Helen Victoria Macfarlane Medium, Spiritualist

Helen Victoria Macfarlane Medium, Spiritualist

Female 1897 - 1956  (59 years)

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  • Name Helen Victoria Macfarlane Medium  [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
    Suffix Spiritualist 
    Birth 25 Nov 1897  Callander, Perthshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location  [1, 4, 7
    Gender Female 
    Name Duncan  [4
    Name Ellen V. Macfarlane  [5
    Name Victoria Helen Macfarlane Medium  [2
    _EMPLOY England Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Death 6 Dec 1956  36 Rankeillor St., Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location  [6
    Person ID I14675  MacFarlane
    Last Modified 29 May 2024 

    Father Archibald Macfarlane, Slater,   b. 9 Mar 1864, Backrow (Pearl St.), Callander, Perthshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 3 Dec 1948, Cherry Cottage, Bridgend, Callander, Perthshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 84 years) 
    Relationship natural 
    Mother Isabella Rattray,   b. 4 Apr 1868, Moulin, Perthshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 24 Sep 1921, Callander, Perthshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 53 years) 
    Relationship natural 
    Marriage 13 Nov 1890  Hawthorn Bank, Dunkeld Road, Perth, Perthshire, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location 
    Family ID F320  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

    Family Henry Anderson Horn Duncan,   b. Abt 1898, Dundee, Forfarshire (now Angus), Scotland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 1960, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 62 years) 
    Marriage 27 May 1916  Bank St. Register Office, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location  [4, 6
    Alt. Marriage 27 May 1916  St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location  [3
    Children 
     1. Isabella McFarlane Duncan,   b. Abt 1919, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. Oct 1987, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 68 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     2. Lillian Lamb MacFarlane Duncan,   b. 21 Apr 1921, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. 4 Aug 1972, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA Find all individuals with events at this location (Age 51 years)  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     3. Peter Duncan,   b. 1923, Scotland Find all individuals with events at this locationd. Scotland Find all individuals with events at this location  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     4. Annie Duncan  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     5. Georgina Duncan  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     6. Henry Duncan  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     7. Alexander Duncan   d. Very Young Find all individuals with events at this location  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
     8. Henrietta Duncan   d. Aged 13 Months Find all individuals with events at this location  [Father: natural]  [Mother: natural]
    Family ID F393  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
    Last Modified 29 May 2024 

  • Notes 
    • A foundation has been established to acknowledge her abilities and to present information to clear her name of the notoriety that surrounds it.
      See her foundation web site at «u»www.helenduncan.org
      «/u»
      1901 Scotland Census about Ellen V Macfarlane
      Name: Ellen V Macfarlane
      Age: 3
      Estimated Birth Year: abt 1898
      Relationship: Daur (Daughter)
      Father's Name: Archie Macfarlane
      Mother's Name: Isabella Macfarlane
      Gender: Female
      Where born: Callander, Perthshire
      Registration number: 336
      Registration district: Callander
      Civil parish: Callander
      Town: Callander
      County: Perthshire
      Address: 96 Main St
      ED: 2
      Household schedule number: 36
      Line: 10
      Roll: CSSCT1901_117
      Household Members:
      Name Age
      Archie Macfarlane 37
      Isabella Macfarlane 32
      Margaret Macfarlane 9
      Isabella Macfarlane 7
      Florence F Macfarlane 5
      Ellen V Macfarlane 3
      Peter Macfarlane 1

      1 - Helen Duncan's conviction for witchcraft during World War II made her a folk heroine. Now to mark the centenary of her birth, a former policeman has mounted a campaign to clear her name.
      An awful vision: In 1941, Helen Duncan claimed that a British battleship had been destroyed. Hours later the Admiralty received news that H.M.S. Hood, above, had sunk with the loss of 1,418 lives.

      It could have been some barbarous throw-back to centuries past. Two hundred years ago the woman, swooning and moaning in the dock, would have been sentenced to public scandal in the pillory... while more fearful souls crossed themselves, invoking God's protection from her devilry.
      But this was 1944 and the crowds thronging the public gallery of the Old Bailey were rational men and women in service uniforms and Utility frocks. Mrs. Helen Duncan was a spiritualist medium from a poor, Scottish, working-class background, reputed to have held seances for the Queen Mother and Winston Churchill. She was the last person to be convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
      The charge against her was 'pretending to raise the spirits of the dead' -- and in war-weary Britain the case made lurid headlines. 'Ghost invited to give evidence on witchcraft trial' trumpeted one newspaper, and: 'Jury may hear voice of spirit guide.' Nineteen witnesses were called to swear that the lady could conjure up the dead; not just in spirit, but in physical form. Among them were a magistrate, a solicitor and one of the best-known journalists of the day. The defence offered to hold a seance as proof of Mrs. Duncan's powers: disappointingly, the jury declined.
      Today, Helen Duncan is a heroine of the spiritualist movement, and many still believe that her raising of the dead was no pretence. Far from being a charlatan, they claim her powers were a threat to the wartime defence of the realm. To mark the centenary of her birth this year, a campaign has been launched to call for her posthumous pardon.
      In 1944, there was no shortage of bereaved relatives desperate for some message offering hope and proof of an afterlife. But Mrs. Duncan was no ordinary medium. She claimed that by exuding a luminous substance called ectoplasm from her own body, she could give form to departed spirits which would materialise before their loved ones' eyes.
      Sceptics said that the 20-stone medium used yards of cheesecloth to simulate the forms of a whole repertoire of spirit friends: from Peggy, the child ghost who sang You Are My Sunshine, to Mrs. Duncan's spirit control, Albert -- a 6 ft 2 in bearded Scotsman who would often speak disparagingly of the medium's husband.
      Mrs. Duncan was arrested at a seance in Portsmouth. But if the nation was riveted by the sheer entertainment value of her cause celebre, it was also baffled. If middle-aged Helen Duncan was a trickster, why did the authorities exhume this antiquated law to put away an uneducated woman? Why not just charge her with obtaining money under false pretences? Churchill, who was known to be interested in spiritualism, was outraged by the case and wrote to the Home Secretary after the trial: 'Let me have a report on why the 1735 Witchcraft Act was used in a modern court of justice. What was the cost to the State of a trial in which the Recorder was kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery to the detriment of necessary work in the courts?'
      In fact, Helen Duncan's supporters claim that the State' s agenda went far beyond clamping down on a fraudulent medium. She was sentenced to nine months in Holloway, and to this day, her family and others believe that, despite Churchill's opposition, the Government ordered her arrest on grounds of national security.
      In the months leading up to D-Day there were fears Mrs. Duncan might 'see' and reveal the secret plans for the Normandy landings. And in the climate of war, the authorities were not prepared to dismiss out of hand her claims of other-worldly powers.
      By early 1944, Mrs. Duncan was well known to the authorities. In May, 1941, Brigadier Boy Firebrace, head of military intelligence in Scotland and later president of the College of Psychic Science, had attended one of her seances in Edinburgh. Later, this level-headed officer described how Mrs. Duncan's ghostly controller, Albert, materialised claiming that a great British battleship had just been sunk.
      Brigadier Firebrace checked with the Admiralty. Two hours later, he received word that H.M.S. Hood had gone down in the North Atlantic, sunk by Hitler's Bismarck with the loss of 1,418 lives. He also established that, at the time of the seance, not even the Admiralty had known of the disaster. 'From the point of view of the authorities,' said Firebrace, 'Mrs. Duncan was a dangerous person.'
      Her psychic career could not have been foretold when Victoria Helen Duncan was born in 1897 at Callander, Perthshire, the daughter of Archibald Macfarlane, a roof slater, and his wife Isabella. They were God-fearing people and when Helen first showed signs of her powers, she was soundly slapped. But superstitious neighbours rewarded her with sweets for telling fortunes and visions.
      Whether for her strange, supernatural gifts, the notoriety she brought on her family, or simply for giving birth to an illegitimate child, Helen was disowned by the Macfarlanes. The only surviving relative of her own generation, her younger sister, to this day never speaks her name. 'Grandma Duncan' s name was taboo,' says her granddaughter, Sheila Downie, 49, a nurse from Stoke-on-Trent. 'The family said she was a witch -- and her mother used to say she'd be burned if she kept on the way she did.' Helen was married to cabinetmaker Henry Duncan before she began -- with his encouragement -- to develop her psychic powers for profit. They had eight children, six of whom survived to adulthood. Mrs. Duncan's first seances were held at home, the latest baby often in a cradle at her feet.
      On her release from Holloway after nine months' imprisonment, Duncan vowed she would never hold a seance again -- but after the publicity of the trial, she was more in demand than before. In November 1956, there was another police raid on a seance at a private house in West Bridgford, Notts, the home of physiotherapist John Timmins. It was said that the police brutally shocked Mrs. Duncan out of her trance. Spiritualists believe that the rush of ectoplasm back into her body caused electrical burns from which she was never to recover. Sceptics remember that she was a 20-stone diabetic with a heart condition. Either way, five weeks later, aged 58, Helen Duncan died.
      Forty years after her death her family remain convinced of her powers -- and believe that she once held a seance for the Queen Mother in Scotland, as well as sittings for Churchill in the early war years. 'You'd need to be a clever and devious person to do the things they accused her of,' insists her granddaughter Am Brealey, 45, a nurse from Stoke-on-Trent and Sheila Downie's younger sister. 'My grandmother wasn't like that. My mother told me that Churchill definitely had seances with her.' 'She used to tell us about the spirits when we were children,' adds Mrs. Downie, who claims that she saw the bums on her grandmother's body before she died. 'It didn't scare us. It's always been part of our life. Every one of us is psychic -- but I am the only one who still practises my mediumship.' The sisters still refer respectfully to 'Uncle' Albert, the spirit guide considered one of the family.
      Half a century after the court case, there is a curious last chapter to the Helen Duncan story. Her case has been revived by a campaign group led by former Scotland Yard policeman James MacQuarrie -- who claims to be a materialising medium in the bizarre tradition of Duncan herself. With colleague Michael Colmer, he has set up a Duncan site on the Intemet, appealing for legal help to fight for a posthumous pardon. The 'tomfoolery' of the Helen Duncan trial resulted in the repeal of the Witchcraft Act in 1951 and its replacement by the Fraudulent Mediums Act. Says MacQuarrie: 'She was a folk heroine who made the Spiritualist religion legal. She did not die in vain.'
      The Daily Mail, Saturday December 6, 1997 by Mary Greene
      [http://members.tripod.com/~helenduncan/hex.htm]

      2 - This unsung heroine was one Helen Duncan, a simple Scottish housewife, who was forced to serve time in London's notorious Victorian Holloway women's prison for the appalling "crime" of holding physical phenomena seances - many months which took a great toll on her health and contributed to her own premature earthly demise.
      Helen was born in Callander, a small Scottish town on the 25th of November 1897 the daughter of a master cabinet maker. Her family was far from rich. Like many of her fellow Celtic lassies she struggled to earn a living even after her marriage at the age of 20. Her husband, Henry, another cabinet maker, had been injured during WW1. She had 12 pregnanies, but only six children survived. To sustain this large family and a disabled husband she worked in the local bleach factory by day and her Spiritual work and domestic duties by night.
      The small amount of cash she made from her sittings, mostly token donations from friends and neighbours existing in a similar poverty to herself , would often discreetly go to their local doctor to pay for those patients who were destitute. This was in the time before Britain's national health service concept of free medicine for all had been introduced.
      But her skill lay in Mediumship of a particular kind, that rare psychic gift of being a vehicle for physical phenomena whilst in trance state. A precious gift that brought comfort to thousands but one which was eventually to cost her her earthly life.
      By the 1930s and 1940s she was travelling the length of wartime Britain giving regular seances in hundreds of Spiritualist churches and home circles. The evidence that flowed from these physical phenomena seances was astonishing. 'Dead' loved ones appeared in physical form , spoke to and touched their earthly relatives and and in this way brought both proof of survival and much comfort to thousands of traumatised and grieving wartime families.
      One such sitting was attended by a man named Vincent Woodcock who had brought his sister in law for an evening's demonstration. Those 60 minutes changed both their lives. Vincent gave evidence in London's premier Old Bailey court room that the medium Helen Duncan slipped into trance and began producing the much scoffed 'ectoplasm'. Then his 'dead' wife materialised from this ectoplasmic matter and asked both Vincent and his sister in law to stand up. The materialised spirit then removed her wedding ring and placed it on her sister's wedding finger , adding "It is my wish that this takes place for the sake of my little girl". A year later the couple were married and returned for a further seance during which the dead woman appeared once more to give her renewed blessings to the happy couple.
      But this touching human story, along with other similar unsolicited and genuine testimonials to her remarkable gifts, were ignored by the law courts for Helen Duncan was destined to 'go down' to appease an establishment terrified that she might accurately discern the date of the D-Day Normandy Landings.
      During the second world war Helen was in great demand from anxious relatives, especially those who had lost close family on active war service. One of many such sittings took place in a private house in the home port of Britain's Royal Naval fleet , the southern coastal city of Portsmouth on the evening of January 19 1944. It was a dangerous place to hold any meeting - such was the German Luftwaffe's intent on reducing Portsmouth to rubble and disable Britain's fleet .
      But the real danger lay not in a hail of enemy bombs but with the sceptism and fear of the establishment. For that night her seance was disrupted by a plain clothes policeman who blew his whistle to launch a raid. Police hands made a grab for the ectoplasm but the spirit world was too quick for them and it dematerialised quicker than they could catch.
      Thus Helen Duncan, together with three of her innocent sitters, were taken up before Portsmouth magistrates and charged with Vagrancy. At this hearing the court was told that Lietenant R. Worth of the Royal Navy had attended this seance suspecting fraud. He had paid 25 shillings ( then worth about $5) each for two tickets and had passed the second ticket to a policeman . It was this policeman who had made the unsucessful grab for the ectoplasm , believing it to be a white sheet. But the subsequent finger tip search of the room immediately after the raid failed to discover any white sheets.
      Even if she had been found guilt under this charge the maximum fine at that time would have been some five shillings ( $1) and she would have been released. But, very oddly Helen was refused bail. Instead she was sent to London and forced to spend four days in the notorious women's prison called Holloway. It was this same Victorian goal where sufragettes had been forced fed by prison warders and where the grisly gallows waited for all female murderers, spies and traitors.
      Meanwhile an anxious establishment debated the best charge to lay against this dangerous war criminal Helen Duncan . One her first appearance before the Portsmouth magistrates she had been charged under the catchall act of Vagrancy. This was later amended to one of Conspiracy which, in wartime Britain , carried the ultimate sentence of death by hanging. But by the time the case had been referred to England's central criminal court - know as the Old Bailey - the charge had been changed yet again . This time to one of witchcraft and an old Act of 1735 had been dredged out of the dusty law libraries .
      Under this ancient rune Helen Duncan and her innocent sitters wer accused of pretending 'to exercise or use human conjuration that through the agency of Helen Duncan spirits of deceased dead persons should appear to be present'.
      But, lest this single charge may falter, the authorities scoured their dusty law precedents for further charges and they found them. One such was the Larceny Act which accused her of taking money ' by falsely pretending she was in a position to bring about the appearances of thes spirits of deceased persons'.
      The prosecution were determined to prove Helen Duncan was a fraud. Her trial took place barely a few months before the famous D-Day landings and lasted for seven gruelling days. Spiritualists everywhere were up in arms that one of their most treasured and gifted demonstrators should be treated in such a tawdry manner. A defence fund was quickly raised . It was used to bring witnesses from all over the world to testify to her genuine gifts. Because of this her case rapidly became a cause celebre which attracted daily headlines in tabloid and broadsheets alike.
      One telling development that this was no ordinary case was that in a rare example of cross border co-operation both the Law Societies (senior legal bar councils) of England and Scotland jointly and simultaneously declared this case to be a travesty of justice.
      As a debunking exercise the case failed miserably. Sceptics must have winced at the daily reporting of case after case where 'dead' relatives had materialised and given absolute proof of their continued existence . One Kathleen McNeill, wife of a Glaswegian forgemaster, told how she has attended such a seance at which her sister appeared. Her sister had died some a few hours previously, after an operation, and news of her death could not have been known. Yet Albert, Helen Duncan's guide, announced that she had just passed over. And, at a subsequent seance, some years later Mrs McNeill's father strode out of the cabinet and came within six feet of her to better display his single eye , a hallmark of his earthly life.
      By the penultimate day of this ridiculous trial the defence was ready to call their star witness Alfred Dodd, an academic and much respected author of works on Shakespeare's sonnets. Alfred told the court that during 1932 and 1940 he had been a regular guest at Helen Duncan's home seances. At one of these sittings his grandfather had materialised, a tall, corpulent man with a bronzed face and smoking cap, hair dressed in his cutomary donkey-fringe. After speaking with his grandson the spirit then turned to his friend Tom and said; "Look into my face and into my eyes. Ask Alfred to show you my portrait. It is the same man".
      Two equally respected journalists, James Herries and Hannen Swaffer then took their places in the Old Bailey witness box - a place where for hundreds of years many a murderer has given evidence and many a witness has pointed an accusing finger. The chain smoking Swaffer , who had already won acclaim as the acerbic uncrowned father of Fleet Street ( home of England's newspaper quarter) and co-founder of the Spiritualist weekly "Psychic News", told the court that anyone who described ectoplasm as butter muslim " would be a child. Under a red light in a seance room it would look yellow or pink whilst these spirit forms all displayed a white appearance".
      James Herries, himself a Justice of the Peace, a much respected psychic investigator of some 20 years standing and the chief reporter of the prestigious and influential "Scotsman" broadsheet affirmed that he had seen Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, famed author of the Sherlock Holmes books, himself to materialise at one of Helen Duncan's seances. He had especially noted the distinctive Doyle rounded features, moustache and equally unmistakeable gravelly voice.
      But, wisely or otherwise, the defence had decided that the best test of Helen Duncan's genuine gifts were for her to give a demonstration of physical phenomena whilst in trance from the very witness box of England's Central Criminal Courts. This suggestion really did cause a frightened flurry in the ivory dovecots of the establishment. If she pulled it off, they debated, then instead of the censure they sought her cause would be spread throughout the land and even beyond . And this would mean that the famed British legal system adopted by so many former colonies - including America - would be held to total ridicule.
      Hurried conferences with the best legal minds were held throughout the night. Their solution was to reject this offer and suggest instead that Mrs Duncan be called as a witness - thus giving the prosecution an opportunity to cross examine this ordinary Scottish housewife and , in doing so, attempt to destroy her credibility. But Helen's defence lawyers saw through this ploy. They pointed out that Mrs Duncan could not testify since she was in a trance state during these seances and could not, therefore, discuss what had transpired.
      The jury only took half an hour to reach their verdict ; Helen and her co-defendants were found Guilty of conspiracy to contravene that ancient 1735 Witchcraft Act but Not Guilty on all other charges.
      Portsmouth's chief of police then described this new 'criminal's' background. Mrs Duncan was married to a cabinet maker and had a family of six children ranging from 18-26 and she had been visiting Portsmouth for some five years. He then described her as " an unmitigated humbug and pest" and revealed that in 1941 she had been reported for announcing the loss of one of His Majesty's ships before the fact had been publically known .
      The presiding judge announced a weekend's delay whilst he considered sentence. Helen herself left the dock weeping in her broad Scottish dialect; "I never hee'd so mony lies in a' my life".
      The following monday morning the judge declared that the verdict had not been concerned with whether ' genuine manifestations of the kind are possible . . .this court has nothing whatever to do with such abstract questions'. However he interpreted the jury's findings to mean that Helen Duncan had been involved in plain dishonesty and for this reason he therefore sentenced her to nine months imprisonment.
      The shocked Spiritualist movenment immediately demanded a change in the law. They felt that she had been prosecuted to stop any leakage of classified wartime information. As one of many , many, examples during 1943 and once more in that ungrateful city of Porttsmouth Helen Duncan had given a seance during which a sailor materialised reporting that he had gone down with His Majesty's Ship "Barham" whose loss was not officially announced until three months later.
      But, the defence right of appeal to the House of Lords , Britain's highest court of appeal, was denied. The establishment had achieved its objective and certainly did not want one single inch of further publicity. Helen was sent back to London's Holloway prison , that Victorian monstrosity for female prisoners still being used today.
      It was not only the best legal minds in the country that felt this case had been a major miscarriage of justice. So too did her prison warders. They refused to 'bang her up'. For the entire nine months of her unjust incarceration Helen Duncan's prison cell door was never once locked ! What's more she contined to apply her psychic gifts, as a constant steam of warders and inmates alike found their way to her cell for spiritual upliftment and guidance.
      And many senior Spiritualists who were close to Helen report that it was not only prisoners and staff who made pilgrimage to the dreaded Holloway Goal. So too did some of her other more notable sitters, including Britain's Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill himself.
      Churchill was no stranger to psychic phenomena. Recalling the events of the Boer War when he had been captured, had escaped and seeking sanctuary he explained in his autobiography how he he was " guided by some form of mental planchette ( a Spiritualist tool) to the only house in a 30 mile radius that was sympathetic to the British cause". Had he knocked on the back door of any other house he would have been arrested and returned to the Boer commanders to be shot as an escaping prisoner of war. Many years prior to this he had been ordained into the Grand Ancient Order of Druids. And throughout his life he experienced many times when his psychic sixth sense saved his life.
      Churchill was exceeding angry indeed when the Helen Duncan case began. He penned an irate ministerial note to the Home Secretary; " Give me a report of the 1735 Witchcraft Act . What was the cost of a trial to the State in which the Recorder ( junior magistrate) was kept busy with all this obsolete tomfoolery to the detriment of the necessary work in the courts?" But his civil servants were over-ridden by the all -powerful intelligence community. D-Day was coming and their levels of paranoia had reached an all time high and even a Prime Minister's anger was to be set aside. Helen Duncan, mother of nine and part time bleach factory employee was considered a risk and they wanted her out of the way when the Allies struck. Her case was a transparent conspiracy to frame her ' in the interests of national security'
      Meanwhile, having served her full sentence, Helen Duncan was released on 22 September 1944, vowing never to give another seance.
      Despite her declaration with in a few months she felt that strong call from the Spirit World to continue her work and was soon spending more time than ever in trance state. Perhaps too much so , for the quality of her seances since imprisonment appeared to have had deteriorated even to the point where Spiritualism's governing National Union actually withdrew her diploma at one stage .
      Helen's Spiritualist friends say that during his visits to her cell Prime Minister Churchill made promises of making amends to Helen. True or speculative it is a fact that in 1951 the damning 1735 Witchcraft Act which had been used to imprison Helen was finally repealed . In its place came the Fraudulent Mediums Act and some four years later in 1954 Spiritualism was officially recognised as a proper religion by formal Act of Parliament. And Spiritualists everywhere knew why and they rejoiced that whilst frauds would be properly prosecuted the authorities, especially the police , would stop harassing true working Mediums.
      They were wrong. In November 1956 police raided a seance in the midlands city of Nottingham. They grabbed the presiding medium, strip searched her and took endless flashlight photographs.. They shouted at her that they were looking for beards, masks and shrouds. But they found nothing.
      The medium was Helen Duncan and in their ignorance the police had committed the worst possible sin of physical phenomena; that a medium in trance must NEVER, ever be touched. As the Spirit World's teachers have patiently explained so many times when this happens the ectoplasm returns to the medium's body far too quickly and can cause immense - sometimes even fatal - damage.
      And so it was in this case. A doctor was summonsed and discovered two scond degree burns across Helen's stomach . She was so ill that she was immediately taken back to her Scottish home and later rushed to hospital.
      Five weeks after that police raid she was dead.
      [http://members.tripod.com/~helenduncan/Duncan.htm]

      3 - When the battleship Barham was torpedoed by the Germans in November 1941, with the loss of over 800 lives, the Admiralty delayed announcing the news to maintain morale.
      But the secrecy was ended within a few days when medium Helen Duncan told a couple during a seance that their son, a sailor on the ship, had appeared from the spirit world to tell them it had sunk.
      In one of the most bizarre acts of the Second World War, Mrs Duncan was accused of leaking military secrets - and became the last woman jailed as a witch in the UK.
      Now campaigners want an official pardon for the Scots-born mother of six, who spent nine months in Holloway Prison, north London.
      A group of mediums have handed a petition to the Scottish Parliament, calling on it to lobby Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.
      Campaigner Roberta Gordon, from Gullane, East Lothian, said: "At the time the country was paranoid about security and the evidence used against her wasn't accurate.
      "It would take away the stigma from her granddaughters and the great-grandsons."
      Mrs Duncan was one of Britain's best-known mediums. During her seances she produced "ectoplasm" - a stringy white substance that is supposed to give form to spirits and allow them to communicate.
      Paranormal investigators denounced her as a fraud who used cheesecloth and egg whites, but her family insist she was genuine, "an ordinary woman with a gift".
      Despite the controversy, Mrs Duncan reputedly numbered Winston Churchill and George VI among her clients.
      Churchill denounced the case against her as "obsolete tomfoolery" and visited her in prison.
      The Barham, a 29,000-ton battleship, was hit by three German torpedoes in the Mediterranean on November 25, 1941.
      The ship went down within minutes, with the loss of 861 lives. Already reeling from the Blitz, the British government decided not to make the news public, not least to keep the Germans guessing.
      But Duncan, who was living in Portsmouth at the time, held a seance just days later and told how she saw a sailor with the words HMS Barham on his hatband.
      He told her: "My ship is sunk". News of the revelation reached the Admiralty and she was placed under observation. But she was not arrested until January 1944.
      The trial in March 1944 caused a media sensation as Mrs Duncan was accused of being a traitor.
      But the prosecution struggled to back the claim and she was convicted instead under the 1735 Witchcraft Act, which had declared there could be no such thing as a medium.
      She was the last person in Britain jailed under the act, which was repealed in 1951. The last person convicted, East Londoner Jane Yorke, 72, escaped with a fine in October 1944 due to her age.
      Mrs Duncan died in 1956, soon after being arrested again in a police raid on a seance.
      Last year the Criminal Cases Review Commission rejected a petition for her to be pardoned, saying it would not be in the public interest.
      [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-522992/Campaigners-bid-clear-witch-leaked-WWII-secrets-sinking-battleship.html]

      3 - Friend of Winston Churchill and the King. Winston Churchill maintained that she should never have been prosucuted under such an old and outdated law. He made sure the law was repealed after Helen's conviction.
      One of the books written about her has said she was tossed out of the house at age 16 because she was pregnant, and and her father forbade her name to be mentioned in the house. This is not true. She had obviously had a falling out with her father and left home at age 16 to find work. She found work at the bleach mills in Dundee.

      4 - Helen Duncan/MacFalane
      children:
      Henrietta died approx 13 months pneumonia
      Alex: dies at very young age
      Lillian married Angus Douglas RAF/ Gunner Killed in action
      children Dawn 7/1/? and Joan 10/15/?
      2nd marriage John Cowie Archiblad married Lillian Lamb MacFalane Duncan Dec 24
      children John 6/19/1950 and Margaret 4/22/1955
      [E-mail from Margaret Hahn rec:12 Jan 2012]

      5 - Victoria Helen Duncan married to Henry Anderson Horn(e) Duncan Cabinetmaker. Died December sixth between 01:45 am and 03:40 am at 36 Rankeillor Street, Edinburgh.

      6 - Website relevent to Helen. «u»http://www.helenduncan.net/«/u»

      (Research):http://members.tripod.com/~helenduncan/hex.htm

      [E-mail from Margaret Hahn (maggiehahn@aol.com ) rec: 12 Jan 2012]

  • Sources 
    1. [S2023] Maureen Irvine, Familyof Peter Macfarlane and Margaret Murray, Isabella & Archibald.

    2. [S2024] Ancestry.com.au, Ancestry Public Member Trees, (Name: Name: Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.;;;), Joan's family tree Owner: electra105981.

    3. [S2024] Ancestry.com.au, Ancestry Public Member Trees, (Name: Name: Name: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc.;;;), Duncan Family Tree Owner: lindaduncan3.

    4. [S2029] Family charts received May 2002 from Maureen Irvine, great-granddaughter of Archibald Macfarlane ref#16.6.

    5. [S2054] 1901 census, (Name: Name: Name: 31 March/1 April 1901;;;).

    6. [S2061] MACFARLANE, Descendants of Factor Macfarlane.

    7. [S2065] Margaret Speirs #8.3, (Name: Name: Name: 1987;;;), In conversation with John Macfarlane 1987.