The Cottingley Fairies: How Two Cousins Fooled Conan Doyle

Two cousins fooled Arthur Conan Doyle with drawings, hatpins and a borrowed camera. In 1917 Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths photographed fairy figures that Elsie had drawn and cut out. Experts gave mixed verdicts, Doyle chose to believe, and the pair admitted the fakery in the early 1980s, with Elsie's letter of 17 February 1983 the clearest record. Frances, though, kept insisting that the fifth photograph was genuine.

This article separates what the surviving records show from what was later claimed. Where accounts disagree on ages or dates, it says so, and it leaves out details that could not be confirmed. For a wider method, see our guide on how to evaluate a claim.

The short answer: a camera, two cousins and drawn figures

In 1917 Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths lived in Cottingley, near Bradford. Most accounts give their ages as 16 and nine, though one museum account gives 15 and 10. They borrowed a glass-plate camera from Elsie's father and photographed themselves beside Cottingley Beck with figures they described as fairies.

The figures were drawings by Elsie, cut out and fixed with hatpins to the ground and to branches, so that they seemed to dance in the picture. Two months after the first photograph, Frances photographed Elsie with a gnome. The series eventually reached five photographs.

The story goes that Frances came home with wet shoes and was scolded, and said she had been to see the fairies. Elsie said she had seen them too, and the girls asked to borrow the camera.

How the pictures reached Conan Doyle

Elsie's father, Arthur Wright, set up a darkroom. He first dismissed the figures as cardboard cutouts, and after the second photograph he refused to lend the camera again. Elsie's mother, Polly, believed the photographs were genuine.

Accounts disagree on when the pictures became public. One places it in mid-1919, after Polly showed them to a Theosophical Society speaker in Bradford. Another account places the parents' lecture in early 1920. Either way, Edward Gardner, a senior Theosophist, took them up.

By June 1920 Gardner was showing copies in London, and Doyle asked to see them. Gardner then returned to Cottingley in July 1920 with two new cameras and 24 secretly marked plates, meant to detect tampering. Doyle had been commissioned to write about fairies for the Christmas 1920 Strand Magazine, and he used the photographs to illustrate the piece.

Experts disagreed, and Doyle chose to believe

The prints drew mixed verdicts. Harold Snelling called the negatives entirely genuine, though he also described them as straightforward photographs of whatever was in front of the camera. Kodak technicians said the prints showed no signs of being faked, but that this was not conclusive. Ilford reported some evidence of faking, and Oliver Lodge believed the pictures were fake.

Doyle's article sold out within days of the December 1920 issue appearing. He wrote that the pictures were either an elaborate hoax or an event that might later seem epoch-making.

From today the fakery looks obvious. But a view of the prints as plainly fake is easy to hold in hindsight, and in 1920 the mixed reports left room for belief.

Decades of silence and the confession

The girls kept denying the hoax for about 60 years, partly out of pity for Doyle and Gardner. In a later interview Elsie said that two village kids could only keep quiet in the face of a brilliant man like Doyle.

Elsie wrote to the photographic journalist Geoffrey Crawley in a letter dated 17 February 1983, revealing that all five photographs were faked. The letter is held in the Science Museum Group collection. Crawley had written a series of articles on the case in the British Journal of Photography in 1982 and 1983.

The Science Museum blog says the fairy figures were based on illustrations in Princess Mary's Gift Book of 1915, which Frances owned. Other accounts say only that they were copied from a popular children's book of the time.

Frances went on insisting that she had really seen fairies, and she maintained until her death that the fifth photograph was genuine. In a later interview she said she never really thought of the affair as a fraud.

What the hoax shows about evidence

Gardner's marked plates were meant to catch tampering, yet the girls did not confess until the early 1980s. Careful procedure does not help much if the people checking want a particular answer.

The Cottingley pictures were made with ordinary tools: a drawing, a pin and a camera. Image manipulation is nothing new, and the case is often cited as proof of that. You can test your own eye in our Real or Rigged? photo game.

The useful questions are who examined the evidence, what they actually concluded, and who gained from a yes. Other hoax cases on the site follow similar lines, such as the Surgeon's Photograph and the crop circles hoax.

Where the record is still unclear

Ages differ between accounts. Most give 16 and nine, while the Science Museum blog gives 15 and 10 for the girls at the time of the early photographs, and another account gives 10 for Frances. Dates also differ: the first public showing is placed in mid-1919 in one account and the parents' lecture in early 1920 in another.

A few other reported details could not be confirmed from the pages checked, so they are left out.

The photographs and cameras are held by the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford.