Whether you believe in the paranormal or not, people throughout history have used trickery to simulate the supernatural for their own gain. What follows are the strange cases of two such performers from British history:
- Mary Bateman, a fraudster, thief, murderess and possessor of a chicken that predicted the end of the world
- Helen Duncan, an ectoplasm-spewing medium who worried the minds behind the D-Day landings and was the last person to be imprisoned under the 1735 Witchcraft Act
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| It turns out the "Prophet Hen" was just an unfortunate, normal chicken... (Ben Moreland) |
Mary Bateman and "The Prophet Hen of Leeds"
There's a British broadsheet from the 20th of March in 1809 that recounts executions at the York Castle gallows. It was intended to be printed and sold on the day of the executions (much like a brochure for a modern-day show) and one of the condemned contained within was Mary Bateman, forfeiting her life for witchcraft and murder.
It seems this was a bit of sensationalism on the part of the papers, as witchcraft was no longer punishable by death. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 (passed by Parliament in 1736) repealed the laws that treated witchcraft as a capital offence, instead specifying that claiming to have magical powers was the crime and that punishments should be fines or imprisonment. Bateman was to be executed for her part in the murder of Rebecca Perigo, but she did indeed claim to have uncanny powers - and at one point claimed to possess a chicken that prophesized the end of the world.
Mary seems to have taken to crime at a young age, stealing from employers and those sharing the same buildings as her. She also dabbled in fraud, purchasing items under other customer's names (and on their credit) or collecting clothing for charity... which she later sold for her own profit. Supposedly her husband discovered her criminal habits when returning home one day, he found that she'd sold off all of the furniture to pay off an angry victim. A few years later, Mary established herself as a fortuneteller and worker of little miracles in Leeds, also joining the following of a local prophetess (Joanna Southcott) who was predicting the end of the world. She offered cures, charms, potions and prayers (all for a small fee) and in 1805 she cashed in on this groundwork with "The Prophet Hen of Leeds."
So it goes without saying that Mary claimed that this was no ordinary chicken. The poultry in question was laying eggs inscribed with the message "Crist is coming" - a poorly-spelled reference to the biblical second coming of Christ and the subsequent end of the world. As well as spreading the message to the good folk of Leeds, she'd charge a penny to view the eggs - and of course, offer her own humble charms and protections for those who felt trepidation about the coming apocalypse.
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| Did you know you can etch eggshells with vinegar? (Nick Fewings) |
It was another scam that made Mary into a murderer. Between 1806 and 1807, she would be consulted by Rebecca and William Perigo regarding persistent unexplained pain felt by Rebecca - something the local country doctors had suggested was the work of a curse. Mary referred to the couple to "Miss Blythe" (an alter ego) who corresponded by letter - and they ended up sending roughly 70 guineas (a major amount) to the fictional wise-woman for her charms and treatments. In 1807 the couple began a course of powders prescribed by "Blythe" to ward off an incoming sickness. The pair were to mix the powder into puddings and eat them - they were also warned against consulting doctors or letting anyone else taste the puddings.
Whatever was in those powders, it wasn't good for humans. The pair developed swollen tongues, discolored features and internal aches, with Rebecca dying after a few weeks. Amazingly, William continued to subscribe to Blythe's treatments... but eventually the penny dropped. He investigated some of the lucky charms provided by Blythe and Mary, finding that they contained pennies and scrap paper rather than the guineas Mary had told them. Soon Mary found herself accused of murder - and with her criminal history, there was no way she was talking her way out. A search of her home revealed many of the belongings given to "Miss Blythe" by the Perigo family, along with poison.
Mary was publicly hanged before a thousands-strong crowd and members of the public could view her corpse for a few pennies (which is grimly ironic, really) before being dissected at Leeds Infirmary.
The indignities didn't stop there, and parts of Bateman continued to circulate after her death. Strips of her skin were sold as protective charms and more of it was used for anthropodermic bibliopegy - binding copies of two books (Sir John Cheeke's "Hurt of Sedition: How Grievous it is to a Common Welth" and Richard Braithwaite’s "Arcadian Princess") previously kept in a collection at Mexborough House. The tip of her tongue ended up in the curio collection of the Ripon Prison governor, while her skeleton was articulated and displayed - in recent history it was featured at Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, but was removed to Leeds University in 2015 following a complaint from a living descendent.
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| Séances had entered the popular culture of Britain by the 20th century... (Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales) |
Helen Duncan, Ectoplasm... and Ethereal Espionage?
Did you know that the last person to be imprisoned under the 1735 Witchcraft Act in Britain was Helen Duncan in 1944, a medium, spiritualist and (authorities seem to have believed) a threat to wartime Britain's national security.
Helen Duncan (a.k.a. "Hellish Nell") earned her nickname by issuing dire prophecies to her classmates when growing up in Callander, Scotland. Having married and produced six children, she began holding séances in the 1920s as a way of earning a little cash to help with the bills.
These were rather theatrical events, it seems. Holding court in a dimly lit room, glowing ectoplasm would issue forth from her mouth while fluttering figures (including her spirit guide "Peggy") drifted in the shadows, answering questions in sepulchral voices and sometimes even touching participants.
Not everyone was convinced. In 1931, an investigation by the London Spiritualist Alliance determined that the ectoplasm produced by Duncan was of rather mundane origins - in fact, it usually comprised of cheesecloth, paper and egg. Duncan would swallow this mixture and regurgitate it when needed - which may explain why she resisted allowing the LSA to examine her by x-ray prior to a séance. The visiting phantoms were also revealed to be crude dummies assembled from clothing, coat hangers and magazines, a fact revealed when
- In 1928 Harvey Metcalfe brought a camera to a séance for some surprise flash photography (you can see Duncan connected to her props, which she may have voiced with ventriloquism)
- In 1933 a séance visitor grabbed "Peggy" when she appeared, revealing her to be nothing more than a vest
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| HMS Victory served as Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar. It's still maintained and kept at Portsmouth. (Mike Norris) |
Duncan wasn't dissuaded by her brush with the law. By 1941 she'd moved down to Portsmouth and was performing her séances there. Portsmouth is more-or-less the home of the British Royal Navy - and during World War II, she had no shortage of customers seeking messages from missing or dead sailors.
It was in one of these séances that Duncan claimed to have been contacted by a sailor named Sid, who'd gone down with HMS Barham. That's where things get creepy, as HMS Barham had indeed been sunk with over 860 crew... but the government had elected to cover up the loss for the sake of morale and (in theory) the general public should not have known.
Perhaps Duncan had a source of information (not necessarily an otherworldly one, as gossip, rumor or even German propaganda could have clued her in) or just made a lucky guess, but word got back to the authorities - and they were not happy. In 1944 police raided one of séances, arresting Duncan and three other participants. She was initially charged under the 1824 Vagrancy Act (which covered fortune-telling and carried fairly light penalties) but her offence was then increased to contravening the 1735 Witchcraft Act. She would be found guilty and imprisoned at Holloway Prison in London for nine months, during which time she held séances in her cell.
The timing of the raid is interesting given that Britain and its allies were preparing for Operation Overlord (or the D-Day Landings.) It's been suggested that certain people in positions of authority wanted to keep Duncan under lock and key to prevent any more leaks of classified information - an interesting theory, since the court refused to allow her to demonstrate a séance (a key piece of evidence) and denied her the right to appeal her conviction to the House of Lords.
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| D-Day was a massive undertaking - this is a section of portable harbor towed from England to France and used to help unload for the Normandy Landings! (Jordi Vich Navarro) |
Not everyone was in favor of this strategy though - a personal minute from the Prime Minister Winston Churchill questioned why an act from 1735 was being used in a modern court of justice and referred to the case as obsolete tomfoolery and public sentiment seemed to agree. The Witchcraft Act would be replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act of 1951, which required that someone with "intent to deceive purports to act as a spiritualistic medium or to exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar powers" must also be requesting some kind of reward for doing so before it became a crime.
Despite her experiences, Duncan continued her ways and had yet another encounter with the law in 1956 when she was arrested while performing another séance. Whether it was the disruption, the stress or simple natural causes, she joined her own collection of spirits around five weeks later.