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In 1917, two cousins used a borrowed camera to photograph drawn fairy figures supported by hatpins at Cottingley Beck. Arthur Conan Doyle and Edward Gardner promoted the pictures as evidence of fairies, while sceptics questioned both the figures and the investigation.
They kept the secret for sixty-six years.
1917
Elsie Wright (16) and Frances Griffiths (9) make cardboard fairy cutouts from a children's book illustration. They push them into Cottingley Beck's bank with hatpins and take a photograph. A private joke that escaped all control.
5
Total fairy photographs produced, 1917–1920. Three more taken with cameras supplied by Arthur Conan Doyle.
1914
Publication year of Princess Mary's Gift Book, the illustrated charity anthology whose fairy drawings Elsie copied.
£20K+
Two original photographs sold in 2018 for over £20,400 — ten times their pre-sale estimate.
The Evidence
The Cardboard Cutouts
Elsie copied illustrations by artist Claude Shepperson from Princess Mary's Gift Book (1914), a charity anthology that sold 604,884 copies. She cut the figures with her aunt's tailor's scissors, mounted them on card, and fixed them with hatpins pushed into the bank. Staging, contrast and reproduction quality helped conceal the supports. Fred Gettings traced the source around 1977, before Randi publicized further analysis.
The Expert Enhancement
Harold Snelling judged the pictures to be straightforward exposures and produced improved reproductions for publication. Conan Doyle's own account says he took negatives to Kodak, whose examiners declined to certify them as authentic evidence of fairies. A photograph could be technically straightforward while recording a staged paper subject.
The Fashionable Fairies
Sceptics noted almost immediately that the fairy figures had strikingly fashionable hairstyles — the swept-back bobs and Edwardian illustration styles of the 1910s rather than the wild, timeless appearance of genuine supernatural beings. The Westminster Gazette reproduced the photographs alongside paper dolls for comparison. The comparison was uncomfortable. The contemporary dispute included hope, curiosity and prompt scepticism; grief cannot establish a single national response.
The Sixty-Six-Year Secret
The First Photographs
Elsie and Frances take the first two fairy photographs at Cottingley Beck using Arthur Wright's Midg camera. Wright develops them, suspects cardboard cutouts, and locks the camera away.
An Epoch-Making Event
Arthur Conan Doyle publishes "Fairies Photographed" in The Strand Magazine. The photographs attract endorsements, scepticism and widespread interest.
The Source Identified
Fred Gettings traces the dancing figures to Shepperson's illustration in Princess Mary's Gift Book. Randi later publicizes photographic analysis; the admitted hatpins are distinct from reported threads in enhancements.
The Confession
Elsie Wright sends a written admission to the British Journal of Photography. Frances confirms photos 1–4 were faked — but maintains the fifth photograph was real until her death in 1986.
CT Scan
Researchers CT-scan the Midg and Cameo cameras at the University of Bradford using equipment capable of 7-micron resolution. The cameras are now held at the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford. No fairies found.
Key Figures
Arthur Conan Doyle
Creator of Sherlock Holmes — the most rigorous mind in English detective fiction — and one of the most credulous figures in the history of British spiritualism. Having lost his son to influenza in 1918 and his brother in 1919, Doyle used the photographs to argue that the dead were near and the world was merciful. He died in 1930 still convinced the photographs were genuine.
Edward Gardner
The Theosophical Society lecturer who discovered the photographs and brought them to Conan Doyle's attention. Gardner arranged the expert examination, supplied the girls with cameras and marked plates for the 1920 session, and spent fifty years defending the photographs' authenticity. He lived to be exactly one hundred years old, dying in 1969 without ever changing his mind.
They Wanted to Believe
Elsie and Frances were not especially skilled deceivers. The cardboard was cardboard. The hatpins were hatpins. The source was a children's book.
The women later described embarrassment at contradicting prominent adult believers. Postwar grief shaped some responses, but the pictures also attracted scepticism, commercial interest and curiosity. There was no single national reaction.
The surviving letters let the women's accounts be read beside the interpretations that adults had publicized.
Get the Full Book
Follow the photographs from their Yorkshire origins to the later admissions that changed their story.