BirminghamLive
So who was Helen MacFarlane Duncan (1897-1956) and why was she a witch? She moved to Dundee and worked at the Royal Infirmary where she met Henry Duncan, a wounded WW1 soldier, married in 1916 and had 6 babies. By Ap 1941, at the height of the war with Germany, the Duncans had sons in the navy, RAF and army.
When she was not working in her factory job, Duncan was offering séances. In Nov 1941, right in the middle of WW2, she held a séance in Portsmouth at which she claimed the spirit of a dead sailor told her the HMS Barham had been sunk. True.. the Barham had indeed sunk, torpedoed by the German U-boat U331 off the Egyptian coast that month.
Official death notices were sent out to families of the 861 sailors, asking them to keep silent until the official announcement appeared in late Jan 1942. But The Times carried news of the disaster; Duncan simply read the news and incorporated it into her séance.
Duncan was investigated from the time of the Portsmouth seance (Nov 1941) until Jan 1944 when she was arrested. She was first charged under the Vagrancy Act 1824, under which fortune-telling was normally prosecuted then. Yet the Crown sent Duncan to be tried the Old Bailey for contravening the Witchcraft Act 1735, which carried prison sentences. Clearly the authorities regarded this case as threatening the war effort; that Act had not been used for more than a century.
but when was the newspaper article published?
Witchcraft??? Did the prosecution really believe this middle aged, overweight Scottish factory worker had classified war intelligence which she could reveal? Presumably the timing of her Jan 1944 arrest was critical since Britain was secretly preparing for the D-day landings then, more vital than Duncan’s harmless entertainment. Officials were paranoid that she may have revealed the date and location of the landings, leading to a crisis in the security services or to soldiers defecting.
Portsmouth’s Chief of Police gave a speech which sent her to prison for 9 months. “This is a case where not only has she attempted and succeeded in deluding confirmed believers in Spiritualism, but she has tricked, defrauded and preyed upon the minds of a credulous section of the public who have gone to these meetings in search of comfort of mind in their sorrow and grief. I can only describe this woman as an unmitigated humbug who can only be regarded as a pest to a certain section of society.” Humbug perhaps, but a witch?
After a 7-day trial, the jury voted guilty on Charge #1, then the judge discharged them from the other verdicts. Duncan was gaoled for 9 months at Holloway women's prison in north London, a very overweight, diabetic, middle aged woman who received inadequate medical care in gaol. On her release in 1945, Duncan promised to cease her games. She was even denied the right to appeal to the House of Lords, living quietly until she died in her Edinburgh home in 1956.
Nor was she the last person convicted under the 1753 Act. In 1944 an elderly woman Jane Yorke from East London was charged under the same act with pretending to conjure up spirits of the dead. [Thankfully Yorke was bound over for £5 to be of good behaviour for 3 years].
Prime minister Winston Churchill rightly denounced Duncan’s conviction as ridiculous, repealed the 1735 Act and replaced it with the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951. But her conviction was never quashed. Nor did the Home Secretary ever explain why Duncan was charged under the Witchcraft Act, rather than on a breach of the State Secrets Act.
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Decades after Helen Duncan's death, a campaign was launched with a petition calling on the Home Secretary to grant Duncan a posthumous pardon. In the request for a pardon, they said she was tried under an old piece of legislation that shouldn’t have been used at the time. Furthermore advice had been issued by the Director of Public Prosecutions that alternatives had been available.
But here is what the Home Office wrote in refusing a petition for a free pardon: “It is extremely rare for the Home Secretary to use his power to recommend a posthumous Free Pardon. In modern times, only one such Pardon has been recommended. It would also be particularly difficult to apply current knowledge, morality and other criteria to events, which took place c50 years ago. In 2008, the pardon was refused. I presume from Duncan’s web page that the appeals will continue.
But here is what the Home Office wrote in refusing a petition for a free pardon: “It is extremely rare for the Home Secretary to use his power to recommend a posthumous Free Pardon. In modern times, only one such Pardon has been recommended. It would also be particularly difficult to apply current knowledge, morality and other criteria to events, which took place c50 years ago. In 2008, the pardon was refused. I presume from Duncan’s web page that the appeals will continue.