grieved, it's not being announced at a seance.

• 35:42Anthony Delaney?

  It's not being announced at a seance. But the shock value was, and this is where she really comes to prominence, because people start going, she couldn't have known. It hasn't been announced.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Her powers are real.

• 35:54Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. Now we have the proof we've been waiting for, but-

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• 37:30Speaker 00

  Okay, talk to me about what happens next.

• 37:32Anthony Delaney?

  So now Helen's on, as rumours go around, just as she had probably heard a rumour about what had happened. The rumour also goes the other way and the government find out that she has disclosed this, you know, protected information.

• 37:45Speaker 00

  And, you know, this is, this is a really serious situation. The British state is constantly looking for spies for the German side. You know, there are really, really, really serious implications if you are caught passing on information or even discussing information that you shouldn't know. Right. If stuff is leaving army bases, even if it's considered common knowledge, you don't talk about it. You need to keep quiet.

• 38:12Anthony Delaney?

  Absolutely. But do also bear in mind a note to producer Tom, who's listening in in the other room. We should also do an episode on how the authorities are using clairvoyance and mediums during this time in whatever kind of official capacity or even in just a curiosity capacity. So it's not like they're unfamiliar with the boundaries of mediumship during this time. There are certain people who they are even reluctantly listening to and watching. And she becomes one of those people that they're watching. Now, they're less interested in what you might be able to do for them, though, I will say that. They're just suspicious of what is she doing over there? That feeling dodges.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  I love these stories from the Second World War, though, of like the kind of mad harebrained schemes that were put into place of like, how we're going to beat the Germans? And it's gonna, you know, thinking of like cracking the Enigma code, which obviously had real word implications. And was, yeah, it was obviously magic. No, but you know, there's sort of these different pockets of like, we're gonna do this crazy project and we're gonna do this. And some people over here are doing this mad thing. And, you know, it's all happening in secret and people aren't really aware of all these things taking place until sometimes decades later of like, sorry, you did what during the war?

• 39:25Anthony Delaney?

  And then let's see what sticks, right? Like, that's what they're trying to do.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  We're just gonna try loads of different stuff and hope that something defeats the Nazis and, you know, it worked.

• 39:33Anthony Delaney?

  Got there in the end, yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 00

  Probably wasn't the work of clairvoyance.

• 39:36Anthony Delaney?

  No, and it wasn't Helen. Helen didn't bring that about, just to let you know in advance.

• 39:39Speaker 00

  So she is under suspicion rather than collabing with the British Armed Forces.

• 39:45Anthony Delaney?

  But we're gonna fast forward a little bit more now to, this is a couple of years later and it is the 14th of January, 1944. She's still doing the old seance gig.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  So we're still in the war. D-Day hasn't even happened yet. We're still very much under the threat of German invasion. Very frightening time.

• 40:06Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, the D-Day landings are being planned, but it hasn't happened.

• 40:10Speaker 00

  Again, not public knowledge. Oh my God, can you imagine if she heard of that?

• 40:13Anthony Delaney?

  Well, but this is, honestly, this is the context in which, you know, like this is why they have to be interested in this kind of thing. Like, well, she's talking about shit she shouldn't be talking about, so what else does she?

• 40:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, and we're, we're planning these crucial things.

• 40:24Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is why two naval officers now attend this 14th of January.

• 40:29Speaker 00

  In disguise or are they like, hello, we're naval officers?

• 40:32Anthony Delaney?

  I don't think they're saying, hello, we're naval officers. I don't think they're saying that. And I'm not sure how official.

• 40:37Speaker 00

  They're not in uniform, probably.

• 40:38Anthony Delaney?

  No, exactly. They're not going in with, with cap under arm kind of thing, but.

• 40:42Speaker 00

  Which of course everyone was walking around like that in the 1940s. So they're, so it's probably almost in disguise to just take your uniform off, right?

• 40:48Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, true, actually. Yeah, yeah. But one of them, Lieutenant Worth, says that during that performance, one of these white cloth figures appeared from behind the curtains.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  No, she's gotta drop these white.

• 41:02Anthony Delaney?

  I know, she's sticking with this.

• 41:03Speaker 00

  Punch and Judy.

• 41:04Anthony Delaney?

  We're 10 years later and she's still doing it.

• 41:06Speaker 00

  Are they the same Punch and Judy?

• 41:07Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, I don't know if they're the same ones, but it's gonna be the same gig, essentially. Yeah, well, those two that we looked at earlier, they weren't the same. So that's, they were two different Punch and Judy's.

• 41:15Speaker 00

  No, that's true. So she's, she's got a, well, maybe one was Punch, one was Judy.

• 41:18Anthony Delaney?

  Well, there you go. But she says, Helen says, that this person who's now appeared in the white cloth is Lieutenant Worth's aunt, dead aunt. And he's like.

• 41:30Speaker 00

  I know you pronounce it as lieutenant because you're Irish, but it makes my eye twitch.

• 41:33Anthony Delaney?

  You die, I know, every time inside. But he goes, lovely Helen, that's great. Thanks very much, babe. I don't have a dead aunt. Yeah. So then she's like, oh, hold on now, wait, wait, there's something else coming through. I know she doesn't have a rural liar jacket.

• 41:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, she's an old Irish lady now. Well, she's from the Highlands.

• 41:49Anthony Delaney?

  I said, I said aunt, I meant sister, sister. It's your dead sister.

• 41:54Speaker 00

  I meant sister looking over her glasses like.

• 41:57Anthony Delaney?

  But does Worth have a dead sister? He does not. She's alive and well.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  She's like, oh, no, no, wait, grandmother?

• 42:05Anthony Delaney?

  Why didn't she start there? It's just so much more safe to.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Just picking generations probably dead.

• 42:10Anthony Delaney?

  Right. So look, he is unimpressed by this and he then reports her to the police. Cause he's like, look, it might, there's no, she doesn't have any powers that we could, that's any threat to us, but.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  But she's bullshitting people. Okay, so he's not reporting it for like, she, she knew where my ship was going and what time we're leaving and who's on board.

• 42:33Anthony Delaney?

  No, no, no.

• 42:33Speaker 00

  Just like she couldn't guess which one of my relatives was, yeah, she's just, she's just fake.

• 42:38Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Okay, so what, what are the authorities, they're a bit busy dealing with the war, what are they gonna do about this?

• 42:43Anthony Delaney?

  They are, God love them, but they find a bit of time to carve out an evening to go to one of her seances five days later, the 19th of January.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 42:51Anthony Delaney?

  And they're, they are undercover, so they're deliberately not announcing themselves as police officers. And they see another figure materialize. This is, again, you know, a supposedly spirit manifest and.

• 43:03Speaker 00

  This is Punch and Judy back again.

• 43:04Anthony Delaney?

  This is Punch and Judy back again. And on very quick inspection, they go, it's, it's cheesecloth again.

• 43:11Speaker 00

  Not cheesecloth.

• 43:11Anthony Delaney?

  She's faking and she is arrested there and then.

• 43:16Speaker 00

  Okay. And fair enough, like, this is just doing that.

• 43:20Anthony Delaney?

  We're decades under our belt now of robbing people, basically.

• 43:22Speaker 00

  I think she could have diversified the act a little bit.

• 43:26Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, just do a Ouija board.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do something where people can't literally grab your props and be like, wait a second.

• 43:33Anthony Delaney?

  Actually, not smart.

• 43:35Speaker 00

  Not smart.

• 43:35Anthony Delaney?

  I mean, we know this. She's, she's dressing up Punch and Judy to pretend they're ghosts, so not smart. But like, Ouija board, it's very.

• 43:43Speaker 00

  Hard to disprove.

• 43:44Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly, right?

• 43:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go with something vibe based, not, not fabric based.

• 43:49Anthony Delaney?

  All the hands were on that thing or whatever.

• 43:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:53Anthony Delaney?

  So she should have gone with that. Anyway. But here's one of the reasons then that she becomes particularly famous. Because she is charged later after this arrest. She's later charged under a really old law, which is the 1735 Witchcraft Act.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  Tell me about this, Antony. I've never heard of it.

• 44:10Anthony Delaney?

  You would, you wouldn't know about this, Maddie, because you didn't write a book called Hoax and definitely doesn't form the spine of some of, at least one chapter, not two.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  At least one, yes. Well, yeah, well, at least, at least one of the stories. Yeah, multiple chapters. Okay. Go on, give it a shot.

• 44:24Anthony Delaney?

  So this, unlike it sounds, is not, I, I would have earlier interpreted this as going, okay, this is to control witchcraft. And it is, but it's not. It's to discredit witchcraft entirely and go, what you're seeing here is not supernatural. Stop claiming that you can commune with all these magicky things.

• 44:43Speaker 00

  So it's basically to outlaw claiming that you are a witch, but also accusing people of witchcraft, right? So it's kind of a reaction to the, the horror of the witch trials in earlier centuries. And it's, you know, the context of this is the Enlightenment of the 18th century. And like, can we all be rational now, please? Stop shouting about witches to each other because it causes nothing but problems.

• 45:04Anthony Delaney?

  You've got a backlog, guys.

• 45:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, let's move on from this, yeah.

• 45:08Anthony Delaney?

  So basically, she's, she's called out as a fraudster, right?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:12Anthony Delaney?

  And this time, the, the trial goes to the Old Bailey and in London in March, 1944.

• 45:19Speaker 00

  I mean, that's kind of fascinating, right, that it ends up in the Old Bailey. The Old Bailey being, you know, the, the sort of most important court in the land where some of the biggest, the biggest trials take place. There she is with Punch and Judy in the Old Bailey.

• 45:34Anthony Delaney?

  And this is the thing, right? It's the, because of that set piece, because she's now in this specific theatre.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  It's escalating.

• 45:41Anthony Delaney?

  Now we're national news, right?

• 45:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:43Anthony Delaney?

  And she becomes.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Oh, I like that being like theatre. I mean, she's gone from like the performance space of, of the parlor, if you like, in her own home, to touring. And now she's arrived at the arena venue, if you like.

• 45:54Anthony Delaney?

  And, and in a way, there's part of her that's not afraid of that, right? Because as you say, she's, she's got an agency in performance. But, but what it does is it puts her at the centre of this tension between those people who follow spiritual mediums and people who are being like, why is she lying to these vulnerable people at this moment in her life? And so she becomes, but she does have her defenders at the time. Like, there are people that want this to be true. And what, in terms of the context, and I think sometimes this is made too much of when we talk about it now, but it certainly was what the, the medium supporters were talking about at the time. Was, oh, well, she's been targeted, she's been scapegoated because they are, well, this was said in hindsight,

• 46:37Anthony Delaney?

  but they were planning D-Day at this time, so they were afraid she was gonna expose the D-Day plans because she knew and she had that information because she's gifted and she's proper skilled.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  So they had to silence her before she ruined it.

• 46:48Anthony Delaney?

  It's a conspiracy, basically. So she becomes the kind of focus for that.

• 46:52Speaker 00

  Conspiracy. That proves magic is real and that this woman knew about D-Day. Okay.

• 47:00Anthony Delaney?

  Now.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 47:01Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah, yeah. So they are, you could have had, because they raided the house, obviously, when they did this. And we could have had a lot more physical evidence that was coming in.

• 47:11Speaker 00

  So they don't find the cupboard of Punch and Judy's?

• 47:12Anthony Delaney?

  No, they do find it, but they don't allow it into the trial because they have to, I know, they have to concentrate just on witness testimony. So it's all, it becomes he said, she said, kind of.

• 47:23Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. Interesting.

• 47:25Anthony Delaney?

  But she is found guilty and she is imprisoned for nine months. And when she hears the verdict, she says, I have done nothing. Is there a God?

• 47:34Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, the showwoman.

• 47:37Speaker 00

  Diva.

• 47:38Anthony Delaney?

  And then it's like, you know, and this has been used by the two sides. Churchill gets wind of this and.

• 47:45Speaker 00

  Oh, I hate to hear from Churchill on any matter.

• 47:48Anthony Delaney?

  In passing, he kind of says that it's essentially obsolete tomfoolery.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  What are the more sensible things he said, to be fair?

• 47:54Anthony Delaney?

  Well, yes. And that is how he means it, or at least that's how I take it to me. But actually, what some people have interpreted as later, particularly now in the 21st century, when they're like, oh, she's oaky spooky, she's queen of oaky spook. They, they use, and they take his quote out of context and say, actually, what he meant was, why are you, we could be using her in a different way, and it's obsolete tomfoolery to be using the court's time.

• 48:17Speaker 00

  Ah, okay. So we're wasting like a show trial when we could be utilizing her skills.

• 48:23Anthony Delaney?

  And there are some people who say, again, in retrospect, but this was happening very quickly after the trial, that actually Churchill, this is untrue, I feel bad even saying it because it's just not true, but that Churchill was actually one of her clients and so was the king at the time. So it's like, you know, there's.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  And I'm Jut the Ripper.

• 48:40Anthony Delaney?

  Yes. Well, that's, that's solved.

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:43Anthony Delaney?

  Exclusive to After Dark.

• 48:44Speaker 00

  Oh, no, I haunted myself. Okay. So she's imprisoned for nine months.

• 48:49Anthony Delaney?

  She is.

• 48:50Speaker 00

  Under the Witchcraft Act, which is, you know, is sort of strange quirk of, of English law, I suppose, British law, that she is, she's prosecuted in this way. She's in prison until, what, the end of the war, 1945?

• 49:03Anthony Delaney?

  I'm not sure if it's the end of the, full end of the, oh, yeah, yeah. I guess it's over. Yeah, yeah. By the time she comes out. Yeah. Good, good point. Anyway, the, one of the conditions of her release is, well, not conditions, but one of the agreements she makes upon release is that, do you know what, lads? I've seen the error of my ways.

• 49:19Speaker 00

  Just leave it there, babe.

• 49:20Anthony Delaney?

  I've had a good innings. Yeah, no more, no more seancing. But she goes against that. And because we know she does, because in December 1956, we're, we're in Edinburgh and she, we know that she is, she's doing them again. She's.

• 49:37Speaker 00

  I mean, it must have been bloody lucrative.

• 49:39Anthony Delaney?

  Hey, it must have been. And like, girl's gotta eat. Like, you know, it's, it's one of those things. But one of the reasons she became famous is, yes, the context of war and interwar and then World War Two. Churchill's in there on the periphery, but he's there. We have the Old Bailey, of course.

• 49:55Speaker 00

  We have the cast of characters, chef's kiss.

• 49:59Anthony Delaney?

  And we have a supposedly, she couldn't have known this piece of information. So there's proof there. So, okay, maybe she was fabricating some of this, but clearly some information she has.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, the sinking of the ship feels like a, it's presented as like a gotcha moment, right? Of like, well, how would she possibly have known?

• 50:16Anthony Delaney?

  Apart from the thousands of people who knew that it was happening and she was in the area where they were. Now, the other thing then that kind of narratively has made her famous is that it said that she was the last witch, right? Because she was, which is misleading anyway, because the Witchcraft Act is not about witchcraft at all.

• 50:35Speaker 00

  She's not accused of witchcraft, yeah.

• 50:35Anthony Delaney?

  And, but, but, you know, it's narratively tight. But even in that case, she's not even the last one there because there's another woman in 1944. I think it's just a few months, September, maybe 1944. Anyway, it's a few months after her. Her name is Jane Rebecca York, and she's also convicted in the Old Bailey for pretending to talk to the dead.

• 50:56Speaker 00

  Oh, okay.

• 50:57Anthony Delaney?

  So she's the last one, but she's not famous because she doesn't have all the bells and whistles.

• 51:00Speaker 00

  Oh, that's so interesting. Okay. I feel like the law, we, we need to move on from the Witch Act and presumably there needs to be a law to stop mediums and doing this kind of fraud, right? Like surely this is going to come in.

• 51:14Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. And it's now, it's, by the time I said she was practicing, not practicing, deceiving, in 1956, there is a new law, the Witchcraft Act is gone by now.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:23Anthony Delaney?

  And we have the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951.

• 51:28Speaker 00

  Right.

• 51:28Anthony Delaney?

  And then later again, I think maybe in the early 2000s, something's telling me 2003, but I could have that year wrong, the Fraudulent Mediums Act is also revoked because it's like, oh, that feels a little bit old fashioned. And now it just becomes, and I love this, just part of trading standards because you can't mislead. You know what I mean?

• 51:46Speaker 00

  So much more boring.

• 51:47Anthony Delaney?

  Exactly. I know, I know, no. At least even with Fraudulent Mediums Act, you're still getting a bit of drama. But now it's just trading standards. And I'm just like, okay, bring it down. So there's Helen Nell and that's her kind of thing. I, I have to say, there is, and I purposely asked you this at some point during it, like, what, what are you thinking about her now? And, and, because I was thinking the same thing at that point, where it's, you know, she's been through a lot. She hasn't had a good background. The wars are going on. She, she's trying to, you know, we'll often talk about, look, you're gonna have to do something to survive. And fair enough, but here's the other side of that, right? And I really have come down on this side by the time I looked into this for, for this episode.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:26Anthony Delaney?

  There are countless women, despite their disenfranchisement, which is, you know, undeniable, who are in similar, if not worse, situations, who don't think that the way to counter it is to capitalize on people like this.

• 52:40Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it is disgusting. Like what she does is ultimately disgusting. Um, yeah, I think it's, it's interesting. It's an interesting history because it, as you say, allows us a view of all these kind of intersecting things. We've got these characters like Churchill in here. We've got this idea of impending D-Day plans and the need to keep them a secret. You know, it gives you this view of an interwar society and society during wartime, of people's anxieties. I think it's a useful history in that way.

• 53:07Anthony Delaney?

  Totally.

• 53:08Speaker 00

  In terms of her, her crimes, because they are crimes. Yeah. I think, I think it's, it's opportunistic, it's callous. I'm interested in the showmanship of it.

• 53:18Anthony Delaney?

  Hmm. Yeah.

• 53:19Speaker 00

  Um, as I say, I've spent a lot of time since becoming, since doing this podcast, thinking about seances. You know, in my book, the first story that I look at is the Cocklane Ghost in 1762, which is just full of seances and, and seances that take place over many, many months, probably weeks, certainly, in which people try and sort of do controlled, scientific, rigorous experiments to work out what's going on and who's doing things. And, you know, so I'm interested in like, seances as a, a performance space, but also as a, a meeting space of different viewpoints and people trying to sort of battle off against one another. So that's all very interesting. But ultimately, she does need to sort of get in the bin because it's not good.

• 53:58Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Like it's, it's, the context is all interesting, like, and compelling. And that's why we still know who she is today.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:07Anthony Delaney?

  But like, yeah, this, this isn't, we say this a lot, don't we? But this isn't girl boss history now. You know what I mean? We're, we're in territory here of, of somebody who's capitalizing on, on grief, pain and, and death and all those kinds of things. And, and she's brazen as well. I mean, that's maybe one thing to admire about her.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Oh, she keeps going.

• 54:23Anthony Delaney?

  Like, she's got, she's not listening to that, but.

• 54:25Speaker 00

  10 out of 10 for the DIY craft work.

• 54:28Anthony Delaney?

  Well, no, have you seen these things? Not 10 out of 10.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  I have enjoyed them.

• 54:32Anthony Delaney?

  That's a good four out of 10 for her, her crafty ability.

• 54:35Speaker 00

  10 out of 10 for effort. Um, thank you for this history. That, I, I, I really have enjoyed this a lot more than I thought. Yeah, it really is. If you want to hear more, do you know what? If you want to hear more Second World War history, we've not done a lot of Second World War history.

• 54:48Anthony Delaney?

  We should.

• 54:49Speaker 00

  If you have like a, a unique angle that you would like us to cover, or a strange way in, mediumship.

• 54:56Anthony Delaney?

  Give us something else.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  Yeah. Some of the more, as I say, the harebrained schemes of trying to defeat the Nazis, the weird stuff people were doing. Maybe, maybe that's our way in. That would be interesting to hear from you. And you can write to us at [email protected], historyhit.com. That's a different email address. It's historyhit.com for us.

• 55:15Anthony Delaney?

  Now, but the other thing that we have to ask people to do before we say goodbye is, at the height of our powers, because what is this spooky season?

• 55:23Speaker 00

  Spooky season.

• 55:24Anthony Delaney?

  What do they have to do?

• 55:25Speaker 00

  They have to leave us a five star review, but not only that. Anthony's shaking his head at me. I'm getting there, babe.

• 55:30Anthony Delaney?

  Yeah.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  They have to go, they, you, you with the headphones in, you have to go, turn to the person on the tube next to you now, please. Tap them on the shoulder. Go up to your friend in the cafe. Tell the barista to listen to After Dark because, you know, we, we are, dare I say, a, a big and beloved podcast, but we, we crave more growth.

• 55:51Anthony Delaney?

  We do.

• 55:51Speaker 00

  We want to, to get more people over to the dark side.

• 55:55Anthony Delaney?

  We're like the Sanderson sisters.

• 55:56Speaker 00

  I've gone very Bill Bailey. Oh, my God.

• 55:57Anthony Delaney?

  Calling.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Come, little children.

• 55:59Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, my God, you're very like her in that.

• 56:02Speaker 00

  Well, that's good because that's Matt's fantasy woman. If so, just park it specifically in that role. He really fancies us. So there we go.

• 56:07Anthony Delaney?

  You, you did it then, just right there. Now, I, if you're in America specifically, I have an appeal to you. I need you to text, email, or call somebody on the other side of the country to geographically spread this word, right?

• 56:21Speaker 00

  Doesn't have to be someone you know. Just pick up the phone box. Pick someone randomly.

• 56:25Anthony Delaney?

  Oh, today? No, I'm not going to keep talking about my life. We have to go. And we'll talk about our lives on social media.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Get on the phone. Spread the word. We love you. Bye.

• 56:33Anthony Delaney?

  Bye.

• 57:11Speaker 02

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• 57:14Speaker 03

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