Conan Doyle and the Cottingley Fairies

The story as it is told

In 1917, in the Yorkshire village of Cottingley, two young cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, went down to a stream and came back with a photograph of fairies. They took more. Real fairies, the girls said, and the camera had caught them.

Photography experts examined the plates and could find no trick. And then the story found its champion. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the most famous writer of detective stories in the world, put his name behind the pictures.

What we can confirm

In July 1917, Frances Griffiths was living with her cousin Elsie Wright's family in Cottingley, West Yorkshire. Frances kept coming home with wet feet from the beck, a local word for a stream, and said she went there to see the fairies. Elsie borrowed her father's camera to prove it (University of Leeds Library). The National Science and Media Museum, which holds the cameras, says Elsie was 15 and treated it as a practical joke on the adults, while Frances, then 10, wanted to justify herself.

The photographs stayed a family joke until 1920. Elsie's mother showed them at a Theosophical Society meeting, and they reached Edward L. Gardner, a Theosophist lecturer, and through him Conan Doyle (Bradford Museums). Gardner gave the girls new cameras and marked plates, and they produced three more fairy pictures in August 1920.

Doyle published the first two pictures in the Strand's Christmas Number, December 1920, under the title "Fairies Photographed: An Epoch-Making Event... Described by A. Conan Doyle." He gave the families false names: the "Carpenter family" of "Dalesby," with the girls as "Iris" and "Alice." He did not claim final proof. He wrote, "The pictures stand or fall together. Both are false, or both are true," and concluded that "a strong prima facie case has been built up." He also reported doubts: one photography company "declared that the background consisted of theatrical properties," and an experienced amateur pointed to the fairies' "elaborate and Parisian coiffure."

The truth came out more than 60 years later. In a letter to the photography journalist Geoffrey Crawley dated February 17, 1983, Elsie, by then Elsie Hill, said all five photographs were faked (National Science and Media Museum, which holds the letter). The girls had copied fairy figures from Princess Mary's Gift Book, cut them out and fixed them in the grass or on branches with hatpins. Frances accepted that the first four were fakes. Until she died, she insisted that the fifth, the fairy "sun-bath" picture she had taken herself, was genuine. In a 1985 interview, Elsie explained why they had kept quiet for so long: "Two village kids and a brilliant man like Conan Doyle, well, we could only keep quiet" (University of Leeds Library; punctuation adjusted from a dash).

The facts

• Article title, pseudonyms, "stand or fall together," expert doubts. Strand Magazine vol. 60 (July to Dec 1920), pp. 463 to 464, archive.org
• The December issue was the Strand's "special Christmas Number" and 30th birthday number, with Conan Doyle billed. Strand, November 1920 announcement, same volume
• First photograph July 1917; 1983 letter of confession; 1985 interview quote; Leeds holds the archive. University of Leeds Library, "Fooled by fairies"
• Elsie 15, Frances 10; cut-outs from Princess Mary's Gift Book fixed with hatpins; Elsie's letter to Crawley dated Feb 17, 1983; Frances held the fifth photo genuine. National Science and Media Museum blog
• Route through the Theosophical Society and Gardner; three more photos in 1920; Doyle's 1922 book. Bradford Museums

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