The Cottingley Fairies Hoax: 1917 - 1920

Frances Griffiths in 1917, aged 9.

The Global Art Market Newswire

by Naomi Rea, April 2, 2019

Faked ‘Fairy’ Photographs From a Famous 20th-Century Hoax Could Fetch $90,000 at Auction

Just young children at the time of the hoax, the two women behind the photographs maintained their incredible story for decades.

A photograph of Francis "Alice" Griffiths taken in 1917 by he cousin Elsie "Iris" Wright. SSPL/Getty Images.

A set of rare photographs of one of the biggest hoaxes of the 20th century are due to go under the hammer in a UK auction house in April. The black and white images, which purported to capture real fairies on camera, spread like wildfire in the early 1900s. They are expected to go for as much as £70,000 ($90,000).

The set of four images, known as the “Cottingley Fairies,” were taken by two schoolgirls in their garden in the British village of Cottingley in the summer of 1917, with a second set being taken in 1920. 

The girls, sixteen-year-old Elsie Wright (1901 - 1988) and her nine-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths (1907 - 1986), took the snaps on Wright’s father’s camera, using paper cut-outs of fairies to stage an ethereal fairy encounter. The photographs will be up for sale at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on April 11 (2019).

At another sale of “Cottingley Fairies” photographs last fall at the auction house, the lots went for £20,000 ($26,000), way above the pre-sale high estimate £1,000 ($1,300).

Their imaginative hoax garnered a lot of publicity at the time, especially after Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle took interest in the images and used them to illustrate an article he had written about fairies. 

"Fairies photographed" article by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in The Strand Magazine, Dec 1920

It wasn't until 1978 that serious doubt emerged about the authenticity of Francis and Elsie's fairy photographs. A researcher named James Randi found drawings of fairies that looked very much like the ones in the photos in a book called "Princess Mary’s Gift Book", published in 1914. As it happens, 16 year old Elsie was a talented drawer and worked part-time at a printing company.

Drawings of fairies appearing in a popular book in the 1920s "Princess Mary's Gift Book"
bear a close resemblance to the Cottingley Fairies.

Although public opinion was split on the photographs’ authenticity, the two girls maintained their story right through to 1983, when they finally admitted the photos had been faked. Even then, the younger woman, Frances Griffiths, continued to insist that a fifth photograph she says was taken accidentally in 1920, titled "The Fairy Bower", although the title on the photograph says "Fairy Sunbath, Elves, etc", was real.

The fifth and so called “real” photograph of fairies and elves, from 1920.
Francis Griffiths accidentally dropped the camera in the grass and it activated.
Many people over the years believe they can see fairies in this shot. SSPL/Getty Images.

Griffith’s daughter Christine Lynch is selling that photo, along with the others, ahead of the forged photoshoot’s 100th anniversary. “It’s time they went to a museum where someone else can see them and enjoy them,” The 88-year old told the Guardian. “They haven’t been on view at all so it’s nice for someone else to see them.”

The images, which each feature at least one of the girls, were made on the eldest’s father’s Midg quarter-plate camera; Elsie Wright had drawn illustrations copied from a popular children’s book and had drawn wings on them; Together, they then cut out the cardboard figures and propped the little puppets up with hatpins in various locations. In their confession, they explained that they had disposed of the figures in a nearby stream after the shoot.

Lynch said that the deception had a lasting negative effect on her mother, who was uncomfortable with the dishonesty and the attention. Lynch says that her mother’s older cousin Elsie “swore her to secrecy, and she said it ruined her life because she was looking over her shoulder the whole time. As a little girl in 1920 she was not used to publicity and she didn’t like it at all, and it haunted her.”

The rare vintage copies of the hoax are going on sale alongside other photographs and a camera from that period at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Gloucestershire on April 11 (2019).

A photograph of Elsie Wright taken by Frances Griffiths in 1920 using Elsie’s father
Arthur’s Midg quarter-plate camera. SSPL/Getty Images.

A photograph of Elsie ‘Iris’ Wright, taken by Frances ‘Alice’ Griffiths in 1920. SSPL/Getty Images.

A photograph of Elsie Wright, this time with a "Gnome' (a kind of male elf), taken by Frances
Griffiths in 1917 using Elsie’s father Arthur’s Midg quarter-plate camera. SSPL/Getty Images.

Addendum by site administrator Tony Magee: In 1917, photography was still a relatively recent concept and not many people owned cameras. But newspapers and other publications did and made great use of the photographic medium. Many people believed that if something appeared in photographic from, particularly if it was published in a newspaper, it was real. This added huge weight to the general public believing that Francis and Elsie’s fairy photos were genuine.

Article first published at artnetnews website, April 2, 2019

https://news.artnet.com/market/famous-fake-fairy-photographs-head-auction-1506307