“Let me have a report on why the Witchcraft Act, 1735, was used in a modern court of justice. What was the cost of this trial to the State?” (Churchill)
This was NOT a plot element in “Foyle’s War,” but I wish it had been.
In 1944, Helen Duncan was gaoled under the Witchcraft Act on the grounds that she had claimed to summon spirits. It is often contended, by her followers, that her imprisonment was in fact at the behest of superstitious military intelligence officers who feared she would reveal the secret plans for D-Day. She came to the attention of the authorities after supposedly contacting the spirit of a sailor of the HMS Barham, whose sinking was hidden from the general public at the time. After being caught in the act of faking a spiritual manifestation, she was arrested during a seance and indicted with seven punishable counts: two of conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act, two of obtaining money by false pretences, and three of public mischief (a common law offence). She spent nine months in prison.Although Duncan has been frequently described as the last person to be convicted under the Act, in fact, Jane Rebecca Yorke was convicted under the Act later that same year. The last threatened use of the Act against a medium was in 1950. In 1951 the Witchcraft Act was repealed with the enactment of the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, largely at the instigation of Spiritualists through the agency of Thomas Brooks MP.
Give them time. Maybe next season!
It turned out later that the Barham secret was leaked by a secretary of the First Lord of the Admiralty to an official in another ministry. Pillow talk?
A photo someone snapped at one of Mrs. Duncan's seances, where you see the "spirits" she summoned were dolls.
It was finally repealed in 1951.
Good one. That would make for an interesting episode.