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Wed 6 Dec, 2006 06:37 pm
This interesting story caught my eye. I had no idea that people had been charged for performing "witchcraft" as late as 1943. I guess it's all tied up with the war, but it seems like a real reach to charge someone for holding a seance. Couldn't think of anything else?
Quote:Calls to pardon 'UK's last witch'
Wednesday, 6 December 2006, 11:52 GMT
BBC News
The family of the last person in the UK to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act will mark the 50th anniversary of her death by calling for her pardon.
Medium Helen Duncan, who was born in Callander, Perthshire, was imprisoned using the law during World War II.
She was targeted by the government after revealing to a séance audience that a warship had sunk before the news had been released to the public.
Her grand-daughter is particularly angry at the accusations of treason.
Mary Martin, of Edinburgh, said Mrs Duncan had been accused of being a traitor.
Spiritualist churches
"When she first came back home after prison she was never the same.
"She always had a bit of a glow about her but she seemed to have lost that.
"Some people said it was treason. My grandmother had two sons and two son in laws in the forces ... and there is no way she would have given anybody information."
Mrs Duncan became one of the most famous mediums of her time, heading a network of spiritualist churches.
During the war she lived in Portsmouth, the home of the Royal Navy.
At a séance in 1943 it was claimed that the spirit of a sailor from the HMS Barham appeared.
The vessel was only officially declared lost several months later.
She was arrested in 1944 and sentenced to nine months in prison at the Old Bailey for crimes under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
While in prison she was visited by Winston Churchill.
When he was re-elected in 1951 the Witchcraft Act was repealed and three years later spiritualism was officially recognised as a religion.
Campaigners to pardon Mrs Duncan have set up an online petition.
The campaign is backed by the British Society of Paranormal Studies.
Medium Mary Armour, who wrote her biography, said: "She has put us on the right side of the law by bringing in the 1952 act."
Helen Duncan was tried under the Witchcraft Act
Interesting and slightly different storyline of the events and trial from her perspective found here:
http://www.helenduncan.org.uk/Duncan.htm
and here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan
The leader in today's Guardian:
Quote:In praise of
free spirits
Winston Churchill did not normally take time out from running the war to visit prisoners, but Helen Duncan was an exceptional convict, the last to be prosecuted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. It is almost impossible to imagine the British state in the middle of the 20th century taking a charge of witchcraft seriously, but it did, in 1944 when Ms Duncan was brought to court after using her celebrity as a mystic to claim she could see the spirit of a man drowned on a ship whose sinking was secret.
This week, 50 years after her death, her family are asking the home secretary, John Reid, to reconsider the case. Behind the wartime prosecution lay fears that Mrs Duncan might discern and reveal plans for the D-Day landings and the result was that she was sentenced at the Old Bailey to 9 months in Holloway. The prime minister, who faced more pressing issues, was rightly indignant, instructing his home secretary to look into the "tomfoolery" and, in 1951, he repealed the anachronistic law (the only piece of legislation from the Attlee government to complete its passage under the Tories). But the conviction still stands.
Campaigners for a pardon may well be accused of eccentricity ?- some claim that through the medium's "ample body milky ectoplasm flowed" ?- but they surely have a point about the unfairness of it all. In Labour's first term, Jack Straw declined to grant a pardon. It is not hard to think why, since the case is certainly odd. But jokes about broomsticks and black cats aside, Ms Duncan deserved better.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1967278,00.html
Thank you Butr and Walter for your contributions.
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