Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches

by Malcolm Gaskill

The 1735 Witchcraft Act, charging that spirits of the dead had been raised by conjuration, was used for the last time in Portsmouth in 1944. The accused was Helen Duncan, a plump Scotswoman, convicted as a fraud yet believed by hundreds to possess the power to speak to the dead. This is her extraordinary story, and of religion and superstition in Britain in the first half of the 20th century.Helen Duncan was born in Callander in 1898 and developed mysterious powers during the World War I when she correctly predicted the guise of the soldier she would marry. Having refined these powers she became increasingly celebrated following her own near death from pneumonia when she was informed of her vocation by a shadowy white figure. She went on to produce spirit forms from ectoplasm that, she said, flowed through her. She was accompanied by a spirit guide named Albert and a young girl spirit named Peggy. Or was she?The Psychic community was divided in two fiercely opposing camps - followers and sceptics. The government of the day got involved (Churchill was said to be more than a little interested) when, during World War II Helen appeared able to tell relatives of the deaths of their loved ones even before offical announcements had been made. And so in 1944, absurdly, anachronistically, she was charged with witchcraft, prosecuted and jailed for the duration of the war.Her life is an amazing glimpse into the spritiual and psychological mood of the times, a story of bathos and absurdity, of credulity and cruelty, and of England's last witch.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Witches, Biography, Paranormal, True Crime, Audiobook

416 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2001

About the author

Malcolm Gaskill is Professor of Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia.

Reviews

[Deborah · Rating 2 out of 5]

My version isn't sub-titled The last of Britain's Witches, which is good, as that error annoyed me. Helen Duncan wasn't a witch. Mine is sub-titled The Curious Case of Britain's Last Witch Trial, which makes more sense. Helen Duncan was a medium, not a witch. I quite enjoyed this , but the author's skepticism shows through. He keeps trying to make it about much more than Helen Duncan, using it as vehicle for a much wider social comment. Unfortunately, having finished it, I'm still not really sure what point he is trying to make. Its an interesting story of one of the last of the manifestation mediums, but without much personal detail as that was unfortunately lost. Without that I didn't get any sense of Helen as a person, just the prurient view of her clients.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overly detailed. Sometimes less is more and felt a bit ‘on the fence’.

[Sarah Goode · Rating 3 out of 5]

not bad but foud it really hard to follow with so many names.

[Emmanuel Gustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do have some mixed feelings about this book. The author remarks that Sir Gerald Dodson, the judge who presided over the Old Bailey trial of Helen Duncan, could not hide his boredom when the defence brought a string of witnesses to describe Helen's achievements as a medium. And frankly, after some 400 pages, it is hard not to sympathise with Sir Gerald. Helen Duncan's life was a bit humdrum. She lived in the grey corners of society, a Scottish woman of working class background. Someone who the more fortunate Britons looked down on, as uneducated, coarse, unattractive, unhealthy. Malcolm Gaskill's determined pursuit of detail reveals a rather dreary story.

Primarily, Helen Duncan was exposed to the glare of publicity because the prosecution at her 1944 trial chose to invoke the 1735 Witchcraft Act to condemn her for her activities as a "medium". That wasn't quite as eccentric as it sounds, as this act made it specifically illegal to pretend to conjure up the spirits of the dead, and that was exactly what Helen Duncan was doing. But it certainly made a poor impression on the public -- and on parts of the legal profession, as lawyers were aware that this 1735 Act left her with no options to defend herself. This crucial element aside, she was not a very interesting individual case, just a small-time fraudster whose earnings gave her family a modestly comfortable life. The tricks she used during her seances were often crude. Gaskill fills pages and pages with speculation about them, incidentally, but with very little specific evidence to go on, and that is annoying.

What makes the book interesting is Gaskill's exploration of the role of spiritualism, mediums and seances in the 1940s. It was amazingly widespread and accepted. The armed services even accepted spiritualism as a religion: There were not that many adherents, but most were officers. Incidentally, I wish Gaskill had explored that a bit more, because one can only wonder about the consequences -- were seances held in the hold of His Majesty's Ships? On the other hand, I regret the meandering length of Gaskill's speculations in amateur psychology to try to explain the firm belief that many sitters at seances had in the things they thought to have seen. A belief that was stubbornly maintained in the full knowledge that fraud was commonplace. In this, Gaskill probably underestimates the importance of self-selection: The people who attended seances regularly were willing and eager to believe. The organisers of the seances tried to select their audience. Most skeptics regretted their wasted shillings, and did not come back.

It is nevertheless astonishing to find among the sitters both the Air Vice Marshalls Sir Hugh Dowding, leader of the Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, and his nemesis and successor Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory. Leigh-Mallory has been dismissed as a pompous ass by many contemporaries and historians, but "Stuffy" Dowding was not one to suffer fools gladly or quietly, and he was very much a scientifically oriented officer. (His retirement after the Battle of Britain, incidentally, was simply because of his age. It had already been postponed.) Frankly, that an officer would publish a book filled with messages-from-the-other side from men who had died under his command, is only too easy to associate with mental illness, and dismiss. But remember that every Christmas, priests (probably knowingly) read to their congregation a biblical story that is riddled with historical implausibilities and errors in chronology, and the congregation is generally willing to overlook such things in search of a higher truth. So we shouldn't critique the spiritualists too hard for their willingness to overlook regurgitated "ectoplasm" and the occasional ghost in white sheet. Gaskill reminds us that in wartime, many were grieving, feeling guilty about their own survival, and desperately seeking for answers.

In his conclusion, Gaskill's defends the somewhat equivocating tone of his book as necessary to convey the spirit of the times, despite his own personal disbelief. That's not unreasonable, as you certainly cannot pretend to understand people if you just laugh at them. But at times, it causes him to indulge in unnecessary obfuscation, which grates a bit.

[Peter McLaughlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Last year, reviewing another one of Gaskill’s books, I observed that he made a number of errors about the intellectual-history aspect of his story. Having now read another one of his books, I no longer have any interest in being polite about it: Gaskill is a philosophical incompetent, incapable of any subtlety in interpreting concepts and arguments (no matter how important they are to his narrative), and not even able to consistently identify intellectual ‘vibes’. He even misses the significance of such an obvious ‘tell’ as Helen Duncan’s favourite poet being William McGonagall . In terms of the object level, I’m exceedingly proud of this nation that we sent Helen Duncan to prison, and I only wish we had done the same with more of the people around her.

[Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and wholeheartedly engaging slice of 20th century history. The author uses the life and subsequent court case of Helen Duncan, a medium who was the last person in Britain to be tried under the Witchcraft Art, to tell a story just as enchanting as any of her sittings. This is one of the best types of biographies: it draws in endless background material, mainly concerning the rise and fall of Spiritualism, in a way that's never less than entertaining and eye-opening from beginning to end. The text is richly detailed and the prose down-to-earth and readable. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really interesting history here, relating to mediumship and the second world war but the author does go into quite a bit of detail about the phenomena of belief in the supernatural and relating it to WW1 and WW2 as well as going into the possible psychology of those who practised it and those who believed in it. The author can get a bit wordy at times but as someone who doesn't really have any knowledge of this subject it was

[Ursy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meticulously researched study of ‘witchcraft’ in the twentieth century. Although it focusses on Helen Duncan, the story is actually much broader, and I really enjoyed the social history aspects of the narrative. At the same time, the amount of characters, dates and tangents - which I accept are fundamental to such a detailed study - sometimes came at the cost of storytelling, and I lost sight of what was important and what was background information.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the nicest nickname! Her real name was Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium. She was the last person to be imprisoned under the Witchcraft Act in the UK. The book goes into great detail about the frauds she committed in order to convince people of the supernatural. Details you probably don’t want to know!

[reqbat · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m always perplexed that Gaskill’s books get such “medium” (no pun intended) reviews, but for me, they’re academic GOLD, containing a thoughtfulness and comprehensiveness of time and place that I don’t see often (and I read about 40 non-fic/textbook/academic study books a year.) He’s just my jam, and this book is no exception.

[Sara Marsden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the revised edition

[Mairead · Rating 2 out of 5]

Grand