I would like to end my short review of “historical” mediumship with the tale of Helen Duncan and of the nationwide clamor that surrounded her court trial in 1944. Before we get into the story, however, let me tell you that we’ll be talking about a materialization medium this time.
A “materialization” medium?
Yes, that’s correct. We will talk about that in detail in a couple of days, and then I will share with you my own difficulties with this particular subject. For the time being, let me just tell you that materialization, in psychic terms, is “the claimed manifestation of temporary, more or less organized, apparitions in varying degrees of form, often possessing human physical characteristics and said to be shaped for a temporary existence from a substance called ectoplasm”. All that is not important for this particular story, however, as we are mostly concerned with Mrs. Duncan’s mental mediumship, that is the capacity of conveying messages from the spirit world which are completely beyond the knowledge of the medium and even of the very sitters attending séances.
Helen Duncan was born in 1897 in Callander, a small Scottish town, the daughter of a master cabinet maker. Her family was far from rich, and she struggled to earn a living even after her marriage at the age of 20. To sustain this large family and a disabled husband she worked in the local bleach factory by day, and then went on to attend her Spiritual work and domestic duties by night. She would make a small amount of cash from her sittings, mostly token donations from friends and neighbours, and often discretely use it to pay the local doctor for those patients who were destitute.
The main reason for Helen’s spectacular rise in popularity was her rare psychic gift of being a vehicle for physical phenomena whilst in trance state: dead loved ones were reported to appear in physical form, to speak and to touch their earthly relatives and in this way bring both proof of survival and much comfort to
the length of wartime Britain giving regular séances in hundreds of Spiritualist churches and home circles. The evidence that flowed from these physical phenomena séances was reportedly astonishing.
The story which made Helen Duncan a national celebrity can be traced back to one night in May 1941, at the time when she was in living Portsmouth, the home of the Royal Navy. That particular night, whilst Helen was in trance, she passed on the news that a British battleship had sunk. It so happens that among the sitters there was one Brigadier R. C. Firebrace, who took note of this piece of information and learnt shortly afterwards that HMS Hood had sunk that day with a loss of 1,100 lives. A committed military man and a patriot, Firebrace felt that he had to report these facts to the Intelligence Agencies, who immediately took an interest in Helen Duncan’s activities.
The crucial episode of the story was to take place a few months later, when, at one of Helen’s séances, the spirit of a sailor appeared before his mother. He materialised in full uniform with an inscription on his cap, HMS Barham. He stated that his ship had been sunk in action. This was not unusual at Helen Duncan’s séances, as the war produced numerous dead sailors and many of the sitters were sailors’ relatives.
After a few days, Psychic News editor Maurice Barbanel, who had attended the séance, telephoned the British Admiralty requesting confirmation of the sinking and enquiring why they had not informed the mother that her son was dead at sea. This was to cause a major stir: the sinking of HMS Barnham was considered ‘Top Secret’ information and British Military Intelligence was appalled that there had been a leak. They had held back on the announcement fearing the loss of 861 seamen, torpedoed by a German U-boat, was bad for public morale. At the time, the British government denied the vessel had gone down, and the British War Office had no official news. It was only months later the Barnham was indeed reported lost in an enemy attack.
These facts left many observers disconcerted: how to explain the materialization of the sailor’s spirit, instantly recognized by his own mother, and, especially, how to explain the fact that the spirit communicated secret information which was to be released only months after?
Some circles, however, reacted not with puzzlement but with open suspicion. The British Military Intelligence started seriously suspecting that Helen Duncan was a spy, and began monitoring her activity discretely but with increasing attention. A naval officer in plain clothes was sent to regularly attend the séances and report to the Admiralty. Things escalated to the point that, in the climate of paranoia preceding D-Day in 1944, they became concerned that Helen Duncan was a threat to national security. The decision was finally taken that Helen was somehow to be silenced.
The drama reached a climax on January 19th, 1944, when a plainclothes policemen and a naval lieutenant were sent to a séance to gather evidence of fraud and arrest the medium. As usual, that evening Helen went into trance and started to materialize ectoplasm. At that point the policeman jumped out of his chair blowing his whistle and, expecting the ectoplasm to be a white sheet, he made a grab for it. The spirit, however, instantly dematerialized. To the great frustration of the officers, after a thorough search nothing could be found to implicate fraud, no sheet, no false beards, no rubber gloves, no accomplice. Nevertheless, Helen was formally arrested with three members of the audience.
The legal proceedings which ensued were nothing short of baffling. The original charge laid against Helen by the Portsmouth Magistrates was that of Vagrancy, which would be a five shilling fine.
However, Helen was refused bail and sent to Holloway prison for four days. The alleged crime was then changed to conspiracy: a hanging offence. By the time the case came before the judge at the Old Bailey, it was once again altered. The defendants were now accused of contravening the
Witchcraft Act of 1735. Bail was refused again (interestingly, murderers were allowed bail not witches…). Worried as they were that Helen could somehow divulge information about D-Day, the Admiralty were determined to keep her in prison.
The reaction of the public was immediate:
Helen’s supporters organised a fund to pay for expenses of the defence witnesses and the Spiritualists National Union appointed Charles Loseby, a well known barrister, to box. This amounted to conducting a séance in the court while in a state of trance. After considering the proposal throughout the night, the prosecution refused the offer.
The witnesses’ testimony at Helen Duncan’s trial is in itself a gold mine of evidence in support of the hypothesis of survival, and it has in fact been analyzed in some depth by experts in recent years (Manfred Cassirer, 1996). Forty-four witnesses appeared in court testifying to Helen’s credibility, and three hundred more were ready to take the stand. From Cassirer’s review we learn from instance that:
Air Force Wing Commander George Mackie stated on oath that through Helen Duncan's materialization gifts he actually met his 'dead' mother and father and a brother.
James Duncan (no relation), a jeweller, testified that both he and his daughter had seen his wife materialize on eight different occasions, in good light. Duncan had seen her close up at a range of 18 inches and they had talked of domestic matters including a proposed emigration to Canada that they had previously kept secret. He had, he said, not a shadow of a doubt that the voice was that of his wife. He also claimed to have seen materializations of his father, who was about his own height and bearded, and his mother.
Mary Blackwell, President of the Pathfinder Spiritualist Society of Baker Street London, testified that she had attended more than 100 materialization séances with Helen Duncan at each of which between 15 and 16 different entities from the afterlife had materialized. She testified that she had witnessed the spirit forms conversing with their relatives in French, German, Dutch, Welsh, Scottish and Arabic. She claimed that she had witnessed the manifestation of ten of her own close relatives including her husband, her mother and her father all of whom she had seen up close and touched.
Despite no evidence having been found during the police raid and despite the defence witnesses’
testimony, the jury found Helen Duncan guilty under the terms of the old Witchcraft Act. She was found innocent of all the other charges. The defence’s right to appeal to the House of Lords was withheld. After being sentenced to nine months imprisonment, all she had to say was "I never hee’d so mony lies in a’ my life".
What happened afterwards?
The end of this story is sad. It’s one of the very human, very “real life” endings that I like in movies or books. Helen was released from prison in Sptember 1944 and, as she left prison, she vowed not to
do psychic work ever again. She was not able, however, to resist the strong call from the Spirit world, and after a few months she resumed her work.
Things were not looking up, though. The experience of the trial and the time she had spent in prison had affected her badly. She would spend more and more time in trance. Perhaps too much so, for the quality of her séances deteriorated even to the point where Spiritualism's governing National Union actually withdrew her diploma at one stage. Meanwhile, Helen’s diabetes and heart condition deteriorated: once a huge woman, she lost over 50 kilos of weight towards the end of her life.
Such an end was to come dramatically in late 1956. On Sunday, 26 October, for reasons that remain unknown to this day, the police raided again one of Helen’s séances in the midlands city of Nottingham. They grabbed her, pinned her to the floor, strip searched her and took endless flashlight photographs, shouting that they were looking for beards, masks and shrouds. Again, they found nothing.
What they did, instead, was to commit the worst possible sin in psychical phenomena: to touch a trance medium during materialization. As the Spirit teachers have patiently explained so many times, when this happens the ectoplasm recoils into the medium's body far too quickly and can cause serious - sometimes even fatal - damage.
And so it was in this case: Helen was taken home with great difficulty and four days later Gena, one of her daughters and a trained nurse, discovered an angry burn the size of a tea plate on her right breast and a smaller one on her stomach, both apparently caused by the recoil of the ectoplasm. A doctor was summoned and described the burns as electrical, and doubted that they could be self inflicted. She was so ill that she was rushed to hospital.
Five weeks after the police raid, Helen Duncan, mother of six and one of the brightest stars in the mediums’ firmament, was dead.