The Cottingley Fairies

The first of the five photographs, taken by Elsie Wright
in 1917, shows Frances Griffiths with the alleged fairies
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The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five
photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths,
two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford
in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were
taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 10. The pictures
came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
who used them to illustrate an article on fairies he had been
commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of
'The Strand Magazine'. Conan Doyle, as a spiritualist, was
enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted
them as clear and visible evidence of psychic phenomena.
Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as
genuine, but others believed they had been faked



The second of the five photographs,
showing Elsie with a winged gnome
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Frances and the Leaping Fairy,
the third photograph
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The fourth photograph, Fairy Offering
Posy of Harebells to Elsie
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One of Claude Arthur Shepperson's illustrations
of fairies, from Princess Mary's Gift Book
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In 1983, the cousins admitted in an article published
in the magazine 'The Unexplained' that the photographs
had been faked, although both maintained that they
really had seen fairies. Elsie had copied illustrations of
fairies from a popular children's book of the time,
'Princess Mary's Gift Book', published in 1914. They
said they had then cut out the cardboard figures and
supported them with hat pins, disposing of their props
in the beck once the photograph had been taken. But
the cousins disagreed about the fifth and final photograph.
Elsie maintained it was a fake, just like all the others,
but Frances insisted that it was genuine

Read more here


Fairies and Their Sun-Bath, the fifth and last
photograph taken of the Cottingley Fairies, the
one that Frances Griffiths insisted was genuine
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