Harry Price and the rise of the cheese-cloth eaters

In 1934, psychic Investigator Harry Price and his ‘National Laboratory of Psychical Research’ took on their most illustrious case — they paid £50 to psychic medium, Helen Duncan, so that she could be examined under scientific conditions.

Duncan was born in Scotland in 1897, and apparently possessed paranormal abilities from early childhood.

By 1926, she had developed these powers to such a degree that she felt able to hold regular séances, and quickly built up a large audience of sitters.

Her abilities included the summoning of spirits whilst in a trance state and emitting ‘ectoplasm’ - a substance which apparently allows spirits to materialise in a physical form.

In 1941, during one of her extraordinary séances, Duncan allegedly ‘materialised’ the spirit of a recently killed sailor.

The ghostly figure wore a naval cap, upon which was written the name of his ship — HMS Barham. He announced, to what must have been a fairly rapt audience, that he had recently been killed when his ship had been taken down by the enemy in the Mediterranean.

In fact, the ’Barham had been torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat two weeks earlier — with all 861 lives lost. However, in order to preserve morale and mislead the enemy, the Government had chosen to suppress the information.

News of the event caused a stir. It quickly reached the national press, and it wasn’t too long before it had got to the families of the men serving on the ’Barham...

As a result, the Admiralty were besieged by members of the public demanding information.

In January 1944, the police raided Duncan’s Portsmouth home.

It has been alleged that the authorities had become so worried about her abilities that — in the interests of national security — they decided to close her Spiritual circle for fear she might reveal further classified information - including news about the imminent D-Day landings.

The raid took place during one of Duncan’s séances and ‘mid-manifestation’ — just at the moment the medium was busily materialising a white-shrouded figure.

However, when the charging policemen entered the room and turned on the lights, it turned out that the ‘spirit’ was nothing more than a piece of cloth with a doll’s face attached to it — which Duncan was manipulating with a wire coat hanger.

A search of the house revealed that Duncan was also in possession of a mocked-up HMS Barham hat-band. (She was apparently unaware that sailors had been banned from wearing hat-bands identifying their ships at the start of the war.)

Duncan was arrested under section 4 of the Witchcraft Act 1735, covering fraudulent ‘spiritual’ activity. In court, Harry Price was called to give evidence against her.

A decade before her trial, Harry Price had paid for Duncan to attend his ‘National Laboratory of Psychical Research’ so that she could be examined under scientific conditions. Obligingly, Duncan sat in his laboratory and set about vomiting up some ectoplasm, whilst Price photographed her.

Price told the court that he had had a sample of Helen Duncan’s ectoplasm examined and had found that it was made largely of egg white. Adding, that he believed Duncan’s spirit manifestations were simply pieces of cheesecloth that had been swallowed — which she would then regurgitate at will.

The jury only took half an hour to reach their verdict and Duncan was found guilty.

The Judge deferred pronouncing sentence until after the weekend (— it’s poor form to send down a witch at the end of the week).

When the court reconvened the following Monday, the judge stated that the verdict had not been concerned with whether “genuine manifestations of the kind are possible…the court has nothing to do with such abstract questions.

"The jury has found this to be a case of plain dishonesty.”

Helen Duncan was sentenced to serve nine months in Holloway Women’s Prison.

The Chief of police in Portsmouth described Duncan as “an unmitigated humbug and pest”, who had “announced the loss of one of His Majesty’s ships before the fact had been publicly known.”

On account of these words, Duncan — or rather ‘Hellish Nell’, as the press habitually referred to her — was branded both ‘a witch’ and ‘a spy’ by the British tabloids.

Harry Price later wrote up the case in Leaves from a Psychist’s Case-Book - the chapter is entitled “The Cheese-cloth Worshippers”.

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