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The curious case of the Cottingley fairies Under the headline "Fairies in Yorkshire", the following report appeared from our correspondent on December 6, 1920. Despite deep scepticism by our writer, the story attracted worldwide attention and ran and ran, perhaps because people thought that the inventor of Sherlock Holmes was not a man to have the wool pulled over his eyes. Then almost a lifetime later, on March 19, 1983, we reported that one of the girls who had appeared in the photo
1920 IN the Christmas number of the Strand Magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle describes what he regards as an epoch-making event, and asks his readers to believe in the existence of fairies in Yorkshire. In support of his case he reproduces photographs from negatives, in which expert photographers have expressed themselves unable to detect any evidence of faking.
One of the photographs shows a girl, seated on the grass, in a woodland glade, with a gnome apparently dancing before her. The other print shows a girl leaning on the bank of a stream, with a number of fairies pirouetting before her, one of which is seen to be playing on a pipe, and dancing with abandon like the rest.
It is a remarkable fact that these photographs were taken about three years ago, and no attempt appears to have been made to give publicity to them by the father of the girls, notwithstanding the fact that he is evidently well versed in photographic processes, and must have realised, at the time he developed the negatives, that "an epoch-making event" had happened before his eyes. It is passing strange! Most photographers would have shouted it from the housetops.
The father is said to have placed plates in a 1/4-plate camera, and the girls sallied forth into the fields with the intention of trying to photograph the fairies, which they are said to have frequently seen. On returning home they were in high glee to find that had succeeded. It is clear that the case rests entirely on the photographic evidence, and, as a photographer of thirty years' standing, I have no hesitation in asserting that it is weak. Any one who knows all the ins and outs of photography realises to the full what a facile medium it is for deception, wilful or otherwise.
There are few experts in the craft who would be prepared to swear to the genuineness of any photograph unless they had seen every operation from start to finish. They would want to see the box of plates, unopened, fresh from the makers, the plates put in the camera, which had been previously examined; they would want to see the exposure made, the plates extracted, developed, fixed, washed, dried, and printed from. In the case before us the test fails at the outset. Who can prove that the plates had not been tampered with prior to insertion in the camera?
There are scores of photographers in this country who could produce negatives showing "fairies", in a variety of attitudes, amid natural surroundings, dancing in the woodlands, etc, quite as convincing as the examples shown, and without revealing any evidence of faking. Is it not strange, if Sir A Conan Doyle's arguments are sound, that on the millions of negatives exposed annually, no fairies have hitherto been observed? The sensitive film is constant. It will always record what it sees through the eye of the lens. If it can see fairies today it will assuredly see them tomorrow. I know it is argued that the girls in the case in question had some occult power to make the fairies visible, but is it not strange that the sitter had to tell the girl with the camera when to expose, leading to the supposition that the fairies were invisible to the latter, although both are reputed to possess the "seeing eye".
Readers who frequent picture shows may recall several films that have appeared lately in which "fairies" have been seen dancing, with their gossamer-like wings glistening in the semblance of moonshine. They make entrancing pictures, and eventually disappear into thin air. Given a section of one of these positive films, I could enable Sir A Conan Doyle to produce these "fairy" revellers by means of his own camera, amid the woodlands of Surrey, and he would rub his eyes and wonder where they came from. Indeed, I can conceive of a humourous packer of plates, with the intention of indulging in a joke, printing a few "fairy" subjects on negative plates and leaving them to be developed by the purchaser after he has made his own exposure on woodland or other scene. I do not say it is done – the makers would probably see to that, but it is possible.
Hence, I maintain, that the evidence produced by Sir A Conan Doyle, and his collaborator is insufficient to warrant them in asking the shrewd Yorkshire Tyke, at any rate, to believe in the existence of fairies in his county of broad acres, or anywhere else, for that matter.
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