The Cottingley Fairy Photographs

Taken from a book published by Edward L Gardner Entitled “Fairies”

Today’s article we discussed these beautiful fairy photographs taken by two young ladies in 1917.

We now continue today with the interview that took place:

Cottingley Glen

From Bradford the tram takes one to Cottingley village, and I reached the address given at about 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon. Mrs. Wright having written that she and her husband would be pleased to meet me. Their cottage proved to be one that had its garden on the edge of a small Valley Stream, they’re big they’re called it, given excess to a Glen of wild foliage running up to the moor. Mrs. Wright opened the door and off to introducing her daughter Elsie, a shy pretty girl of about 16, I explained something of my quest and then comma for an hour i heard of the incidents leading up to the photographs. All my queries were answered with willingness and candor.

The story ran thus. Three years earlier in July 1917, a young cousin from South Africa had come to stay with the rights. This was Francis Griffiths, then 10 years old. Mrs. Griffiths had come to, to live with her sister Mrs. wright, while her husband was in France as a volunteer soldier of the south African contingent. The two girls Elsie Wright and Francis Griffiths, then 13 and 10 years old, were thus together for the summer of 1917 and they spent most of their time in the beautiful Glen at the back of the cottage. There they played, and repeatedly spoke of the fairies they met in the Glen. The parents took little notice of this and merely chaffed the children, thinking they imagined most of what they described.

Then it happened that Mr. Wright had a small camera, a Midg quarter plate left with him by a relative and he amused himself taking snaps and developing them in the scullery cupboard. It had been in use only about a month when, one day it gave Elsie and idea. It was on a Saturday at midday meal that there had been some bantering about the fairies and Elsie retorted: look here for that, if you’ll let me have your camera and tell me how it works I’ll get a photo of the fairies. We’ve been playing with them this morning. Mr. Wright laughed at them and said he wasn’t going to have his plates spoilt and put them off. But the girls persisted and worried him and at last he gave way. Putting one plate only in the box he set it showed Elsie the trigger and send them off delighted. In less than an hour the girls were back and Elsie called out to her father, who was spending the Saturday afternoon in the garden, we’ve got the photo, I believe. Will you look? Mr. Wright took the camera, saying he would see it in the evening and they had to be satisfied with that.

The story had got so far when Mr. Wright came into his tea, after introductions, we all set down to this good Yorkshire meal together. I learned then that Mister Wright was the working manager of a small estate nearby, looked after an electrical plant, among other things, and generally attended to the outdoor work of the house there. Of the haughty Yorkshire type, of forthright speech and character, with the sense of humour and like his wife, with a very cheerful disposition. Confirming the account of events so far, he then told me of his experience when developing the plate that evening three years earlier. With Elsie wedged in beside him in the small cupboard he put the plate in the dish, fully expecting only a blur and was startled to see flash up, almost at once, the dark figures which he took to be some white Swans. Elsie saw them too and hearing her father’s exclamation, shouted to Francis outside, we’ve got them; You’ll see. When the plate was finished Mr. Wright put it aside, saying they’d get a print in the morning and see what the Swans looked like. Really uncertain as to what the children could have got hold of, as he told me, he took a sun print in the morning with some curiosity and was amazed at what he saw.

His questioning of the girls did not at all satisfy him, though they insisted that the figures in the photograph were the fair head so often draft stop nothing would induce the children to give any other explanation, that the parents felt convinced that somehow they were being deceived. Mr. Wright told me at this point that neither he nor his wife had ever accepted the story given by the girls, notwithstanding that a month later they got the second photograph. So convinced however, did Mr. Wright that the figures must be made of paper or the like that he went up to the Glen to the waterfall, which he recognised, and reached all about for scraps of paper cuttings. While the children were away he and his wife searched the girl’s bedrooms too, for some sign as to the way it had been managed, but neither in the glean nor in the cottage could they discover anything. Not having found either of the girls untruthful, both were really concerned at the persistence with which they maintained their explanation, so the parents decided to let the matter alone. The camera was not learned to the girls again, and beyond taking a few prints during the first weeks the two negatives were put away with some papers and books on a shelf and were there for three years, till Mrs Wright happened to attend the local lecture referred to.

Elsie and I then walked up the Glen that I might see the actual sights of the photographs and verify them and I was glad of the opportunity of questioning the elder girl quietly by herself and of talking things through. We soon found the spots and the surroundings were unmistakably the same as photographed. I was interested to notice several very large toadstools on the bank of the stream and picked a couple to take home. Elsie explained where she knelt when taking Francis and the group of dancing fairies and while we were there I asked why Francis was not looking at the fairies instead of gazing at the camera. The reply was: why, Frances wanted me to take her photograph directly, we got out of the garden, she was crazy for it; I said we might just as well take her with the fairies, but there it was. Francis apparently was much more interested in the camera that they had for the first time than she was in dancing fairies she could see any day and from her point of view I suppose it was understandable.

The answer of Esie’s is typical of the simplicity are met with throughout the investigation. Indeed, that which impressed me most in our conversation was the utter unconcernedness of Elsie at the affair being anything special. She had seen and played with fairy creatures since she could remember anything and actually to photograph them did not appeal to her as being very extraordinary. I might mention here though I will deal with it more adequately later, that both the girls were good simple clairvoyance, quite unspoiled because unaware of it. They had the advantage also, of being able to see only the subtler physical region and not anything beyond, their extrasensory perception being strictly limited; Hence there was very little confusion what distortion in the focus of their clairvoyance.

As we discussed the incidents again that evening, both Mr. and Mrs Wright were amazed indeed when I told them, for the first time, of the experts reports on the two negatives. Why, exclaimed Mr. Wright, it looks as if there might be real after all! I’ve been should then on the use Sir Arthur Conan Doyle proposed to make of the photographs, but at once they all demurred. They felt it as a real difficulty and it took all our could do by way of persuasion to obtain their consent to the publication. One condition was insisted on. They their proper names should not be printed, northern of the village. I would very much rather have had permission to give the correct names and all particulars, but I had to be content with the conditions made. I suggested then a money payment, as Sir Arthur had wished this, but Mrs Wright declined very firmly, almost indignantly, saying that if the photographs were genuine then they shouldn’t be soiled not being paid for.

Conning over the position in my hotel at Bradford, for I was spending some time in the neighbourhood, I had to admit that the two probable motives for fraudulent work, namely money and notoriety, were obviously quite absent. It is but fair too, that I should give my testimony here to Mr. and Mrs. Wright’s sincerity and candor and in my opinion, their absolute honesty. If any fraudulent intent and purpose whatever label behind these photographs it was not, I was satisfied, within their knowledge. In that view, I had to allow, cut out any likelihood, almost the possibility, of fraud, because of Mr. Wright’s own testimony to the circumstances of the first photograph. The loading of the camera with a single plate, the time the girls were away, the development of the plate by himself that evening, the inability to devise any photographic trickery, all these facts seemed entirely to favour a genuine happening. However unique and strange. Yet such an event as fairy photographs needed to be supported by evidence as incontrovertible as it was possible to obtain. So at my last visit to the right family on that trip I made a further suggestion.

Is this story unfolds I will continue to publish the rest of it Sir please keep your eyes open for the next article.