Fairies Under The Spotlight: an article by GF Willmetts.

Anyone can be faked out. A lot depends on beliefs. Take Arthur Conan Doyle and the Cottingley fairies. Despite writing Sherlock Holmes, he still had a belief in fairies from his spiritualist upbringing. The photographs made by cousins 16-year-old Elsie Wright and 9-year-old Frances Griffiths sustained that belief. We can’t say we aren’t free of such fakery.

Look at the surgeon’s photograph of the Loch Ness Monster, avoiding background detail and clipped by the press, making it look far bigger than the model actually filmed. It was only seen in context; then scans showed three large mobile things in Loch Ness, so it’s a grey area. Photographs of fairies are a lot rarer, as few had cameras.

Let’s go back to Conan Doyle. The book says the girls took their illustrations from a book called ‘Princess Mary’s Gift Book’ from 1914. I pulled a copy at a decent price recently. It is a beautiful book that contains colour plates affixed to the pages, black and white illustrations, and many text stories. Only one colour plate had a fairy in it, and that was tiny and a flash of light. The other was a simple black and white ink drawing. It, too, looked nothing like the fairies in their photographs. It was easy to miss page 104, where Claude A. Shepperson had a three-fairy black and white picture.

It might have inspired one of the photos, but not all, so seeking out some other books he illustrated has been difficult and after the deadline here. Every text refers to this book, and yet you do have to wonder how many carried on with the reference without actually looking up the book? We’ve seen the same phenomenon in modern-day text on the Net. People pick paragraphs up and maybe tweak them, but they don’t confirm the evidence by checking the research themselves.

There’s even a story by Conan Doyle in this same book called ‘Bimbash Joyce’, so it’s not unlikely that he wouldn’t have heard of this charity book whose profits were donated to The Queen’s “Work For Women” Fund, acting in conjunction with The National Relief Fund. Certainly, if he had viewed the same image I have seen, he would not have made the same connection. I’ve included both here.

We have to assume the girls lacked access to a new book. Even so, there were a lot of fairy tale books around the turn of the 20th century, let alone anything earlier. I have books that my parents collected, so it’s likely that a similar situation existed in earlier times. Hardbacks were kept and passed onto children, et al. If anything, the real problem is why didn’t someone identify the fairies rather than simply say ‘Princess Mary’s Gift Book’? A lot of people owned this book. The original photos were in sepia and had colour tints added by publishers or were faint for easy viewing. My dad had, and I still own, a set of these tints. It’s labour-intensive painting a photograph. Elsie Wright worked at a photographer’s studio, but I doubt if her work helped with the photos. The adults back then, including Conan Doyle, weren’t totally gullible, and all were looking for photo fakery but not suspected it was the physical composition that was photographed. Conan Doyle was especially careful because he was putting his name to an article, and even in his book on the subject, there is not a mention of his spiritualist beliefs.

OK, time to dig a bit deeper. There are several books out there on the subject, but let’s start off with the aforementioned ‘The Coming Of The Fairies: The Cottingley Incident’ by Arthur Conan Doyle, who provides a history and the various people involved. Cousins 16-year-old Elsie Wright and 9-year-old Francis Griffiths always told Wright’s father that when they went playing out in the fields, they were playing with fairies. Elsie convinced him to loan her a camera and took a photo. It wasn’t even developed for a while. When it was taken, we had the initial photograph, and even Elsie was astonished by how well it turned out. A second photo was taken of a group of fairies flying by Francis.

Please remember, these cameras were only capable of capturing a single photograph at a time on a plate. When word got out, the photos were thought to be fake, and the negatives were requested and tested by various people, including the Kodak company themselves. The conclusions were that there was no double exposure and first generation. If anything, the second photo was underexposed. Conan Doyle’s involvement was writing an article for ‘The Strand’ newspaper, and as he was asked to keep their names confidential, he used fake names. That changed later. The cousins later took three more photos using a different camera, likely employing the same physical trick. I can’t help but wonder if they believed they would have come under suspicion the second time. Being young, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were easier to go along with the pretence than admit the deception.

Reading this book and subsequent writings clearly leads to the conclusion that Conan Doyle bears all the blame. Back then, there was no evidence to support the widespread belief in fairies. There were many accusations of fakes with the five photos back then, but they were given far more scrutiny than the 1933 photo of Nessie, and no camera fakery was involved, which was true. The girls skilfully employed cut-outs to conceal the supports. Verification would be a lot different today. You certainly wouldn’t have left the girls unsupervised, or at least covertly, to see what is going on.

The main issue lies in the extent of your beliefs. I mean, where do you stand with Nessie and the various Sasquatch manifestations? Despite some frauds, there is still enough physical evidence to think there is something there. If interdimensional creatures are considered fairies, then one would expect to see more evidence of their existence. I’m using the modern-day term ‘interdimensional’ deliberately, as, back in the day, fairies were ‘seen’ as existing in a different plane and quickly vanishing.

We all know the photos were faked, and they only intended them for their family, but then things got out of control. What could they do but go along with it and take three more photos? From my modern perspective, the cleverness lay in concealing the supports used for positioning. The first photo even had a waterfall in the background, supporting the lack of blurred creatures. The other photos were a lot closer up and hiding background detail to provide scale. When I saw the photos back in the 1960s, picture quality and size didn’t provide much opportunity to look close up. The flying creatures show neither shadows nor sun reflection, and the sun’s position is indiscernible.

Joe Cooper’s 1990 book, ‘The Case Of The Cottingley Fairies’, has done a lot of my research for me, especially as the cousins are both now dead, but he had a chance to talk to them. Clearly, the book covers many of the same points. Some of the logic fails to make sense.

If anything, it’s a prank on their father that got out of hand, and I suspect even they were surprised how charming the first two photos were. The second three photos were with a different camera, and they were given more photo plates, which were supposedly used to photograph their friends and the village. I am repeating this because search engines may only focus on a few lines.

It’s pointed out that Elsie Wright did a lot of drawing and painting, especially fairies, although one of the investigators found no sign of them when he checked their bedrooms looking for cutouts. One of her paintings is in the book’s photo plates, but it’s a shaky Shepperson copy with none of the photos’ sleek lines. Upon examining the photos, it’s difficult to discern any pencil or ink lines, given that they are clearly watercoloured. A child would have added detail even if the camera didn’t pick it up.

It’s also of note that the first two photos in ‘The Strand’ magazine were enhanced to make the fairies sharper and cropped to focus on them. The original photo of the group of fairies was originally under-exposed. Considering that many people at the time believed fairies existed and glowed, it is understandable that they might have accepted the indistinct appearance of the photos. The photo authorities examined the images for any signs of fakery, similar to how we would today, rather than considering the possibility that the fakery occurred off camera. Even Conan Doyle examined the photos for signs of fakery, indicating that no one was immediately accepting them as real. When examining the photos, they evoke a surreal feeling; if the cameras of that era had used rolls of film instead of plates, it would have been possible to determine whether the fairies had moved, adding more depth to the analysis.

The frequent cropping of the picture to a close-up will be apparent when you look at the group of fairies flying in photo one. Viewing the photo at its original size provides better context for the background. If they really wanted to do that, they would have had close-ups.

I did consider looking for the other books. ‘Fairies: A Book Of Real Fairies’ by Edward L. Gardner was originally published in 1945 and has had a few reprints since, but very few are on the market, and they are costly to justify exploring.

For many generations, mankind has held the belief that other non-primate humanoid beings live beside us, though they are not always seen. Various mythologies certainly feature these beings, which have helped propagate belief in them. Even playwright William Shakespeare used them in ‘A Midsummer’s Night Dream’, probably the closest he got to our fantasy genre before it existed. To just dismiss the belief as being something from the early 20th century would be doing a disservice. All the general public really wanted was some sort of proof.

Reading Janet Bord’s book, ‘Fairies: Real Encounters With Little People’, even she doubts the stories, as there are rarely any first-hand accounts. One thing that does become obvious is that the little ones are invariably 2 or 3 feet tall, frequently dressed in red, and love dancing and playing pranks. The sheer height alone should have raised suspicions about the cousins’ photos.

It is interesting that sightings of these mini-people have been reported worldwide and have become part of mythology, likely influenced by film representations after the 1930s. Similarly, the sasquatch is also part of this phenomenon; reports of very tall hairy beings have even emerged in tropical regions where people are unfamiliar with the Canadian/American version. If there is anything instilled in the human psyche, it is the notion that something on the edge of reality can only be perceived by a select few, and this idea is prevalent. If we take that generalisation, where do the likes of the Loch Ness Monster and UAPs stand? There’s been many fake photos amongst them, but even viable evidence from many people over the years tends to put them in a different category. If there are real fairy-like small beings out there, then they appear to have disappeared to wherever they came from.

So let’s be fair to Arthur Conan Doyle. He wrote the two articles in ‘The Strand’ magazine at the request of others and, like many people, examined the photographs for signs of fakery before publishing them. I doubt that anyone could have anticipated the extent of exposure this topic would receive over the years, nor can I explain why others did not produce their own photographic evidence.

© GF Willmetts 2025

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NB Photos used only for article reference and evidence. No copyright infringement intended.