WEBVTT - Photographing Fairies (Classic) 0:00:15.410 --> 0:00:26.410 Pushkin. Hello everyone. The Cautionary Tales team is on a 0:00:26.570 --> 0:00:29.290 Christmas break at the moment, but I have a special 0:00:29.490 --> 0:00:34.490 cautionary tale for you from the archives. Do you believe 0:00:34.490 --> 0:00:39.730 in magic? So Arthur Conan Doyle certainly does in this 0:00:39.970 --> 0:00:43.490 cautionary tale about a lie that gets out of control. 0:00:44.090 --> 0:00:46.730 I'll have another classic for you next week, one that 0:00:47.010 --> 0:00:50.770 may help with your New Year's resolutions, and then we'll 0:00:50.810 --> 0:00:53.810 be back in the new year with plenty of brand 0:00:53.930 --> 0:01:00.970 new cautionary tales. Enjoy the episode. 0:01:01.890 --> 0:01:06.170 In May nineteen twenty I heard that alleged photographs of 0:01:06.330 --> 0:01:08.010 fairies had been taken. 0:01:09.730 --> 0:01:12.650 These are the words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the 0:01:12.730 --> 0:01:17.010 creator of Sherlock Holmes, in a book titled The Coming 0:01:17.330 --> 0:01:21.810 of the Fairies. Unlike The Sign of Four or The 0:01:21.850 --> 0:01:25.890 Hound of the Baskervilles, the Coming of the Fairies wasn't 0:01:25.930 --> 0:01:30.930 a work of fiction. It was deadly serious. These photographs 0:01:30.970 --> 0:01:34.890 were in the possession of Edward Gardner, an influential believer 0:01:35.010 --> 0:01:38.170 in spiritualism. The idea that the spirits of the dead 0:01:38.370 --> 0:01:42.850 can communicate with a living Spiritualism was all the rage 0:01:42.890 --> 0:01:46.250 at the time, and if you believed in spirits, it 0:01:46.330 --> 0:01:48.930 wasn't too much of a leap to believe in fairies too. 0:01:50.170 --> 0:01:54.530 Where had these photographs come from? Edward Gardner's sister explained 0:01:54.570 --> 0:01:55.370 to Conan Doyle. 0:01:56.170 --> 0:01:58.450 Edward has got into touch with a family in Bradford, 0:01:58.490 --> 0:02:01.810 where the little girl Elsie and her cousin Francis, constantly 0:02:01.850 --> 0:02:04.570 go into the woods and play with the fairies. Some 0:02:04.730 --> 0:02:07.410 time ago, Elsie said she wanted to photograph them and 0:02:07.450 --> 0:02:10.850 begged her father to lend his camera. For long he refused, 0:02:11.210 --> 0:02:13.130 but at last she managed to get the loan of it, 0:02:13.170 --> 0:02:16.010 and one plate off, she and Francis went into the 0:02:16.050 --> 0:02:19.930 woods near a waterfall. Francis ticed them, as they call it, 0:02:20.170 --> 0:02:23.450 and Elsie stood ready with the camera. Soon the three 0:02:23.530 --> 0:02:28.210 fairies appeared, and one pixie dancing in France's zorra. It 0:02:28.250 --> 0:02:30.730 was a long time before the father would develop the photo, 0:02:31.050 --> 0:02:34.010 but at least he did, and to his utter amazement, 0:02:34.050 --> 0:02:36.570 the four sweet little figures came out beautifully. 0:02:37.610 --> 0:02:41.610 The photographs are indeed beautiful. The first is a charming 0:02:41.650 --> 0:02:45.650 depiction of nine year old Francis surrounded by small, bright, 0:02:45.890 --> 0:02:51.250 dancing figures, crisp and elegant. Conan Doyle describes it like this. 0:02:52.010 --> 0:02:55.610 The waterfall and rocks are about twenty feet behind Frances, 0:02:56.130 --> 0:02:59.490 who standing against the bank of the beck. A fifth 0:02:59.530 --> 0:03:02.770 fairy may be seen between and behind the two on 0:03:02.810 --> 0:03:06.650 the right. The coloring of the fairies is described by 0:03:06.650 --> 0:03:10.850 the girls as being of very pale pink, green, lavender, 0:03:10.930 --> 0:03:13.770 and mauve, most marked in the wings, and fading to 0:03:13.850 --> 0:03:17.770 almost pure white in the limbs and drapery. Each fairy 0:03:17.890 --> 0:03:20.210 has its own special color. 0:03:21.410 --> 0:03:25.930 Conan Doyle was aware that the existence of fairies was controversial, 0:03:26.650 --> 0:03:30.610 so he affected the stance of a logical man, explaining 0:03:30.770 --> 0:03:33.250 every clue like Sherlock Holmes himself. 0:03:34.050 --> 0:03:38.050 The original negative is asserted by expert photographers to bear 0:03:38.130 --> 0:03:42.650 not the slightest trace of combination work, retouching, or anything 0:03:42.730 --> 0:03:46.610 whatever to market as other than a perfectly straight, single 0:03:46.690 --> 0:03:51.050 exposure photograph taken in the open air under natural conditions. 0:03:51.490 --> 0:03:53.450 His conclusion was inescapable. 0:03:54.290 --> 0:03:59.010 I have convinced myself that there is overwhelming evidence for 0:03:59.090 --> 0:03:59.690 the fairies. 0:04:01.210 --> 0:04:05.010 Turning to the second photograph showing Elsie holding hands with 0:04:05.050 --> 0:04:08.690 a little gnome, he muses on the contrast between the 0:04:08.690 --> 0:04:12.570 gnomes and the little fairy elves. It's hard not to laugh. 0:04:13.410 --> 0:04:17.250 Elves are a compound of the human and the butterfly. Well, 0:04:17.370 --> 0:04:20.450 the gnome has more of the moth. This may be 0:04:20.570 --> 0:04:23.570 merely the result of under exposure of the negative and 0:04:23.690 --> 0:04:26.850 the dulness of the weather. Perhaps the little gnome is 0:04:26.930 --> 0:04:30.090 really of the same tribe, but represents an elderly male 0:04:30.450 --> 0:04:33.010 while the elves are romping young women. 0:04:33.810 --> 0:04:37.810 A newspaper headline of the time put it bluntly. Has 0:04:37.930 --> 0:04:43.650 Conan Doyle gone mad, I'm Tim Harford and you're listening 0:04:44.090 --> 0:05:12.490 to cautionary tales. The story had begun five years earlier 0:05:12.730 --> 0:05:15.690 at the bottom of a garden in Cottingly, a village 0:05:15.690 --> 0:05:20.050 on the outskirts of Bradford in northern England. A beautiful stream, 0:05:20.250 --> 0:05:23.730 or beck as the locals say, flowed past the trees 0:05:23.810 --> 0:05:27.330 and moss covered banks. As the breeze toyed with the leaves, 0:05:27.690 --> 0:05:31.450 and the sun dappling danced across the grass, Little Francis 0:05:31.530 --> 0:05:35.930 Griffiths could imagine that she saw fairies at play. She 0:05:36.010 --> 0:05:39.530 talked with her dear friend and cousin, Elsie Wright, about 0:05:39.570 --> 0:05:45.490 what she saw. One day, Francis slipped on the rocks 0:05:45.490 --> 0:05:48.650 in the beck and soaked her clothes. It would happen 0:05:48.730 --> 0:05:50.330 a lot Elsie later. 0:05:50.130 --> 0:05:54.930 Remembered, Francis, for some unaccountable reason, always fell down when 0:05:54.930 --> 0:05:55.890 we went up the beck. 0:05:58.250 --> 0:06:01.210 Elsie tried to help little Francis sneak into the house, 0:06:01.570 --> 0:06:06.330 but Francis's mother saw her and scolded her. Francis protested 0:06:06.330 --> 0:06:08.610 that she had fallen because she had been playing with 0:06:08.610 --> 0:06:12.210 the Fairyes, that was the last straw. She was sent 0:06:12.250 --> 0:06:18.450 to her room. Elsie, comforting her tearful cousin, suggested a plan. 0:06:19.210 --> 0:06:22.490 The two of them would borrow Elsie's father's camera and 0:06:22.610 --> 0:06:25.410 take photographs of the fairies at the bottom of the 0:06:25.450 --> 0:06:29.530 garden to prove the adults wrong and little Francis right. 0:06:30.370 --> 0:06:35.090 And they did, making the iconic picture of Francis surrounded 0:06:35.090 --> 0:06:40.530 by dancing sprites. Elsie's father, Arthur Wright, developed the first 0:06:40.530 --> 0:06:46.810 photograph in his dark room. He wasn't impressed. It was 0:06:46.850 --> 0:06:49.210 a nice image of Francis, but what were all the 0:06:49.290 --> 0:06:54.570 pieces of paper in the foreground fairies, said Elsie. Nonsense, 0:06:55.090 --> 0:06:58.690 said her father. A few weeks later they took a 0:06:58.730 --> 0:07:02.610 second photograph, this time of Elsie wearing a hat, sitting 0:07:02.690 --> 0:07:07.410 on the grass and holding hands with a tiny prancing gnome. 0:07:07.930 --> 0:07:11.130 A joke, said Arthur Wright. Why would they not admit it? 0:07:12.050 --> 0:07:17.090 But they did not, and so the camera was confiscated. 0:07:18.290 --> 0:07:22.010 The story might have ended then in nineteen seventeen, but 0:07:22.210 --> 0:07:26.250 Elsie's mother, Polly Wright, was less of a skeptic than Arthur. 0:07:26.970 --> 0:07:29.450 A couple of years later, poly Wright went to a 0:07:29.490 --> 0:07:34.890 meeting of a spiritualist society on the subject of very life. 0:07:34.930 --> 0:07:39.370 She mentioned the existence of the photographs. There was some excitement, 0:07:39.690 --> 0:07:42.730 and before long the images had made their way to 0:07:42.810 --> 0:07:47.410 the influential mystic Edward Gardner. Gardner wrote back to Polly Wright, 0:07:47.730 --> 0:07:51.650 saying that the first picture was the best of its kind. 0:07:51.930 --> 0:07:57.130 I should think anywhere. Edward Gardner took the photographs to 0:07:57.210 --> 0:08:02.530 his friend Harold Snelling, an expert in photographic processing and retouching. 0:08:03.330 --> 0:08:07.450 Snelling told Gardner that the pictures looked unprocessed to him, 0:08:07.570 --> 0:08:12.170 single exposures taken out. Snelling's testimony was very important to 0:08:12.250 --> 0:08:17.290 Conan Doyle. If Snelling said they were genuine, they were genuine. 0:08:17.410 --> 0:08:23.890 But at this point the plot thickens. Gardner wanted large, sharp, 0:08:24.050 --> 0:08:27.370 spectacular prints to frame and hang on his wall, to 0:08:27.450 --> 0:08:30.450 show people when he gave public lectures, and to give 0:08:30.490 --> 0:08:34.970 to the newspapers, so he paid Snelling to make these prints. 0:08:36.090 --> 0:08:40.330 Snelling made new negatives by painting on the prints that 0:08:40.410 --> 0:08:45.290 Elsie's mother had sent and then rephotographing them. He added 0:08:45.530 --> 0:08:49.970 sparkle and sharpness, just as today a photoshop expert might 0:08:50.090 --> 0:08:54.250 retouch a supermodel for a magazine cover. But that meant 0:08:54.290 --> 0:08:58.250 that every subsequent expert was looking not at the original 0:08:58.290 --> 0:09:03.290 prints but at Snelling's upgrades. No longer were these the 0:09:03.530 --> 0:09:10.850 unprocessed single exposure photographs that he had vouched for. Snelling, 0:09:10.850 --> 0:09:13.850 of course, had no idea quite how much attention would 0:09:13.930 --> 0:09:17.450 later be devoted to the authenticity of these images, but 0:09:18.010 --> 0:09:22.370 having been paid about a year's wages by Gardner, he 0:09:22.450 --> 0:09:26.410 seems not to have uttered another word on the subject thereafter. 0:09:27.530 --> 0:09:31.250 Edward Gardner then took the photographs to experts at Kodak. 0:09:31.730 --> 0:09:36.210 They were confused, partly because Snelling's post processing made the 0:09:36.290 --> 0:09:39.810 lighting on the pictures look strange. The Kodak team believed 0:09:39.810 --> 0:09:42.610 the pictures might have been taken in a studio, but 0:09:42.810 --> 0:09:46.450 that wasn't true, and Gardner knew it. Whatever had been 0:09:46.490 --> 0:09:50.970 done would have required considerable technical skill, which of course 0:09:51.490 --> 0:09:56.890 Snelling had. In any case, they said, fairies don't exist, 0:09:57.170 --> 0:10:02.050 so the pictures must be a fake. Gardner, who was 0:10:02.170 --> 0:10:06.130 sure that fairies did exist, didn't find this very persuasive. 0:10:06.770 --> 0:10:10.610 He didn't realize or didn't care, that Snelling's work had 0:10:10.650 --> 0:10:14.650 confused everyone. As far as he was concerned, Snelling's work 0:10:14.730 --> 0:10:17.850 was cosmetic, the fairies had been in the original photograph, 0:10:18.170 --> 0:10:22.050 and the experts were mystified. What more proof did anyone want? 0:10:22.970 --> 0:10:26.090 So he wrote to the most famous advocate of spiritualist 0:10:26.130 --> 0:10:34.330 beliefs in the British Empire, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan 0:10:34.370 --> 0:10:38.570 Doyle was intrigued. He wrote to Elsie and to her father, Arthur, 0:10:38.850 --> 0:10:41.490 who was a huge fan of Conan Doyle, and both 0:10:41.610 --> 0:10:46.050 delighted and amused by the interest. And Conan Doyle sent 0:10:46.210 --> 0:10:49.650 Edward Gardner to Cottingly with a better camera in the 0:10:49.690 --> 0:10:53.770 hope that he could produce more images of fairies. Foiled 0:10:53.810 --> 0:10:57.530 by bad weather, he returned to London, leaving the camera 0:10:57.650 --> 0:11:03.370 with Elsie and Francis, together with dozens of expensive photographic plates, 0:11:03.970 --> 0:11:09.770 most of which tellingly did not survive. Still, soon enough, 0:11:10.210 --> 0:11:16.330 Gardner received three stunning new fairy images, one of a 0:11:16.330 --> 0:11:19.930 fairy in flight, one of a fairy presenting flowers to 0:11:19.970 --> 0:11:25.930 Elsie and one strange and ethereal image of fairies sunbathing 0:11:26.010 --> 0:11:31.810 in their little glade. Edward Gardner was completely convinced. He 0:11:31.930 --> 0:11:35.730 argued that the fairies were visible manifestations of the girl's 0:11:35.890 --> 0:11:40.290 psychic energy that would explain why, as several commentators noted, 0:11:40.490 --> 0:11:45.250 they bore such a close resemblance to illustrations from picture books. 0:11:46.250 --> 0:11:50.130 As for Conan Doyle, he began to write a spectacular 0:11:50.210 --> 0:11:54.530 account of a case that was stranger than anything Sherlock 0:11:54.570 --> 0:12:03.930 Holmes had ever tackled. Conan Doyle's account made a huge splash, 0:12:04.690 --> 0:12:08.450 first in a sellout issue of Strand magazine, then in 0:12:08.530 --> 0:12:13.290 his book. Many people found the whole thing laughable. Punch 0:12:13.370 --> 0:12:16.370 Magazine published a cartoon showing him with his head in 0:12:16.410 --> 0:12:21.050 the clouds, poor Sherlock Holmes sitting near by, mourning his 0:12:21.210 --> 0:12:27.090 creator's foolishness. But many backed Conan Doyle. After all, how 0:12:27.130 --> 0:12:31.370 could two simple rural girls possibly have faked such a thing? 0:12:32.010 --> 0:12:35.850 One popular novelist urged people to gaze on the innocent 0:12:35.930 --> 0:12:39.610 faces of the girls themselves in the photographs. There is 0:12:39.970 --> 0:12:46.890 an extraordinary thing called truth, he wrote. It is God's currency, 0:12:47.490 --> 0:12:52.250 and the cleverest coiner or forger can't imitate it. The 0:12:52.330 --> 0:12:56.170 Yorkshire Weekly Post kept its feet on the ground, but agreed. 0:12:56.610 --> 0:12:59.410 When one considers that these are the first photographs these 0:12:59.490 --> 0:13:02.330 children ever took in their lives, it is impossible to 0:13:02.370 --> 0:13:06.130 conceive that they are capable of technical manipulation, which would 0:13:06.130 --> 0:13:12.170 deceive experts. Indeed hard to understand how two little girls, 0:13:12.570 --> 0:13:16.010 on the first photograph they ever took could have faked 0:13:16.010 --> 0:13:20.530 an image so compelling that expert photographers could not explain it. 0:13:21.290 --> 0:13:25.410 But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's own creation Sherlock Holmes, could 0:13:25.450 --> 0:13:29.130 have explained that this puzzlement was hardly an argument for 0:13:29.170 --> 0:13:33.210 the existence of fairies. To quote mister Holmes. 0:13:33.530 --> 0:13:38.890 When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, 0:13:39.850 --> 0:13:41.010 must be the truth. 0:13:44.330 --> 0:13:48.890 Indeed, for most observers, Sherlock Holmes's maxim was a good guide. 0:13:49.450 --> 0:13:53.090 Fairies do not dwell at the bottom of gardens, and 0:13:53.170 --> 0:13:56.890 so the photographs must be fake. One critic summed it up. 0:13:57.730 --> 0:14:02.330 Knowing children, and knowing that Sir Arthur Conan Oil has legs, 0:14:02.570 --> 0:14:06.010 I decide that the girls have pulled one of them. 0:14:06.770 --> 0:14:10.890 Of course they had, if you remember our earlier cautionary 0:14:10.970 --> 0:14:14.850 Tale of Abraham Bradius and the Fake vmir You'll also 0:14:14.930 --> 0:14:19.130 remember that if a person wants to believe something passionately enough, 0:14:19.490 --> 0:14:23.930 expertise is no defense. Doyle was not only a doctor 0:14:24.090 --> 0:14:28.770 and a formidable intellect, he was also a skilled amateur photographer. 0:14:29.450 --> 0:14:32.490 He knew very well that photographs could be faked, but 0:14:32.690 --> 0:14:36.690 he also knew that such fakes took skill. He couldn't 0:14:36.730 --> 0:14:40.250 quite imagine how two little girls could have done it, 0:14:40.890 --> 0:14:44.690 and more to the point, he didn't want to imagine. 0:14:45.810 --> 0:14:50.810 But how had the fakery been achieved? That question wasn't 0:14:50.850 --> 0:14:56.850 conclusively answered until nineteen eighty two, sixty five years after 0:14:56.890 --> 0:15:02.090 the first two fairy photographs were taken. We'll find out 0:15:02.090 --> 0:15:13.290 the answer after the break. After the flurry of interest 0:15:13.370 --> 0:15:17.490 following the publication of Conan Doyle's book, the Cottingly Fairies 0:15:17.770 --> 0:15:21.890 were largely forgotten for half a century. Then in the 0:15:21.970 --> 0:15:26.290 nineteen seventies there was a revival of interest by newspapers 0:15:26.290 --> 0:15:30.130 and TV shows. But the man who would crack the 0:15:30.170 --> 0:15:34.410 case wide open was Jeffrey Crawley, the editor of the 0:15:34.410 --> 0:15:39.690 British Journal of Photography. Crawley deployed the forensic logic one 0:15:39.770 --> 0:15:43.810 might expect from Sherlock Holmes himself in a remarkable series 0:15:43.890 --> 0:15:49.530 of ten articles titled That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingly Fairies. 0:15:50.530 --> 0:15:55.290 Crawley was sure the photographs were fakes, but his methods 0:15:55.330 --> 0:16:00.050 of observation and deduction revealed a great deal. First, he 0:16:00.090 --> 0:16:03.810 obtained the original camera that Francis and Elsie had used 0:16:03.810 --> 0:16:07.730 to produce the first photograph, serviced it to bring it 0:16:07.770 --> 0:16:12.090 to full working order, and took his own prints. He 0:16:12.210 --> 0:16:15.970 concluded right away that the original photograph of Francis and 0:16:16.010 --> 0:16:19.050 the fairies cannot possibly have been what it claimed to 0:16:19.050 --> 0:16:23.450 be in those lighting conditions. The primitive camera wasn't capable 0:16:23.450 --> 0:16:27.410 of taking photographs that sharp. Elsie had said that the 0:16:27.450 --> 0:16:31.290 shutter speed was one fiftieth of a second, but Crawley 0:16:31.330 --> 0:16:33.970 believed that in reality, the shutter would have had to 0:16:34.010 --> 0:16:37.810 have been open for a second or more. That meant 0:16:37.890 --> 0:16:41.970 that anything which moved would be blurred. As indeed, the 0:16:42.010 --> 0:16:47.290 waterfall in the background of the photograph is The fairy wings, however, 0:16:47.810 --> 0:16:54.290 are pin sharp. Crawley kept sifting the evidence and obtained 0:16:54.330 --> 0:16:57.970 a copy of the first photograph. This copy had never 0:16:58.050 --> 0:17:02.770 been near the retouching specialist Harold Snelling. When Crawley saw it, 0:17:03.490 --> 0:17:08.050 he was stunned. It was strikingly different from the endlessly 0:17:08.170 --> 0:17:12.130 reproduced photographs of Francis and the dancing troop of fairies. 0:17:12.930 --> 0:17:18.050 It was overexposed and blurred. Francis's face lacked detail, and 0:17:18.170 --> 0:17:21.010 the fairies were hard to make out. They were little 0:17:21.010 --> 0:17:25.130 more than vague, pale shapes. For the first time since 0:17:25.210 --> 0:17:30.930 nineteen twenty, a photographic expert saw not Snelling's processed copy 0:17:31.690 --> 0:17:35.650 but the original and realized quite how significant and how 0:17:35.690 --> 0:17:42.010 confusing Snelling's post processing had been. Crawley realized that the 0:17:42.050 --> 0:17:46.250 confusion had deepened because the photographs used different techniques to 0:17:46.330 --> 0:17:50.610 achieve the effect of fairies. The third photograph, for example, 0:17:50.810 --> 0:17:54.330 taken three years after the first two, is probably a 0:17:54.410 --> 0:17:58.930 double exposure, a fairy in one shot superimposed over an 0:17:58.970 --> 0:18:03.530 image of Francis in another. The fourth features a dramatic 0:18:03.770 --> 0:18:08.410 new composition, with Elsie three years older, looking less like 0:18:08.450 --> 0:18:12.130 a child an awkward hat, and more like a fashion model. 0:18:13.090 --> 0:18:17.330 The fairy is simply a paper cutout. The fifth photograph, 0:18:17.770 --> 0:18:21.810 a strange and blown out image of a fairy sun bath, 0:18:22.370 --> 0:18:26.410 is also a double exposure, but one which creates a trippy, 0:18:26.650 --> 0:18:31.170 psychedelic effect rather than a crisp picture of a flying fairy. 0:18:32.050 --> 0:18:35.690 Both Elsie and Francis claimed to have taken that photograph. 0:18:36.210 --> 0:18:40.970 Crawley's conclusion is that they both did unknowingly photographing the 0:18:41.010 --> 0:18:47.770 same scene twice on a single photographic plate. Any stage 0:18:47.850 --> 0:18:51.770 magician could explain why the combined effect is so bewildering. 0:18:52.410 --> 0:18:57.290 Magicians make a useful distinction. The method is the technique 0:18:57.450 --> 0:19:00.970 used to produce the illusion, for example, palming a coin 0:19:01.290 --> 0:19:03.170 so that it seems to be in the left hand, 0:19:03.450 --> 0:19:06.970 when in fact it's in the right hand. The effect 0:19:07.410 --> 0:19:11.410 is the illusion itself. The coin has vanished, the coin 0:19:11.610 --> 0:19:15.290 reappears from behind your ear. And while it's often said 0:19:15.290 --> 0:19:18.170 that a magician should never perform the same trick twice, 0:19:18.690 --> 0:19:22.970 some do exactly that. They repeat the same effect over 0:19:23.090 --> 0:19:27.170 and over again, but they change the method each time. 0:19:28.130 --> 0:19:32.730 The cumulative impact is bewildering, and often the more expert 0:19:32.810 --> 0:19:36.410 the spectator, the more bewildering it is. Every time the 0:19:36.450 --> 0:19:40.130 spectator produces a theory about how the trick is done, 0:19:40.250 --> 0:19:46.450 the method changes and the theory is disproved by a 0:19:46.490 --> 0:19:50.570 combination of luck and fate. The sequence of Cottingly Fairy 0:19:50.610 --> 0:19:55.690 photographs use the same bewildering strategy. The first is created 0:19:55.730 --> 0:20:00.930 by Harold Snelling's liberal retouching, then later effects use cutouts, 0:20:01.170 --> 0:20:04.570 double exposures and even a fluke. If you look at 0:20:04.610 --> 0:20:07.330 them and try to find a single trick behind them all, 0:20:08.090 --> 0:20:12.290 you can't. Jeffrey Crawley of the British Journal of Photography 0:20:12.610 --> 0:20:17.170 concluded that the five pictures had used four different methods 0:20:17.330 --> 0:20:21.570 to achieve the illusion. Crawley then turned to the question 0:20:21.650 --> 0:20:25.570 of the characters involved. The Yorkshire Weekly Post had found 0:20:25.570 --> 0:20:30.250 it impossible to conceive that these two innocent looking girls 0:20:30.370 --> 0:20:35.250 could have mastered the techniques of image manipulation. But perhaps 0:20:35.250 --> 0:20:40.930 the girls weren't quite as innocent as everyone assumed. Francis, 0:20:40.970 --> 0:20:44.850 of course, was aged just nine when the first photograph 0:20:44.890 --> 0:20:48.250 was taken. She is literally the poster child for the 0:20:48.290 --> 0:20:54.450 Cottingly Fairies. But Elsie Wright, her cousin Elsie, is another matter. 0:20:55.330 --> 0:20:59.410 Elsie was hardly a child. She turned sixteen the summer 0:20:59.450 --> 0:21:03.370 that the first photographs were taken. Elsie had struggled at 0:21:03.410 --> 0:21:06.610 school and left at the age of thirteen to study 0:21:06.690 --> 0:21:10.210 near by at the Bradford College of Arts. One of 0:21:10.250 --> 0:21:13.850 her teachers later recalled she was very clever at art, 0:21:14.090 --> 0:21:19.450 and particularly with drawing fairies and cutting them out. That 0:21:19.650 --> 0:21:22.930 recollection may be tinged with hindsight, but once you know 0:21:22.970 --> 0:21:25.730 that Elsie wasn't a nine year old girl but a 0:21:25.770 --> 0:21:29.170 student at an art college, it puts those photographs of 0:21:29.210 --> 0:21:33.530 fairies into another light. And there's another thing that didn't 0:21:33.570 --> 0:21:36.170 seem to have registered with the people who thought the 0:21:36.210 --> 0:21:42.570 girls were naive little children. Elsie had a job, not 0:21:42.690 --> 0:21:47.130 just any job either. She worked at the photography studio 0:21:47.410 --> 0:21:52.290 of a greetings card factory, doing post processing work. Early on, 0:21:52.410 --> 0:21:56.690 she'd done spotting, or touching up flowed photos using paint. 0:21:57.330 --> 0:22:02.610 Later she colorized black and white work and created composite photographs, 0:22:03.010 --> 0:22:06.730 combining the images of soldiers who died during the war 0:22:07.490 --> 0:22:11.650 with portraits of the family they'd left behind. It was 0:22:11.930 --> 0:22:15.970 skilled work. Is it really so impossible to imagine that 0:22:16.130 --> 0:22:20.810 Elsie Wright could have created a manipulated photograph? Writing in 0:22:20.810 --> 0:22:27.290 the British Journal of Photography, Jeffrey Crawley didn't think so, 0:22:27.330 --> 0:22:30.330 And that's when there was another twist in the story. 0:22:31.090 --> 0:22:34.090 Crawley received a letter from an eighty two year old 0:22:34.210 --> 0:22:40.090 lady called Elsie Hill the married name of Elsie Wright, 0:22:41.690 --> 0:22:46.730 and Elsie Wright had a confession to make. After sixty 0:22:46.810 --> 0:22:51.490 six years of lying, she had finally decided to tell 0:22:51.530 --> 0:22:57.010 the truth. Elsie had hatched the plan to comfort Francis 0:22:57.330 --> 0:23:01.210 after a stern scolding from her mother. First Francis had 0:23:01.250 --> 0:23:04.210 soaked her clothes and the beck. Then she had compounded 0:23:04.210 --> 0:23:07.210 the sin by blaming it on the fairies, making up 0:23:07.250 --> 0:23:09.890 stories about fairies with an other to get her sent 0:23:09.970 --> 0:23:14.570 to her room. Elsie was indignant. Grown ups lie all 0:23:14.610 --> 0:23:18.370 the time. She said, they're always making up fantastical stories. 0:23:18.650 --> 0:23:21.490 Why should Francis be in such trouble for doing the same. 0:23:22.250 --> 0:23:25.890 And so Elsie comforted Francis with the promise that they 0:23:25.930 --> 0:23:31.170 would prove the adults wrong by producing a picture of 0:23:31.210 --> 0:23:38.530 the fairies. Elsie was quite right. Adults do tell a 0:23:38.570 --> 0:23:41.770 lot of lies. Some of them are every bit as 0:23:41.810 --> 0:23:45.410 delightful and absurd as fairies at the bottom of the garden. 0:23:46.090 --> 0:23:50.170 Think about Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. We grown ups 0:23:50.210 --> 0:23:54.130 tell children that Rudolph pulls Santa's slay, and that his 0:23:54.330 --> 0:23:57.450 shiny red nose lights the way for Santa. When Christmas 0:23:57.450 --> 0:24:02.490 Eve is foggy, it's a touching story, but also absurd. 0:24:03.290 --> 0:24:06.970 Santa's magic is so powerful that in a single night 0:24:07.210 --> 0:24:11.490 he can fill every stocking with Christmas gifts. Why on 0:24:11.650 --> 0:24:15.050 earth would he need a silly, shiny nose to navigate? 0:24:15.930 --> 0:24:20.090 And yet we tell our children such tales. As they 0:24:20.090 --> 0:24:23.290 grow up, they realize that there is such a thing 0:24:24.090 --> 0:24:29.370 as a magical lie, and lies are often necessary, whether 0:24:29.370 --> 0:24:34.050 they're magical or not. In nineteen seventy five, the sociologist 0:24:34.130 --> 0:24:38.690 Harvey Sachs gave a lecture titled Everyone Has to Lie, 0:24:39.330 --> 0:24:42.610 in which he pointed out that society is lubricated by 0:24:42.650 --> 0:24:48.250 a continual trickle of falsehoods. More recently, the psychologist Robert 0:24:48.290 --> 0:24:53.690 Feldman filmed first time conversations between two strangers talking together. 0:24:54.290 --> 0:25:00.050 He concluded that people lied every three or four minutes. 0:25:01.290 --> 0:25:05.170 Of course they did. When the restaurant's server asks how 0:25:05.250 --> 0:25:08.170 are you, we're not supposed to give a truthful answer. 0:25:09.250 --> 0:25:12.330 Say I'm nervous, this is my first date since my 0:25:12.410 --> 0:25:15.250 psycho X had an affair with my best friend, emptied 0:25:15.290 --> 0:25:18.890 my bank account and then left me. Or my hemorrhoids 0:25:18.890 --> 0:25:22.570 are killing me. But otherwise not bad. We say thanks, 0:25:22.730 --> 0:25:25.810 I'm great. At the end of a dinner party. We 0:25:25.890 --> 0:25:29.490 don't say the food was mediocre and the conversation was awkward, 0:25:29.530 --> 0:25:31.890 but at least it's not far to get home. We 0:25:31.970 --> 0:25:35.370 say that we had a wonderful time. And when our 0:25:35.450 --> 0:25:38.610 children ask us about Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, we 0:25:38.690 --> 0:25:41.210 don't tell them, oh him. He was made up in 0:25:41.290 --> 0:25:45.130 nineteen thirty nine by an advertising copywriter at Montgomery Ward. 0:25:45.530 --> 0:25:48.050 It's a story. To make awkward kids with no friends 0:25:48.050 --> 0:25:52.210 feel better about themselves. We tell them the magical lie 0:25:52.530 --> 0:25:58.530 that without Rudolph, Santa would be lost. We lie out 0:25:58.570 --> 0:26:02.850 of politeness, we lie to make ourselves look good, and 0:26:02.890 --> 0:26:08.210 we lie because the truth would be cruel. More on that. 0:26:09.370 --> 0:26:25.090 After the break, sixty six years after she created the 0:26:25.130 --> 0:26:31.810 first fairy photographs, Elsie Wright was confessing. One of the 0:26:31.890 --> 0:26:34.570 letters that she wrote to Jeffrey Crawley at the British 0:26:34.610 --> 0:26:37.770 Journal of Photography hinted at why it had taken her 0:26:37.810 --> 0:26:38.290 so long. 0:26:39.210 --> 0:26:42.210 Dear mister Crawley, thank you for your letter revealing so 0:26:42.330 --> 0:26:44.890 much depth and understanding of the pickle Francis and I 0:26:44.930 --> 0:26:47.850 got ourselves into on that day when our practical joke 0:26:47.890 --> 0:26:50.290 fell flat on its face, when no one would believe 0:26:50.330 --> 0:26:53.770 we'd got pictures of real fairies. Just imagine if they had, 0:26:54.050 --> 0:26:56.050 the joke would have ended there. And then when we 0:26:56.090 --> 0:26:59.010 would have told all instead, the laugh was on us. 0:26:59.810 --> 0:27:03.610 Elsie imagined that when their parents saw the fairy photographs, 0:27:03.730 --> 0:27:08.410 they'd be astonished. They would apologize for scolding Francis, and 0:27:08.450 --> 0:27:11.850 then Elsie would reveal the trick and that all have 0:27:11.930 --> 0:27:16.810 a good laugh together. Except that Arthur Wright never believed 0:27:16.850 --> 0:27:21.210 in fairies for a second. He was scornful and angry 0:27:21.250 --> 0:27:23.570 when the children would not explain how they'd done it. 0:27:24.210 --> 0:27:27.810 Elsie's pride was wounded. She believed in her talent as 0:27:27.810 --> 0:27:32.650 an illustrator and a photographer with hindsight, Arthur Wright could 0:27:32.690 --> 0:27:35.770 have got to the truth if his initial reaction had 0:27:35.810 --> 0:27:41.890 been gentler. He missed the only chance because once Elsie 0:27:41.970 --> 0:27:45.010 had let the lie linger, when was the moment for 0:27:45.050 --> 0:27:49.730 the truth. When Polly Wright, Elsie's mother, returned from a 0:27:49.770 --> 0:27:53.570 spiritualist meeting in nineteen nineteen, having told others of the 0:27:53.610 --> 0:27:59.370 photographs that would humiliate her mother. When Edward Gardner, a 0:27:59.450 --> 0:28:05.610 fine gentleman, requested copies, even worse, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 0:28:05.690 --> 0:28:08.370 one of the most famous men in the country, wrote 0:28:08.490 --> 0:28:15.090 separately both Elsie and her father calamitous. Conan Doyle's involvement 0:28:15.370 --> 0:28:18.130 raised the stakes far beyond what any of them could 0:28:18.170 --> 0:28:21.930 have imagined. Arthur Wright was a true fan of Conan 0:28:21.970 --> 0:28:25.650 Doyle's and he couldn't quite believe that r Elsie, at 0:28:25.690 --> 0:28:29.290 the bottom of the class, had the great man fooled. 0:28:30.610 --> 0:28:34.610 Three years after her father's painfully dismissive reaction to the 0:28:34.650 --> 0:28:38.610 original photographs, this must have been a real temptation for 0:28:38.690 --> 0:28:43.290 Elsie to stretch her creative wings and prove her talents 0:28:43.530 --> 0:28:48.290 on the biggest stage imaginable. She must have been exhilarated 0:28:48.450 --> 0:28:53.570 and terrified all at once, and her father, Arthur Wright, 0:28:53.890 --> 0:28:58.330 couldn't abide the suggestion of fraud the risk of social disgrace. 0:28:58.730 --> 0:29:02.530 So was now the moment to confess. You could hardly 0:29:02.610 --> 0:29:07.490 fault Elsie for biting her tongue. At first, Elsie Wright 0:29:07.690 --> 0:29:11.010 had been trying to comfort Forcis. Then she had been 0:29:11.050 --> 0:29:14.010 showing off her talents as an artist and a photographer. 0:29:15.010 --> 0:29:19.290 But as the deception continued, she began lying because it 0:29:19.290 --> 0:29:23.890 would have been heartless to tell the truth. Edward Gardner 0:29:23.930 --> 0:29:27.370 and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had so publicly put their 0:29:27.410 --> 0:29:31.250 trust in Elsie and Francis and their photographs, and been 0:29:31.290 --> 0:29:33.650 so mocked for it, that for the young women to 0:29:33.730 --> 0:29:39.970 confess would be to humiliate both men utterly. Not for 0:29:40.050 --> 0:29:44.050 the first time in human history, young women decided to 0:29:44.170 --> 0:29:50.690 keep quiet to spare the fragile egos of men. Conan 0:29:50.730 --> 0:29:54.450