Portsmouth

Helen Duncan and the Last Witchcraft Trial

The Scottish medium Helen Duncan produced ectoplasm from her mouth, out of which the shapes of the dead were formed. In 1931 Harry Price obtained a sample after a London sitting: cheesecloth stitched to paper and stiffened with egg white. On 19 January 1944 police arrested her in the middle of a séance in Portsmouth — above the naval port preparing for the Normandy landings, where she had been telling relatives that a ship was lost before the Admiralty said so. She was tried at the Old Bailey under the Witchcraft Act of 1735, for pretending to call up spirits, and given nine months. It was the last conviction under that Act in British history; the Act itself was repealed in 1951.