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Speaker 1: Pushkin. In May nineteen twenty I heard that alleged photographs

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Speaker 1: of fairies had been taken. These are the words of

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Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, in

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Speaker 1: a book titled The Coming of the Fairies. Unlike The

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Speaker 1: Sign of Four or The Hound of the Baskervilles, the

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Speaker 1: Coming of the Fairies wasn't a work of fiction. It

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Speaker 1: was deadly serious. These photographs were in the possession of

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Speaker 1: Edward Gardner, an influential believer in spiritualism. The idea that

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Speaker 1: the spirits of the dead can communicate with a living

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Speaker 1: Spiritualism was all the rage at the time, and if

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Speaker 1: you believed in spirit it wasn't too much of a

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Speaker 1: leap to believe in fairies too. Where had these photographs

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Speaker 1: come from, Edward Gardner's sister explained to Conan Doyle. Edward

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Speaker 1: has got into touch with a family in Bradford, where

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Speaker 1: the little girl, Elsie and her cousin Francis constantly go

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Speaker 1: into the woods and play with the fairies. Some time ago,

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Speaker 1: Elsie said she wanted to photograph them, and begged her

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Speaker 1: father to lend his camera. For long he refused, but

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Speaker 1: at last she managed to get the loan of it,

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Speaker 1: and one plate off. She and Francis went into the

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Speaker 1: woods near a waterfall. Francis ticed them, as they call it,

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Speaker 1: and Elsie stood ready with the camera. Soon the three

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Speaker 1: fairies appeared, and one pixie dancing in francis soura. It

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Speaker 1: was a long time before the father would develop the photo,

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Speaker 1: but at least he did, and to his utter amazement,

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Speaker 1: the four sweet little figures came out beautifully. The photographs

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Speaker 1: are indeed beautiful. The first is a charming depiction of

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Speaker 1: nine year old Francis surrounded by small, bright, dancing figures,

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Speaker 1: crisp and elegant. Conan Doyle describes it like this. The

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Speaker 1: waterfall and rocks are about twenty feet behind Francis, who's

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Speaker 1: standing against the bank of the back. A fifth fairy

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Speaker 1: may be seen between and behind the two on the right.

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Speaker 1: The coloring of the fairies is described by the girls

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Speaker 1: as being of very pale pink, green, lavender, and mauve,

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Speaker 1: most marked in the wings and fading to almost pure

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Speaker 1: white in the limbs and drapery. Each fairy has its

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Speaker 1: own special color. Conan Doyle was aware that the existence

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Speaker 1: of fairies was controversial, so he affected the stance of

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Speaker 1: a logical man, explaining every clue. Like Sherlock Holmes himself.

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Speaker 1: The original negative is asserted by expert photographers to bear

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Speaker 1: not the slightest trace of combination work, retouching, or anything

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Speaker 1: whatever to markt as other than a straight, single exposure

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Speaker 1: photograph taken in the open air under natural conditions. His

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Speaker 1: conclusion was inescapable. I have convinced myself that there is

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Speaker 1: overwhelming evidence for the fairies. Turning to the second photograph

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Speaker 1: showing Elsie holding hands with a little gnome, he muses

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Speaker 1: on the contrast between the gnome and the little fairy elves.

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Speaker 1: It's hard not to laugh. Elves are a compound of

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Speaker 1: the human and the butterfly, while the gnome has more

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Speaker 1: of the moth. This may be merely the result of

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Speaker 1: under exposure of the negative and the dullness of the weather.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps the little gnome is really of the same tribe,

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Speaker 1: but represents an elderly male while the elves are romping

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Speaker 1: young women. A newspaper headline of the time put it bluntly,

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Speaker 1: has Conan Doyle gone mad? I'm Tim Harford and you're

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Speaker 1: listening to cautionary tale. The story had begun five years

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Speaker 1: earlier at the bottom of a garden in Coottingly, a

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Speaker 1: village on the outskirts of Bradford in northern England. A

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Speaker 1: beautiful stream, or beck as the locals say, flowed past

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Speaker 1: the trees and moss covered banks. As the breeze toyed

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Speaker 1: with the leaves, and the sun dappling danced across the grass,

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Speaker 1: Little Francis Griffiths could imagine that she saw fairies at play.

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Speaker 1: She talked with her dear friend and cousin, Elsie Wright,

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Speaker 1: about what she saw. One day, Francis slipped on the

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Speaker 1: rock in the back and soaked her clothes. It would

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Speaker 1: happen a lot, Elsie later remembered. Francis, for some unaccountable reason,

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Speaker 1: always fell down when we went up the back. Elsie

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Speaker 1: tried to help little Francis sneak into the house, but

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Speaker 1: Francis's mother saw her and scolded her. Francis protested that

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Speaker 1: she had fallen because she had been playing with the fairies.

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Speaker 1: That was the last straw. She was sent to her room. Elsie,

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Speaker 1: comforting her tearful cousin, suggested a plan. The two of

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Speaker 1: them would borrow Elsie's father's camera and take photographs of

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Speaker 1: the fairies at the bottom of the garden to prove

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Speaker 1: the adults wrong and little Francis right. And they did,

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Speaker 1: making the iconic picture of Francis surrounded by dancing sprites.

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Speaker 1: Elsie's father, Arthur Wright, developed the first photograph in his

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Speaker 1: dark room. He wasn't impressed. It was a nice image

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Speaker 1: of Francis, But what were all the pieces of paper

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Speaker 1: in the foreground fairies, said Elsie. Nonsense, said her father.

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Speaker 1: A few weeks later they took a second photograph, this

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Speaker 1: time of Elsie wearing a hat, sitting on the grass,

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Speaker 1: and holding hands with a tiny, prancing gnome. A joke,

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Speaker 1: said Arthur Wright. Why would they not admit it? But

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Speaker 1: they did not, and so the camera was confiscated. The

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Speaker 1: story might have ended then in nineteen seventeen, but Elsie's mother, Pollywright,

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Speaker 1: was less of a skeptic than Arthur. A couple of

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Speaker 1: years later, Pollwright went to a meeting of a spiritualist

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Speaker 1: society on the subject of fairy life. She mentioned the

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Speaker 1: existence of the photographs. There was some excitement, and before

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Speaker 1: long the images had made their way to the influential

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Speaker 1: mystic Edward Gardner. Gardener wrote back to Polly Wright, saying

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Speaker 1: that the first picture was the best of its kind.

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Speaker 1: I should think anywhere. Edward Gardner took the photographs to

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Speaker 1: his friend Harold Snelling, an expert in photographic processing and retouching.

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Speaker 1: Snelling told Gardener that the pictures looked on process to him.

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Speaker 1: Single exposures taken outside Snelling's testimony was very important to

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Speaker 1: Conan Doyle. If Snelling said they were genuine, they were genuine.

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Speaker 1: But at this point the plot thickens. Gardner wanted large, sharp,

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Speaker 1: spectacular prints to frame and hang on his wall, to

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Speaker 1: show people when he gave public lectures, and to give

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Speaker 1: to the newspapers, so he paid Snelling to make these prints.

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Speaker 1: Snelling made new negatives by painting on the princes that

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Speaker 1: Elsie's mother had sent, and then rephotographing them. He added

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Speaker 1: sparkle and sharpness, just as today a photoshop expert might

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Speaker 1: retouch a supermodel for a magazine cover. But that meant

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Speaker 1: that every subsequent expert was looking not at the original

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Speaker 1: prints but at Snelling's upgrades. No longer were these the

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Speaker 1: unprocessed single exposure photographs that he had vouched for. Snelling

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Speaker 1: of course, had no idea quite how much attention would

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Speaker 1: later be devoted to the authenticity of these images, but

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Speaker 1: having been paid about a year's wages by Gardener, he

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Speaker 1: seems not to have uttered another word on the subject thereafter.

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Speaker 1: Edward Gardner then took the photographs to experts at Kodak.

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Speaker 1: They were confused, partly because Snelling's post processing made the

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Speaker 1: lighting on the pictures look strange. The Kodak team believed

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Speaker 1: the pictures might have been taken in a studio, but

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Speaker 1: that wasn't true, and Gardener knew it. Whatever had been

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Speaker 1: done would have required considerable technical skill, which of course

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Speaker 1: Snelling had. In any case, they said, fairies don't exist,

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Speaker 1: so the pictures must be a fake. Gardner, who was

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Speaker 1: sure that fairies did exist, didn't find this very persuasive.

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Speaker 1: He didn't realize or didn't care, that Snelling's work had

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Speaker 1: confused everyone. As far as he was concerned, Snelling's work

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Speaker 1: was cosmetic. The fairies had been in the original photograph,

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Speaker 1: and the experts were mystified. What more proof did anyone want?

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Speaker 1: So he wrote to the most famous advocate of spiritualist

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Speaker 1: beliefs in the British Empire, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan

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Speaker 1: Doyle was intrigued. He wrote to Elsie and to her father, Arthur,

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Speaker 1: who was a huge fan of Conan Doyle, and both

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Speaker 1: delighted and permused by the interest, and and Oile sent

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Speaker 1: Edward Gardner to Cottingly with a better camera in the

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Speaker 1: hope that he could produce more images of fairies. Foiled

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Speaker 1: by bad weather, he returned to London, leaving the camera

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Speaker 1: with Elsie and Francis, together with dozens of expensive photographic plates,

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Speaker 1: most of which tellingly did not survive. Still, soon enough,

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Speaker 1: Gardner received three stunning new fairy images, one of a

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Speaker 1: fairy in flight, one of a fairy presenting flowers to Elsie,

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Speaker 1: and one strange and ethereal image of fairies sunbathing in

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Speaker 1: their little glade. Edward Gardner was completely convinced. He argued

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Speaker 1: that the fairies were visible manifestations of the girl's psychic

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Speaker 1: energy that would explain why, as several commentators noted, they

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Speaker 1: bore such a close resemblance to illustrations from picture books.

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Speaker 1: As for Conan Doyle, he began to write a spectacular

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Speaker 1: account of a case that was stranger than anything. Sherlock

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Speaker 1: Holmes had ever tackled. Conan Doyle's account made a huge splash,

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Speaker 1: first in a sellout issue of Strand magazine, then in

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Speaker 1: his book. Many people found the whole thing laughable. Punch

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Speaker 1: Magazine published a cartoon showing him with his head in

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Speaker 1: the clouds, poor Sherlock Holmes sitting nearby, mourning his creator's foolishness,

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Speaker 1: But many backed Conan Doyle. After all, how could two

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Speaker 1: simple rural girls possibly have faked such a thing. One

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Speaker 1: popular novelist urged people to gaze on the innocent faces

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Speaker 1: of the girls themselves in the photographs. There is an

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Speaker 1: extraordinary thing called truth, he wrote. It is God's currency,

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Speaker 1: and the cleverest coiner or forger can't imitate it. The

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Speaker 1: Yorkshire Weekly Post kept its feet on the ground, but agreed.

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Speaker 1: When one considers that these are the first photographs these

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Speaker 1: children ever took in their lives, it is impossible to

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Speaker 1: conceive that they are capable of technical manipulation which would

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Speaker 1: deceive experts. It was indeed hard to understand how two

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Speaker 1: little girls, on the first photograph they ever took, could

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Speaker 1: have faked an image so compelling that expert photographers could

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Speaker 1: not explain it. But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's own creation.

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Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes could have explained that this puzzlement was hardly

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Speaker 1: an argument for the existence of fairies. To quote mister Holmes,

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Speaker 1: when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable,

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Speaker 1: must be the truth. Indeed, for most observers, Sherlock Holmes's

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Speaker 1: maxim was a good guide. Fairies do not dwell at

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Speaker 1: the bottom of gardens, and so the photographs must be fake.

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Speaker 1: One critic summed it up. Knowing children, and knowing that

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Speaker 1: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has legs, I decide that the

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Speaker 1: girls have pulled one of them. Of course they had.

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Speaker 1: If you remember our earlier cautionary tale of Abraham Bradius

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Speaker 1: and the fake for Meir, you'll also remember that if

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Speaker 1: a person wants to believe something passionately enough, expertise is

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Speaker 1: no defense. Doyle was not only a doctor and a

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Speaker 1: formidable intellect. He was also a skilled amateur photographer. He

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Speaker 1: knew very well that photographs could be faked, but he

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Speaker 1: also knew that such fakes took skill. He couldn't quite

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Speaker 1: imagine how two little girls could have done it, and

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Speaker 1: more to the point, he didn't want to imagine. But

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Speaker 1: how had the fakery been achieved? That question wasn't conclusively

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Speaker 1: answered until nineteen eighty two, sixty five years after the

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Speaker 1: first two fairy photographs were taken. We'll find out the

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Speaker 1: answer after the brain. After the flurry of interest following

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Speaker 1: the publication of Conan Doyle's book, the Cottingly Fairies were

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Speaker 1: largely forgotten for half a century. Then in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventies there was a revival of interest by newspapers and

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Speaker 1: TV shows. But the man who would crack the case

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Speaker 1: wide open was Jeffrey Crawley, the editor of the British

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Speaker 1: Journal of Photography. Crawley deployed the forensic logic one might

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Speaker 1: expect from Sherlock Holmes himself in a remarkable series of

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Speaker 1: ten articles titled That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingly Fairies.

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Speaker 1: Crawley was sure the photographs were fakes, but his methods

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Speaker 1: of observation and deduction revealed a great deal. First, he

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Speaker 1: obtained the original camera that Francis and Elsie had used

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Speaker 1: to produce the first photograph, serviced it to bring it

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Speaker 1: to full working order, and took his own prints. He

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Speaker 1: concluded right away that the original photograph of Francis and

201
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Speaker 1: the fairies cannot possibly have been what it claimed to

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Speaker 1: be in those lighting conditions. The primitive camera wasn't capable

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Speaker 1: of taking photographs that Charle Elsie had said that the

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Speaker 1: shutter speed was one fiftieth of a second, but Crawley

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Speaker 1: believed that in reality, the shutter would have had to

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Speaker 1: have been open for a second or more. That meant

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Speaker 1: that anything which moved would be blurred as indeed the

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Speaker 1: waterfall in the background of the photograph is. The fairy wings, however,

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Speaker 1: are pin sharp. Crawley kept sifting the evidence and obtained

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Speaker 1: a copy of the first photograph. This copy had never

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Speaker 1: been near the retouching specialist Harold Snelling. When Crawley saw it,

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Speaker 1: he was stunned. It was strikingly different from the endlessly

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Speaker 1: reproduced photographs of Francis and the dancing troop of fairies.

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Speaker 1: It was over exposed and blurred. Francis's face lacked detail,

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Speaker 1: and the fairies were hard to make out. They were

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Speaker 1: little more than vague, pale shapes. For the first time

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Speaker 1: since nineteen twenty, a photographic expert saw not Snelling's processed copy,

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Speaker 1: but the original and realized quite how significant and how

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Speaker 1: confusing Snelling's post processing had been. Crawley realized that the

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Speaker 1: confusion had deepened because the photographs used front techniques to

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Speaker 1: achieve the effect of fairies. The third photograph, for example,

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Speaker 1: taken three years after the first two, is probably a

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Speaker 1: double exposure, a fairy in one shot superimposed over an

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Speaker 1: image of Francis in another. The fourth features a dramatic

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Speaker 1: new composition, with Elsie, three years older, looking less like

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Speaker 1: a child in an awkward hat and more like a

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Speaker 1: fashion model. The fairy is simply a paper cutout. The

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Speaker 1: fifth photograph, a strange and blown out image of a

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Speaker 1: fairy sun bath, is also a double exposure, but one

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Speaker 1: which creates a trippy, psychedelic effect rather than a crisp

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00:17:53,170 --> 00:17:58,010
Speaker 1: picture of a flying fairy. Both Elsie and Francis claimed

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Speaker 1: to have taken that photograph. Crawley's conclusion is that they

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Speaker 1: both did unknowingly photographing the same scene twice on a

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Speaker 1: single photographic plate. Any stage magician could explain why the

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Speaker 1: combined effect is so bewildering. Magicians make a useful distinction.

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Speaker 1: The method is the technique used to produce the illusion.

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Speaker 1: For example, palming a coin so that it seems to

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Speaker 1: be in the left hand, when in fact it's in

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Speaker 1: the right hand. The effect is the illusion itself. The

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Speaker 1: coin has vanished, the coin reappears from behind your ear.

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Speaker 1: And while it's often said that a magician should never

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Speaker 1: perform the same trick twice, some do exactly that. They

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00:18:44,490 --> 00:18:48,690
Speaker 1: repeat the same effect over and over again, but they

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Speaker 1: change the method each time. The cumulative impact is bewildering,

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Speaker 1: and often the more expert the spectator, the more bewildering

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00:18:58,530 --> 00:19:02,330
Speaker 1: it is. Every time the spectator produces a theory about

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Speaker 1: how the trick is done, the method changes and the

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00:19:05,650 --> 00:19:12,050
Speaker 1: theory is disproved by a combination of luck and fate.

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00:19:12,370 --> 00:19:17,690
Speaker 1: The sequence of Cottingly Fairy photographs used the same bewildering strategy.

250
00:19:18,130 --> 00:19:22,650
Speaker 1: The first is created by Harold Snelling's liberal retouching, then

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Speaker 1: later effects use cutouts, double exposures, and even a fluke.

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Speaker 1: If you look at them and try to find a

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Speaker 1: single trick behind them all, you can't. Jeffrey Crawley of

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00:19:34,530 --> 00:19:38,250
Speaker 1: the British Journal of Photography concluded that the five pictures

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Speaker 1: had used four different methods to achieve the illusion. Crawley

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00:19:44,090 --> 00:19:47,410
Speaker 1: then turned to the question of the characters involved. The

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Speaker 1: Yorkshire Weekly Post had found it impossible to conceive that

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Speaker 1: these two innocent looking girls could have mastered the techniques

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Speaker 1: of image manipulation. But perhaps the girls weren't quite as

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00:20:00,570 --> 00:20:06,210
Speaker 1: innocent as everyone assumed. Francis, of course, was aged just

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00:20:06,650 --> 00:20:10,850
Speaker 1: nine when the first photograph was taken. She is literally

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00:20:10,890 --> 00:20:15,050
Speaker 1: the poster child for the Cottingly Fairies. But Elsie Wright,

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00:20:15,250 --> 00:20:20,770
Speaker 1: her cousin Elsie, is another matter. Elsie was hardly a child.

264
00:20:21,450 --> 00:20:25,050
Speaker 1: She turned sixteen the summer that the first photographs were taken.

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00:20:25,810 --> 00:20:28,730
Speaker 1: Elsie had struggled at school and left at the age

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Speaker 1: of thirteen to study nearby at the Bradford College of Art.

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Speaker 1: One of her teachers later recalled she was very clever

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Speaker 1: at art, and particularly with drawing fairies and cutting them out.

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Speaker 1: That recollection may be tinged with hindsight, but once you

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Speaker 1: know that Elsie wasn't a nine year old girl but

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Speaker 1: a student at an art college, it puts those photographs

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Speaker 1: of fairies into another light. And there's another thing that

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00:20:57,010 --> 00:20:59,810
Speaker 1: didn't seem to have registered with the people who thought

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Speaker 1: the girls were naive little children. Elsie had a job,

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Speaker 1: not just any job, either. She worked at the photography

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Speaker 1: studio of a greetings card factory doing post processing work.

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Speaker 1: Early on she had done spotting or touching up flawed

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00:21:19,250 --> 00:21:23,770
Speaker 1: photos using paint. Later, she colorized black and white work

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00:21:24,290 --> 00:21:29,210
Speaker 1: and created composite photographs, combining the images of soldiers who

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Speaker 1: died during the war with portraits of the families they

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00:21:33,090 --> 00:21:37,770
Speaker 1: had left behind. It was skilled work. Is it really

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00:21:37,850 --> 00:21:41,690
Speaker 1: so impossible to imagine that Elsie Wright could have created

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00:21:41,730 --> 00:21:46,210
Speaker 1: a manipulated photograph? Writing in the British Journal of Photography,

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Speaker 1: Jeffrey Crawley didn't think so, And that's when there was

285
00:21:52,450 --> 00:21:56,650
Speaker 1: another twist in the story. Crawley received a letter from

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00:21:56,650 --> 00:22:01,490
Speaker 1: an eighty two year old lady called Elsie Hill, the

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00:22:01,610 --> 00:22:07,450
Speaker 1: married name of Elsie Wright, and Elsie Wright had a

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00:22:07,490 --> 00:22:13,170
Speaker 1: confession to make. After sixty six years of lying, she

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00:22:13,250 --> 00:22:19,010
Speaker 1: had finally decided to tell the truth. Elsie had hatched

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00:22:19,050 --> 00:22:22,730
Speaker 1: the plan to comfort Francis after a stern scolding from

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00:22:22,730 --> 00:22:26,370
Speaker 1: her mother. First, Francis had soaked her clothes in the beck.

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Speaker 1: Then she had compounded the sin by blaming it on

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00:22:29,250 --> 00:22:33,050
Speaker 1: the fairies. Making up stories about fairies was enough to

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Speaker 1: get her sent to her room. Elsie was indignant. Grown

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Speaker 1: ups lie all the time, She said, they're always making

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00:22:40,730 --> 00:22:44,410
Speaker 1: up fantastical stories. Why should Francis be in such trouble

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00:22:44,450 --> 00:22:48,290
Speaker 1: for doing the same. And so Elsie comforted Francis with

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00:22:48,330 --> 00:22:52,570
Speaker 1: the promise that they would prove the adults wrong by

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00:22:52,650 --> 00:23:00,330
Speaker 1: producing a picture of the fairies. Elsie was quite right.

300
00:23:00,970 --> 00:23:04,250
Speaker 1: Adults do tell a lot of lies. Some of them

301
00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:08,170
Speaker 1: are every bit as delightful and absurd as fairies at

302
00:23:08,170 --> 00:23:11,530
Speaker 1: the bottom of the guard. Think about Rudolph the red

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00:23:11,610 --> 00:23:16,090
Speaker 1: nosed reindeer. We grown ups tell children that Rudolph pulls

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Speaker 1: Santa slay, and that his shiny red nose lights the

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00:23:19,690 --> 00:23:23,450
Speaker 1: way for Santa when Christmas Eve is foggy. It's a

306
00:23:23,490 --> 00:23:29,370
Speaker 1: touching story, but also absurd. Santa's magic is so powerful

307
00:23:29,450 --> 00:23:32,890
Speaker 1: that in a single night he can fill every stocking

308
00:23:32,930 --> 00:23:37,170
Speaker 1: with Christmas gifts. Why on earth would he need a silly,

309
00:23:37,290 --> 00:23:41,010
Speaker 1: shiny nose to navigate? And yet we tell our children

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00:23:41,090 --> 00:23:45,650
Speaker 1: such tales. As they grow up, they realize that there

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00:23:45,890 --> 00:23:50,970
Speaker 1: is such a thing as a magical lie, and lies

312
00:23:51,090 --> 00:23:55,850
Speaker 1: are often necessary, whether they're magical or not. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy five, the sociologist Harvey Sachs gave a lecture titled

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00:24:00,890 --> 00:24:04,290
Speaker 1: Everyone Has to Lie, in which he pointed out that

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00:24:04,370 --> 00:24:10,330
Speaker 1: society is lubricated by a continual trickle of falsehoods. More recently,

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00:24:10,610 --> 00:24:16,130
Speaker 1: the psychologist Robert Feldman filmed first time conversations between two

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00:24:16,170 --> 00:24:22,170
Speaker 1: strangers talking together. He concluded that people lied every three

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00:24:22,450 --> 00:24:27,570
Speaker 1: or four minutes. Of course they did. When the restaurants

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00:24:27,610 --> 00:24:30,930
Speaker 1: server asks how are you, we're not supposed to give

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00:24:30,970 --> 00:24:34,850
Speaker 1: a truthful answer. We don't say I'm nervous, this is

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00:24:34,890 --> 00:24:37,530
Speaker 1: my first date since my psycho X had an affair

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00:24:37,570 --> 00:24:39,970
Speaker 1: with my best friend, emptied my bank account and then

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00:24:40,050 --> 00:24:43,930
Speaker 1: left me. Or my hemorrhoids are killing me, but otherwise

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00:24:43,970 --> 00:24:48,450
Speaker 1: not bad. We say thanks, I'm great. At the end

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00:24:48,450 --> 00:24:51,170
Speaker 1: of a dinner party, we don't say the food was

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00:24:51,250 --> 00:24:53,970
Speaker 1: mediocre and the conversation was awkward, but at least it's

327
00:24:54,010 --> 00:24:56,570
Speaker 1: not far to get home. We say that we had

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Speaker 1: a wonderful time. And when our children ask us about

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00:25:00,410 --> 00:25:04,170
Speaker 1: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we don't tell them oh him.

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00:25:04,210 --> 00:25:06,370
Speaker 1: He was made up in nineteen thirty nine by an

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00:25:06,410 --> 00:25:10,290
Speaker 1: advertising copywriter at Montgomery Ward. It's a story to make

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00:25:10,330 --> 00:25:14,170
Speaker 1: awkward kids with no friends feel better about themselves. We

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00:25:14,290 --> 00:25:19,690
Speaker 1: tell them the magical lie that without Rudolph, Santa would

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00:25:19,690 --> 00:25:24,410
Speaker 1: be lost. We lie out of politeness, we lie to

335
00:25:24,490 --> 00:25:28,490
Speaker 1: make ourselves look good, and we lie because the truth

336
00:25:29,210 --> 00:25:46,850
Speaker 1: would be cruel. More on that. After the break, sixty

337
00:25:46,930 --> 00:25:51,650
Speaker 1: six years after she created the first fairy photographs, Elsie

338
00:25:51,650 --> 00:25:56,690
Speaker 1: Wright was confessing. One of the letters that she wrote

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00:25:56,690 --> 00:26:00,170
Speaker 1: to Jeffrey Crawley at the British Journal of Photography hinted

340
00:26:00,210 --> 00:26:03,970
Speaker 1: at why it had taken her so long. Dear mister Crawley,

341
00:26:04,370 --> 00:26:06,690
Speaker 1: thank you for your letter revealing so much depth and

342
00:26:06,810 --> 00:26:09,370
Speaker 1: understanding of the pickle Francis and I got us cells

343
00:26:09,410 --> 00:26:12,170
Speaker 1: into on that day when our practical joke fell flat

344
00:26:12,210 --> 00:26:14,450
Speaker 1: on its face, when no one would believe we'd got

345
00:26:14,490 --> 00:26:17,890
Speaker 1: pictures of real fairies. Just imagine if they had, the

346
00:26:18,010 --> 00:26:20,090
Speaker 1: joke would have ended there, and then when we would

347
00:26:20,090 --> 00:26:24,010
Speaker 1: have told all instead, the laugh was on us. Elsie

348
00:26:24,010 --> 00:26:27,770
Speaker 1: imagined that when their parents saw the fairy photographs, they'd

349
00:26:27,810 --> 00:26:32,570
Speaker 1: be astonished. They would apologize for scolding Francis, and then

350
00:26:33,010 --> 00:26:35,770
Speaker 1: Elsie would reveal the trick and they'd all have a

351
00:26:35,810 --> 00:26:40,690
Speaker 1: good laugh together. Except that Arthur Wright never believed in

352
00:26:40,770 --> 00:26:45,170
Speaker 1: fairies for a second. He was scornful and angry when

353
00:26:45,210 --> 00:26:48,570
Speaker 1: the children would not explain how they'd done it. Elsie's

354
00:26:48,610 --> 00:26:51,730
Speaker 1: pride was wounded. She believed in her talent as an

355
00:26:51,730 --> 00:26:56,530
Speaker 1: illustrator and a photographer. With hindsight, Arthur Wright could have

356
00:26:56,570 --> 00:27:00,290
Speaker 1: got to the truth if his initial reaction had been gentler.

357
00:27:01,130 --> 00:27:06,170
Speaker 1: He missed the only chance because once Elsie had let

358
00:27:06,210 --> 00:27:09,050
Speaker 1: the lie linger. When was the moment for the truth?

359
00:27:10,330 --> 00:27:14,650
Speaker 1: When Polly Wright, Elsie's mother, returned from a spiritualist meeting

360
00:27:14,690 --> 00:27:19,010
Speaker 1: in nineteen nineteen, having told others of the photographs that

361
00:27:19,050 --> 00:27:24,170
Speaker 1: would humiliate her mother, when Edward Gardner, a fine gentleman,

362
00:27:24,290 --> 00:27:29,570
Speaker 1: requested copies, even worse, when Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, one

363
00:27:29,610 --> 00:27:32,850
Speaker 1: of the most famous men in the country, wrote separately

364
00:27:32,850 --> 00:27:38,890
Speaker 1: to both Elsie and her father calamitous. Conan Doyle's involvement

365
00:27:39,130 --> 00:27:41,930
Speaker 1: raised the stakes far beyond what any of them could

366
00:27:41,930 --> 00:27:45,690
Speaker 1: have imagined. Arthur Wright was a true fan of Conan

367
00:27:45,770 --> 00:27:49,450
Speaker 1: Doyle's and he couldn't quite believe that our Elsie, at

368
00:27:49,450 --> 00:27:53,090
Speaker 1: the bottom of the class, had the great man fooled.

369
00:27:54,410 --> 00:27:58,370
Speaker 1: Three years after her father's painfully dismissive reaction to the

370
00:27:58,410 --> 00:28:02,330
Speaker 1: original photographs, This must have been a real temptation for

371
00:28:02,450 --> 00:28:07,010
Speaker 1: Elsie to stretch her creative wings and prove her talents

372
00:28:07,290 --> 00:28:12,050
Speaker 1: on the biggest stage. Imagine she must have been exhilarated

373
00:28:12,170 --> 00:28:17,370
Speaker 1: and terrified all at once, and her father, Arthur Wright,

374
00:28:17,650 --> 00:28:22,090
Speaker 1: couldn't abide the suggestion of fraud the risk of social disgrace.

375
00:28:22,450 --> 00:28:26,290
Speaker 1: So was now the moment to confess. You could hardly

376
00:28:26,370 --> 00:28:31,290
Speaker 1: fault Elsie for biting her tongue. At first, Elsie Wright

377
00:28:31,450 --> 00:28:34,810
Speaker 1: had been trying to comfort Francis. Then she had been

378
00:28:34,810 --> 00:28:37,810
Speaker 1: showing off her talents as an artist and a photographer.

379
00:28:38,770 --> 00:28:43,050
Speaker 1: But as the deception continued, she began lying because it

380
00:28:43,090 --> 00:28:47,650
Speaker 1: would have been heartless to tell the truth. Edward Gardner

381
00:28:47,690 --> 00:28:51,090
Speaker 1: and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had so publicly put their

382
00:28:51,170 --> 00:28:55,010
Speaker 1: trust in Elsie and Francis and their photographs, and been

383
00:28:55,050 --> 00:28:57,410
Speaker 1: so mocked for it, that for the young women to

384
00:28:57,490 --> 00:29:03,770
Speaker 1: confess would be to humiliate both men utterly. Not for

385
00:29:03,810 --> 00:29:07,850
Speaker 1: the first time in human history, young women decided to

386
00:29:07,930 --> 00:29:14,450
Speaker 1: keep quiet to spare the fragile egos of men. Conan

387
00:29:14,530 --> 00:29:18,210
Speaker 1: Doyle had a long standing curiosity about the unseen and

388
00:29:18,290 --> 00:29:23,010
Speaker 1: the paranormal. Shortly before he heard about the fairy photographs,

389
00:29:23,050 --> 00:29:27,610
Speaker 1: this had firmed into a passionate belief in spiritualism, triggered

390
00:29:27,770 --> 00:29:33,330
Speaker 1: by a series of bereavements. First, his wife Louisa died

391
00:29:33,490 --> 00:29:37,450
Speaker 1: at the age of fifty. Then Conan Doyle lost both

392
00:29:37,490 --> 00:29:41,410
Speaker 1: his brother and his oldest son in the great flu

393
00:29:41,530 --> 00:29:45,450
Speaker 1: epidemic that followed the First World War. As Conan Doyle

394
00:29:45,570 --> 00:29:49,810
Speaker 1: was writing an essay about fairies, his mother, to whom

395
00:29:49,930 --> 00:29:54,890
Speaker 1: he had always been very close, also died. Edward Gardner

396
00:29:54,970 --> 00:29:59,450
Speaker 1: was in mourning too for his late wife. Both men,

397
00:29:59,770 --> 00:30:03,770
Speaker 1: it seems, were desperate to believe there was something on

398
00:30:03,810 --> 00:30:08,290
Speaker 1: the other side of death after a devastating war and

399
00:30:08,410 --> 00:30:13,330
Speaker 1: a deadly flu pandemic. They were not alone in that desperation.

400
00:30:14,490 --> 00:30:19,130
Speaker 1: Remember how popular spiritualism was, how many people were attempting

401
00:30:19,170 --> 00:30:23,890
Speaker 1: to contact their lost loved ones through seances. Elsie Wright

402
00:30:24,170 --> 00:30:27,570
Speaker 1: understood this very well. Remember that she had been working

403
00:30:27,650 --> 00:30:30,970
Speaker 1: in a photography studio, adding color to the black and

404
00:30:30,970 --> 00:30:35,650
Speaker 1: white portraits of dead soldiers, or creating composite images of

405
00:30:35,690 --> 00:30:40,410
Speaker 1: them and their families. The living pictured alongside the dead.

406
00:30:41,210 --> 00:30:45,530
Speaker 1: Elsie recalled, there were stacks and stacks of work, and

407
00:30:45,610 --> 00:30:48,050
Speaker 1: it was all rather sad, as most all the tickets

408
00:30:48,050 --> 00:30:55,250
Speaker 1: set on top killed, an action few young women could

409
00:30:55,250 --> 00:30:58,650
Speaker 1: have understood better what Conan Doyle and Gardner might be

410
00:30:58,690 --> 00:31:03,250
Speaker 1: going through. Elsie felt sorry for them. She agreed with

411
00:31:03,290 --> 00:31:06,050
Speaker 1: Francis that they would simply wait until the old men

412
00:31:06,170 --> 00:31:11,890
Speaker 1: passed away. In nineteen thirty, Sir Arthur did Elsie and

413
00:31:11,890 --> 00:31:15,410
Speaker 1: Francis were both in their twenties when it happened. The

414
00:31:15,490 --> 00:31:19,170
Speaker 1: New York Times headline noted that Conan Doyle's family were

415
00:31:19,250 --> 00:31:24,530
Speaker 1: waiting for a message from his spirit. All Francis and

416
00:31:24,530 --> 00:31:27,370
Speaker 1: Elsie had to do was to wait for Edward Gardner

417
00:31:27,370 --> 00:31:30,490
Speaker 1: to pass away and they could finally reveal the truth.

418
00:31:31,530 --> 00:31:37,330
Speaker 1: But that moment never seemed to arrive. Gardner lived until

419
00:31:37,690 --> 00:31:42,130
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, just shy of his a hundredth birthday,

420
00:31:42,530 --> 00:31:45,810
Speaker 1: and by then his son was also an evangelist for

421
00:31:45,850 --> 00:31:50,890
Speaker 1: the fairies. Elsie and Francis, both in their sixties, were

422
00:31:50,930 --> 00:31:57,770
Speaker 1: still trapped by their joke. From nineteen seventeen throughout the

423
00:31:57,890 --> 00:32:03,290
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Elsie dropped hints, telling journalists that the photographs

424
00:32:03,330 --> 00:32:07,970
Speaker 1: were pictures of figments of our imagination. Edward Gardner had

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00:32:08,010 --> 00:32:11,450
Speaker 1: always said that the fairs were manifestations of the psychic

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00:32:11,570 --> 00:32:17,010
Speaker 1: energy of the girls that Elsie's phrasing was distinctly ambiguous.

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00:32:18,050 --> 00:32:21,810
Speaker 1: It was only in nineteen eighty one that Gardner's son died.

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00:32:22,810 --> 00:32:27,650
Speaker 1: Francis was working on a tell all memoir. Neither woman

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00:32:27,770 --> 00:32:30,770
Speaker 1: wanted to be left dangling if the other one confessed.

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00:32:31,530 --> 00:32:35,890
Speaker 1: Tabloid journalists, academics and the British Journal of Photography were

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00:32:35,930 --> 00:32:40,730
Speaker 1: all sniffing around the story. Finally, the truth came out.

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Speaker 1: Just as Conan Doyle didn't know the full truth about

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Speaker 1: Elsie Wright, Elsie Wright can't have known the full truth

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00:32:51,010 --> 00:32:55,250
Speaker 1: about Conan Doyle. She would have had no idea, for example,

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00:32:55,450 --> 00:32:59,890
Speaker 1: that Conan Doyle's father, Charles, was afflicted first by depression,

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00:33:00,450 --> 00:33:05,250
Speaker 1: then by epilepsy, and finally by alcoholism. She wouldn't have

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00:33:05,370 --> 00:33:10,170
Speaker 1: known that Charles Altamont Doyle lived his final years at

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00:33:10,170 --> 00:33:14,650
Speaker 1: the Montrose Royal Lunatic Asylum. She wouldn't have known that

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00:33:14,770 --> 00:33:18,970
Speaker 1: in those final years in the asylum he sketched elegant

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00:33:19,210 --> 00:33:24,610
Speaker 1: pictures of fairies, one with a scrawled note, I have

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00:33:24,850 --> 00:33:29,450
Speaker 1: known such a creature. But she did know that Conan

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00:33:29,570 --> 00:33:33,450
Speaker 1: Doyle was a man in mourning. She didn't want to

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00:33:33,450 --> 00:33:37,530
Speaker 1: add to his pain. And so a joke that was

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00:33:37,570 --> 00:33:40,690
Speaker 1: supposed to last for a couple of hours ended up

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00:33:40,770 --> 00:33:46,130
Speaker 1: lasting sixty five years. The editor of the British Journal

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00:33:46,130 --> 00:33:50,490
Speaker 1: of Photography, Jeffrey Crawley, mused, if you take us the

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00:33:50,690 --> 00:33:55,570
Speaker 1: criterion of success coverage in the national media in columinches

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00:33:55,610 --> 00:33:59,690
Speaker 1: and television time, quite apart from articles, books and having

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00:33:59,730 --> 00:34:03,810
Speaker 1: a street name to commemorate your efforts, then Elsie's by

450
00:34:04,050 --> 00:34:07,930
Speaker 1: far the most successful photographer in the Graft's history. If

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00:34:07,930 --> 00:34:10,930
Speaker 1: it is remembered that that success has been based on

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00:34:11,010 --> 00:34:14,610
Speaker 1: the first photograph she ever took, then whether or not

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00:34:14,690 --> 00:34:17,850
Speaker 1: you believe in fairies, it has to be admitted that

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00:34:17,890 --> 00:34:24,570
Speaker 1: her record will probably remain unsurpassed. Elsie and Francis both

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00:34:24,690 --> 00:34:29,490
Speaker 1: died within a few years of Elsie's confession. Francis herself

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00:34:29,970 --> 00:34:34,570
Speaker 1: always maintained that even though the photographs were faked, she

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00:34:34,690 --> 00:34:40,850
Speaker 1: really had seen fairies. Fairies are famous for casting mischievous spells,

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00:34:41,650 --> 00:34:46,250
Speaker 1: and I can't help thinking about Elsie and Francis heading

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00:34:46,290 --> 00:34:50,690
Speaker 1: down to cottingly Beck that summer over a century ago,

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00:34:51,570 --> 00:34:55,930
Speaker 1: where the water danced and the leaves provided shelter from

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00:34:55,970 --> 00:35:00,690
Speaker 1: the blazing sun and from the skeptical eyes of the

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00:35:00,770 --> 00:35:06,690
Speaker 1: grown ups. Elsie was cradling the fragile camera. Francis had

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00:35:06,730 --> 00:35:11,010
Speaker 1: Elsie's beautiful drawings and pocket full of hatpins to prop

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00:35:11,050 --> 00:35:17,370
Speaker 1: them up. Together, they cast a spell lasted a lifetime.

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Speaker 1: For a full list of our sources, please see the

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00:35:49,610 --> 00:36:02,650
Speaker 1: show notes at Tim Harford dot com. Portionary Tales is

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00:36:02,690 --> 00:36:06,770
Speaker 1: written by me Tim Harford with Andrew Wright. It's produced

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00:36:06,770 --> 00:36:10,770
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley with support from Courtney Guarino and Emily Vaughan.

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00:36:11,250 --> 00:36:14,410
Speaker 1: The sound design and original music is the work of

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00:36:14,490 --> 00:36:19,170
Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. Julia Barton edited the scripts. It features the

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00:36:19,250 --> 00:36:24,250
Speaker 1: voice talents of Ben Crowe, Melanie Guttridge, Stella Harford, and

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00:36:24,410 --> 00:36:28,290
Speaker 1: Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without

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00:36:28,290 --> 00:36:33,130
Speaker 1: the work of Mia LaBelle, Jacob Weisberg, Heather Fane, John Schnarz,

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00:36:33,650 --> 00:36:39,450
Speaker 1: Carlie Migliori, Eric Sandler, Royston Basserve, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Murano,

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00:36:39,810 --> 00:36:43,690
Speaker 1: and Yellow Lakhan and Maya Kanig. Cautionary Tales is a

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00:36:43,730 --> 00:36:47,650
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please

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00:36:47,650 --> 00:36:51,010
Speaker 1: remember to share, rate and review, and if you want

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00:36:51,050 --> 00:36:53,530
Speaker 1: to hear the show, add free and listen to four

479
00:36:53,650 --> 00:36:58,250
Speaker 1: exclusive cautionary tale shorts. Then sign up for Pushkin Plus

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00:36:58,250 --> 00:37:01,530
Speaker 1: on the show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin

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00:37:01,810 --> 00:37:15,690
Speaker 1: dot fm, slash Plus