The Voice Box

Helen was born, Victoria Helen McCrae MacFarlane on 25th November 1897, in a small Scottish  town called Callender.    The Daughter of a master cabinet maker.   She married at the early age of twenty to another master cabinet maker named Henry Duncan.   Henry had been injured during the war years of WWI and was unable to work.     She had 12 pregnancies but only 6 of her 12 children survived.   To maintain this large family of six children and a disabled husband, Helen worked in a local bleach factory by day, and worked at her spiritual and domestic duties at night.

Helen's particular mediumship skill was that of Physical Phenomena whilst in a Trance state.   A very precious gift that brought comfort to hundreds of grieving people the length and breadth of the country.   But, one that eventually cost Helen her life.

During WWII Helen was in great demand as she toured the country giving demonstrations of her mediumship, especially to those who had lost close family on active war service.   One particular sitting was in a private home in the Navel City of Portsmouth, on an evening in January 1944. Portsmouth was not the best place in the world to be at this critical point in the war.   The German Luftwaffe being hell bent on turning it in to rubble hoping to destroy the British Navel Fleet.

The real danger on that night came from within the arranged sitting, when a plain clothes police officer disrupted the circle and blew his whistle to start a raid.   The officer made a grab for the ectoplasm believing it to be a sheet, but spirit was to quick for him and it vanished before he could touch it.   Helen and three of her sitters were arrested and charged with Vagrancy.   At the hearing the court heard testimony that Lieutenant R Worth RN, had attended the seance suspecting fraud.   He claimed he had £2.10shillings for two tickets, one of which he gave to the police officer who instigated the raid and grabbed for the ectoplasm.  

Then something strange happened.   Under the law at that particular time, had she been found guilty of this offence she would probably only have had to pay a five shillings fine and she would have been released.   Oddly she was not, also she was refused bail and sent to London and spent four days in Holloway prison.   The Vagrancy charge was later amended to one of Conspiracy, which during wartime, carried the death sentence by hanging.   But by the time the case came to court at the Old Bailey, this had also been amended to one of Witchcraft, an old Act of 1735 had been dredged out of the old and dusty law libraries.

Under this old act, Helen and her three sitters were accused of pending "to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased dead persons should appear present".   But in case this charge failed others were brought also.   The Larceny Act which accused her of taking money 'by falsely pretending she was in a position to bring about the appearances of these spirits of deceased persons'.

Her trial, which took place at the Old Bailey, lasted for seven dreadful days, and only a few months before the D-Day landings in France.   Spiritualists from all over the country were angered that one of their most treasured demonstrators was being treated in this way.   A defence fund was quickly set up and was used to bring witnesses from all over the world to testify on her behalf about the genuiness of her mediumship abilities.   Because of this, her case soon became a "cause celebre" which attracted news papers from all over the world.   Sceptics must have cringed at the continual reporting of case after case were 'dead' relatives had materialised and given proof after proof of their continued existence.

On the next but last day of the trial, the defence called their star witness, Alfred Dodd, an academic and very respected author on the works of Shakespear's sonnets.  He had been interested in psychic things for over 40 years.    Alfred informed the courts that during 1932 and 1940, he had been a regular visitor at Helen Duncan's home seances. During one of these seances in Manchester in 1932 the Voice of Albert Mrs Duncan's guide said;    "there is a big man coming out for you" referring to Mr Dodds.   "The curtain of the cabinet went to one side, and out there came the living form of my Grandfather.   I knew it was him because he was a very big man, tall, about six feet one inch at least. He looked around the room very quizzically until his eyes met mine.   He then strode across the room from the seance cabinet to where I was.   He pushed the heads of the two strangers that were before me to one side, and he put out his hand and grasped mine.   He said as he grasped it, 'I am very pleased to see you, Alfred, here in my native city'.  I was very surprised to see him and looked closly at him and said, 'why, you look just the same'.   He next said, 'I am sorry you are having such a rough time' (which was true).   After talking with me for some period, he put his hand on my friends shoulder and said ''Stand up Tom' my friend looked up at him, then the voice of Albert said "Stand up ; stand up', So Tom Waller stood up, my Grandfather said, 'Look into my face, and look into my eyes, will you know me again Mr Waller?'   'Yes' - replied Tom, 'You ask Alfred to show you my portrait which is hanging in his dining-room, and you will see it is the same man that is speaking to you now'.   He turned round and walked back into the cabinet, he lifted up his leg and slapped his thy three times.   He then turned and rose himself to his full height and smacked his chest three times, he said, so that all could hear, 'It is solid, Alfred; it is solid,' and went back into the cabinet."

   Hannan Swaffer and James Herries, both highly respected journalists of the time, took their turn in the witness box at the Old Bailey.   Swaffer, who had already recognised as the uncrowned father of Fleet Street, and co-founder of of the Spiritualists weekly paper "Psychic News, told the court that "anyone who described ectoplasm as butter muslim, would be a child, under the red light of the seance room it would look yellow or pink, whilst all these materialised spirits forms appear white."   Herries, who was himself a Justice of the Peace.   A psychic investigator for over twenty years, testified that he had witnessed the materialisation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Homes books.  

The defence, wishing to prove beyond doubt that Helen's mediumship was beyond repute, wanted to conduct a seance within the Old Bailey.   The suggestion caused absolute panic from the establishment.   Think of the consequences.  If she pulled it off, the press would have had an even better hey day thatn they were already, it would bring her fame instead of censure, and this would make the British legal system held to ridicule.   Needless to say the idea was rejected, and instead call Mrs Duncan as a witness, giving the prosecution a chance to cross examine her.   To try and destroy her credability.   Helens defence was quick to point out that Mrs Duncan was in a state of trance, and could not therefore, having no knowledge, discuss what had gone on.

The Jury took all of thirty minutes to reach a verdict.   Helen and her co-defendants were found guilty of conspiriacy to contravene the ancient 1735 Witchcraft Act, but not guilty on all other charges.

Portsmouths Chief of Police, described Mrs Duncan as an unmitigated humbug and pest, and revealed that in 1941 she had been reported for announcing the sinking of one of His Majesty's ships before it had been publiclly anounced.  

The following Monday the judge summed up stating that the verdict had not been concerned with whether genuine manifestations are possible ot not, and that the court had nothing to do with such questions.   What he did do was to interperet the jury's findings to mean that Helen Duncan had been involved in plain dishonesty, and for this reason alone he imprisoned her for nine months at Holloway.

Even Sir Winston Churchill who was then Prime Minister and no stranger to physical phenomena, wanted to know why such a charge using the 1735 Witchcraft Act was used in a British Court, and at what cost to the state.  Churchill visited Helen in Prison and made promises to make amends.   True to his word in 1951 the 1735 Witchcraft Act was repealed and replaced with the Fraudulent Mediums Act.

In 1951, to the rejoicement of Spiritualists all over the country, Spiritualism was recorded as an officially recognised religion by an Act of Parliment.   This meant that while frauds would be properly brought to justice by the police and those head hunters of the Spiritualist movement, It also meant that bonifide working mediums could carry on working without fear of harrament.

Well thats what was supposed to happen, In November 19576, police raided a seance in Nottingham.   They grabbed the presiding medium, strip searched her and took endless flashlight photographs.   Shouting at her that they were looking for beards, masks and shrouds.   They found nothing.   The medium was Helen Duncan, and in their ignorance the police had committed the worst possible crime involving  physical phenomena, that of a medium in trance never being touched.   Our spiritual teachers have explained to us so many times what damage can be done with the ectoplasm returning to the mediums body to quickly which can cause terrible injuries to the sitters and possible fatel injuiries to the medium.   As it was with Helen Duncan, a doctor who was summoned to attend to Helen discovered two second degree burns on her stomach.   She was so ill that she was immediately rushed back to her home in Scotland  and later into hospital.     Five weeks after the Police raid, Helen was dead.

Spiritualists are no strangers to scorn and hypocrisy at the hands of disbelievers.   But this was without doubt the most disgusting and hanius crime against any person.   For what?  Bringing confort to those grieving souls who have lost loved ones to spirit. Giving them the comfort of knowledge that they are not dead, just moved  into a different life pattern from which, from time to time, they can bridge that gap between our world and theirs to return and speak to us once more through mediums like Helen Duncan.

Helen has returned on a number of occasions now in Spiritualist home circles, but her first contact was to her daughter Gina.