The Cottingley Fairies

Summary

Two cousins in Cottingley, near Bradford, photographed "fairies" in 1917 and 1920, and Arthur Conan Doyle presented the pictures to the world as genuine. In 1983 the cousins admitted the fairies were paper figures fixed with hatpins, though one maintained until her death that the last photograph was real.

The photographs were never faked in the darkroom, which is why the experts of 1920 could find nothing wrong with them. The deception was in front of the lens.

What is documented

The first two photographs. In 1917 Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffiths borrowed Elsie's father Arthur's quarter-plate "Midg" camera. Accounts give their ages differently: Elsie as 15 or 16, Frances as 9 or 10. Conan Doyle's book records the first photograph, of Frances with a group of fairy figures, as taken in July 1917 at about 3 p.m. on a hot, sunny day, and the second, of Elsie with a gnome, in September 1917. The Wrights' address in 1920 was 31 Main Street, Cottingley. In Doyle's account the stream runs past the back of the house, and the photographs were taken "not more than a hundred yards away".

The experts. Early in 1920 Edward Gardner, a member of the Executive Committee of the Theosophical Society, heard of the photographs, and in May 1920 Conan Doyle heard of them from the editor of the journal Light. Gardner had the negatives examined by Harold Snelling, a photographer with more than thirty years' experience at the Autotype Company and Illingworth's photographic works. Snelling reported that they were "entirely genuine, unfaked photographs of single exposure, open-air work", with "no trace whatever of studio work". Experts at Kodak found no evidence of superposition or other trickery, but would not say that the pictures showed anything preternatural.

Publication. Conan Doyle published the first two photographs in the Christmas 1920 number of The Strand Magazine, disguising the girls' identities, and in 1922 set out the case in his book The Coming of the Fairies. He framed the choice himself: the events were "either the most elaborate and ingenious hoax ever played upon the public", or something that might one day appear "epoch-making".

The 1920 photographs. In the summer of 1920 Gardner supplied the cousins with new camera equipment, two cameras by the museum's account, and with plates that had been secretly marked to detect tampering. In August 1920 they produced three more photographs, all on the marked plates. The last, Fairies and Their Sun-Bath, shows no girl, only figures in long grass. Doyle's book describes a "sheath or cocoon" in the grass that "fairy lovers and observers" called a magnetic bath.

The investigation. In 1982 and 1983 the photographic journalist Geoffrey Crawley published a series of articles in the British Journal of Photography, "That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingley Fairies".

The admission. In a letter to Crawley written in 1983, Elsie revealed that all five photographs were faked. The girls had been inspired by the fairy illustrations in a copy of Princess Mary's Gift Book that Frances owned. Elsie drew their own versions, which they cut out and fixed in the ground, or to trees, with hatpins.

The fifth photograph. It is the only photograph over which the two cousins disagreed in later life. Frances, who said she took it, insisted until her death that it was genuine. Elsie said it was faked like the others.

The objects. The National Science and Media Museum in Bradford holds the Midg camera used for the first two photographs, a Cameo camera, photographs from the series and Elsie's 1983 letter to Crawley.

Leading explanations

Paper figures photographed in the open air. Established. Elsie stated that all five photographs were faked, and Frances did not dispute the first four. The method explains why the experts of 1920 found nothing: Snelling was right that the negatives were single exposures with no studio work, and Kodak was right that there was no superposition. Neither examination could detect a cut-out standing in the grass.

The fifth photograph. Disputed between its two makers. Frances's account that it was genuine is the only testimony for a paranormal origin, and Elsie contradicted it. No independent evidence supports Frances's account. The registry records the disagreement and does not resolve it in favour of either woman.

Current status

Debunked. The fairies were drawings, cut out and fixed with hatpins, and the photographers said so. The one remaining disagreement concerns a single photograph, and it is a disagreement between the two women who made the series, not a scientific question left open.

No new evidence is expected. The cameras, prints and Elsie's letter are held in a public museum collection.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.