HELEN’S STORY 1897 - 1956
The prosecution were determined to prove Helen Duncan was a fraud. Her trial took
place barely a few months before the famous D-
The true story of a Scottish housewife who found herself in the centre of a WWII legal battle which ended with her being convicted under the Witchcraft Act.
During the second world war Helen was in great demand from anxious relatives, especially those who had lost close family on active war service.
Two second degree burns were found across Helen's stomach. She was immediately taken back to her Scottish home and later rushed to hospital.
Helen was sent back to London's Holloway prison, that Victorian monstrosity for female prisoners still being used today.
The Prime Minister had been ordained into the Grand Ancient Order of Druids and was a client and also a keen supporter of Helen Duncan.
HELEN DUNCAN
The Official Pardon Site
© 1997 -
IMPRISONMENT
The shocked Spiritualist movement immediately demanded a change in the law. They felt that she had been prosecuted to stop any leakage of classified wartime information.
As one of many, many examples during 1943 and once more in that ungrateful city of Portsmouth, Helen Duncan had given a séance during which a sailor materialised reporting that he had gone down with His Majesty's Ship "Barham", whose loss was not officially announced until three months later.
But, the defence right of appeal to the House of Lords, Britain's highest court of appeal, was denied. The establishment had achieved its objective and certainly did not want one single inch of further publicity.
Helen was sent back to London's Holloway prison, that Victorian monstrosity for female prisoners still being used today.
It was not only the best legal minds in the country that felt this case had been
a major miscarriage of justice. So too did her prison warders -
For the entire nine months of her unjust incarceration, Helen Duncan's prison cell door was never once locked! What's more, she continued to apply her psychic gifts as a constant steam of warders and inmates alike found their way to her cell for spiritual upliftment and guidance.
And many senior Spiritualists who were close to Helen report, it was not only prisoners and staff who made pilgrimage to the dreaded Holloway Goal. So too did some of her other more notable sitters, including Britain's Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill himself.