The Trial of Mrs Duncan

Out of Print

Edited with a Foreword and a Note on the Old Bailey

Victoria Helen McCrae Duncan was a Scottish medium best known as the last person to be imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735. She was famous for producing fraudulent ectoplasm made from cheesecloth.

Duncan's trial for fraudulent witchcraft was a minor cause célèbre in wartime London. Duncan was barred by the judge from demonstrating her alleged powers as part of her defence against being fraudulent. The jury brought in a guilty verdict on count one, and the judge then discharged them from giving verdicts on the other counts, as he held that they were alternative offences for which Duncan might have been convicted had the jury acquitted her on the first count.

Duncan was imprisoned for nine months, Brown for four months and the Homers were bound over.After the verdict, Winston Churchill wrote a memo to Home Secretary Herbert Morrison, complaining about the misuse of court resources on the "obsolete tomfoolery" of the charge.