This obsolete tomfoolery
The medium screamed and the rest of the ‘teleplasm.’ went down her throat
On the afternoon of November 24th, the HMS Barham was torpedoed off the Egyptian coast. A U-Boat got the better of the Queen Elizabeth-class battleship that had survived the previous World War mostly unscathed. Three of the four torpedoes fired at the ship made direct contact, causing it to capsize. Four minutes later, the boat was done in by an internal magazine explosion, causing it to sink to the bottom of the Mediterranean.
The captain went down with his ship and 861 others. Evasive actions by British destroyer Hotspur and its Australian counterpart Nizam managed to rescue nearly 500. The Board of Admiralty kept a tight lid on the horror, over fears that its sinking might lower morale among the allied troops. When next of kin were finally informed months after the fact, the military asked that they maintain the secret, commanding that “information of the event which led to the loss of your husband's life should not find its way to the enemy until such time as it is announced officially.”
Helen Duncan learned of the incident the same month it occurred – well in advance of the next of kin. She had her own unique sources and methods. The dead let the news slip during a séance in Portsmouth. A mother of six and part-time bleach factory employee, Duncan had begun communicating with the dead two decades prior. Such conversations often found a stream of ectoplasm emerging from her mouth. Her methods proved controversial almost immediately, making her a frequent target of professional skeptics.
The ectoplasm was a particular sticking point. Photographer Harvey Metcalfe attended one such seance two years into Duncan’s professional practice, snapping a series of flash photographs at an opportune moment. Once published, the images exposed the medium’s methods to the world. Her primary spirit guide, a little girl named Peggy, proved to be a combination of papier-mache and bedsheets. The long strand of ectoplasm spewing forth from her mouth was cheesecloth.
Duncan’s work had become a favorite subject for Harry Price. Unlike Metcalfe’s early skepticism, the psychic research’s initial interests were born of an excitement around Duncan’s work. Price had managed to secure a piece of the ectoplasm, which was placed into a bottle of distilled water for safekeeping. A chemist soon informed him that the spiritual substance was a combination of egg whites and various chemicals.
Price’s investigations grew more thorough, culminating with a payment to Duncan in exchange for a seance in a laboratory setting. The medium accepted, but soon fought back when attempts were made to x-ray her, over concerns that she had begun swallowing cheese cloth to create her ectoplasm-like effects. As her husband was attempting to reassure her, Duncan struck his face, before lunging at one of the doctors.
Duncan fled the lab, as the scene spilled over into the streets. The commotion drew the attention of police, but Price and company managed to talk them out of detaining the woman. Duncan discreetly passed the remainder of the cheesecloth to her husband during the kerfuffle before agreeing to return to the lab for tests.
“[T]hey gave us another seance and the ‘control' said we could cut off a piece of ‘teleplasm’ when it appeared,” Price later recounted. “The sight of half-a-dozen men, each with a pair of scissors waiting for the word, was amusing. It came and we all jumped. One of the doctors got hold of the stuff and secured a piece. The medium screamed and the rest of the ‘teleplasm’ went down her throat. This time it wasn't cheese-cloth. It proved to be paper, soaked in white of egg, and folded into a flattened tube.”
In spite of what was believed to be decades of widespread fraud, Duncan managed to maintain her practice. The story of a recently sunk ship piqued the interest of a high-ranking Scottish official, who happened to be in the crowd the evening she revealed the information. Quickly fact-checking the information after the seance, he discovered the information to be true. The revelation soon brought the unwanted attention of the Royal Navy.
Duncan was arrested under the Vagrancy Act of 1824, but officials ultimately discovered more substantive grounds in a law passed nearly a century early. The Witchcraft Act was introduced in 1735 to ease barbaric laws that were still on the books. It marked a shift into a more modern approach to legislating occult acts, swapping grievous bodily harm and drowning for more civilized acts of censure. The new law was focused on the influence of perceived witchcraft, rather than the evils of the act itself.
The invocation of a then-obscure 209-year-old law predictably caused public sensation. The story made headlines across the country’s top publications, including The Daily Express, which offered a biting cartoon of firefighters fixated on the flying figure of a witch, while London burned. Even the Prime Minster got in on the act. With his nation in midst of World War, he skipped the pleasantries in a tersely worded letter to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison.
“Let me have a report on why the Witchcraft Act of 1735 was used in a modern Court of Justice,” Churchill demanded. “What was the cost of the trial to the state, observing that witnesses were brought from Portsmouth and maintained here in this crowded London for a fortnight, and the Recorder kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery.”
Duncan was convicted, nonetheless, screaming ,"I have done nothing; is there a God?" when sentenced to nine months. Upon release, she agreed to end her seances. She was, however, arrested once again for the practice shortly before her death in 1956. Hers would prove one of the final convictions under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
Sources:
The Strange Case of Hellish Nell by Nina Shandler
Calling the Spirits by Lisa Morton
The Society for Psychical Research 1882–1982: A History by Renée Haynes