Subsequently to her first imprisonment the witchcraft act was repealed and replaced with a law making it illegal to claim to speak to the dead for the purpose of making money, unless you could actually speak to the dead (Or it was for entertainment purposes). This law change was spearheaded by a Labour politician named Thomas Brooks who was himself a spiritualist.
This law was then itself repealed and replaced by EU marketing regulations in 2008.
Edit: Incidentally while she was charged under the witchcraft act. The reason she was reported was not for being a medium, but for being a BAD medium. Her performance at seances was so awful, having misidentified two separate ghosts (Actually Duncan herself in a white costume twice) as two female members of the same audience member’s family who both happened to be alive, that her audience went to the cops.
Edit 2: Rephrased the previous edit a bunch.
a law making it illegal to claim to speak to the dead for the purpose of making money, unless you could actually speak to the dead
Canada had (has?) a law on the books that made it illegal to pretend to practice witchcraft, I imagine it was for similar reasons but I always found it funny that practicing legitimate witchcraft was perfectly fine and legal but pretending to do so would get you in trouble
i suppose it’s fraud
having misidentified two separate ghosts (Actually Duncan herself in a white costume twice) as two female members of the same audience member’s family who both happened to be alive
Rookie mistake, you’re supposed to say you can speak to future ghosts when this comes up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan
Wiki article for those interested. Contains a photo of the spooky ectoplasm.
Surprised she didn’t get a movie like the Warren family did
Imagine being so bad at pretending to talk to ghosts (to a potentially bereaved audience already primed & willing to believe you) that they, after the show, are like “what was that bullshit? where’s the nearest officer of the law I have to report this” lmao you have to give it to hertwo female members of the same audience member’s family who both happened to be alive
Are you sure about that? Whispers -take the shot
entertajmment purposes
one of my favorite purposes
First off. There was never this egregious a spelling mistake. You’re imagining things.
Secondly. Why does autocorrect keep correcting real words and let me pump out total nonsense unchallenged.
stop clicking “add to dictionary”?
I have never clicked that button ever.
The sloppification of autocorrect
You could say she had… Medium difficulty.
Honestly more of a small than a medium
A small medium now at large.
unless you could actually speak to the dead
Has anyone successfully pleaded that they could in court?
And how do you even show that that’s what someone was doing? Like, I can kinda imagine someone suing a Christian Church for talking with the dead, no? Praying to saints, or Jesus even (though this would require the court to formally deny the resurrection or whatever).
I don’t know, but those are great questions.
So say it was for entertainment. Shit, we literally have medium shows on tv that make big bank off lying to grieving families.
Execute them for witchcraft
We punish people for attempted murder, why not attempted witchcraft?
do we give a nobel prize for attempted chemistry?
