The Cottingley Fairies were photographed by two cousins in England in 1917 and 1920. The photos gained attention from Arthur Conan Doyle and others, but were later revealed to be a hoax.
The Cottingley Fairies are figures that appear in a series of five photographs taken by cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in 1917 and 1920. Today the Cottingley Fairies are widely regarded as a hoax. However, at the time the photographs were taken they had a number of believers, including Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths began claiming that they had seen fairies regularly at their home in Cottingley, England, in 1917, when Elsie was 16 and Frances nine. Naturally, the adults in their family were skeptical, but Elsie’s father let the girls borrow his camera to photograph the fairies and confirm their story. When a photo of Frances surrounded by dancing fairies emerged in the dark room, the girls received mixed reactions. Elsie’s father was not convinced, but the girls’ mothers were amazed by this apparent evidence of the supernatural.
The girls took another photograph the same year, of Frances with a gnome. In 1919, Elsie’s mother brought the Cottingley Fairies to the attention of the Bradford Theosophical Society. Edward Gardner, a noted theosophist, was very impressed with the images and began using them in his lectures.
Finally, in 1920, the Cottingley fairies came to the attention of Arthur Conan Doyle, who was greatly impressed by the photographs, which he believed were proof of the existence of fairies. Gardner supervised Elsie and Frances as they took more photographs, only three of which showed the Cottingley fairies. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about the Cottingley fairies in two articles for The Strand, in 1920 and 1921, and published a book called The Coming of the Fairies in 1922.
The furore over Cottingley’s fairies has diminished over time, especially as improved versions of the photographs have appeared in which the fairies look a lot like cardboard cutouts. In a 1981 interview, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths admitted that the Cottingley fairy pictures were a hoax. However, Frances maintained until her death in 1986 that they had indeed seen fairies and that the last of the five images was genuine.
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