Helen Duncan versus Wikipedia 
The case of Helen Duncan or “Hellish Nell” as she was called due to her volatile temper, is even today one that creates polarity and hysteria among those who should know better. She was a popular psychic who was dragged into court and imprisoned, charged under the archaic British Witchcraft Act of 1735.
According to Wiki: ‘Witchcraft Act 1735’: “In September 1944, Helen Duncan was jailed under the Witchcraft Act on the grounds that she had claimed to summon spirits. It is often contended, by her followers that her imprisonment was in fact at the behest of superstitious military intelligence officers who feared she would reveal the secret plans for D-Day. She came to the attention of the authorities after supposedly contacting the spirit of a sailor of the HMS Barham, whose sinking was hidden from the general public at the time. After being caught faking a spiritual manifestation, she was arrested during a seance and indicted with seven punishable counts: two of conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft 
Act, two of obtaining money by false pretences, and three of public mischief (a common law offence). She spent nine months in prison. Duncan has been frequently described as the last person to be convicted under the Act…The last person convicted under the Act was Jane Rebecca Yorke of Forest Gate in east London. On 26 September 1944 at the Central Criminal Court, Yorke was convicted on seven counts of “pretending…to cause the spirits of deceased persons to be present” and bound over… The last threatened use of the Act against a medium was in 1950.
In 1951 the Witchcraft Act was repealed with the enactment of the Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, largely at the instigation of Spiritualists through the agency of Thomas Brooks MP.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witchcraft_Act_1735
The above Wiki article is not exactly balanced but it does manage to outline some of the facts. But then we find the Wiki article about Helen Duncan herself, the most unashamedly biased presentation I personally have ever seen, directed more to extreme skeptical opinion and emotion whilst ignoring well documented historical fact. On the second line of the article Wiki says: “She was famous for producing fraudulent ectoplasm made from cheesecloth.”, an unsupported assertion and a lie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan
She was famous for being the last person imprisoned under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735.
She was famous for her psychic readings not for cheesecloth and there are, to my knowledge, no reports that cheesecloth was ever presented as evidence at the witch-trial hearing even though investigators went to great length to procure it. One would think by the tone of Wiki that this was exhibit number one, but it was not.
The Wiki editor then, in time honoured skeptical fashion, contradicts him/herself, suggesting Helen Duncan was a spy… or what?: “The prosecution may be explained by the mood of suspicion prevailing at the time: the authorities were afraid that she could continue to reveal classified information, whatever her source was.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Duncan#HMS_Barham_sinking
No ‘source’ of classified information was ever mentioned at the trial. Duncan willingly volunteered to demonstrate her mediumistic ability to the court but this was rejected by both judge and jury. The Wiki editor has thrown-in a strawman to divert attention from real facts. And Wiki has the damned cheek to ask us for money?!
The following article sums-up my own view of the damage done by these extreme skeptics such as this Wiki editor. They are quite prepared to change genuine history and substitute their own distorted agenda version of events:
Wikipedia has been hijacked by ‘guerrilla skeptics’!
An Idealistic Project is infected with systemic bias
What is the ideology that they promote?
“I can’t answer for the personal views of all these editors, but based on past experience as a Wikipedia editor, from debates on-line, from email exchanges and from sceptical groups and publications, a stereotype emerges. Most refer to themselves as ‘rational sceptics’ or rationalists. However, I have not found that they are particularly rational or interested in evidence or practice critical thinking in the manner of genuine sceptics. Most are atheists if not militant atheists. Most (including the largest sceptical group founders Randi and Kurtz) are not scientists and do not follow the scientific spirit of open enquiry as science is, to them, a fixed fundamental belief system. Their avid faith in science as the only source of truth is known as scientism. So anything that cannot be accounted for within the limitations of current scientific knowledge is illusory and deserves zero tolerance. In their view, consciousness and experiences like love are no more than chemical processes and electro-magnetic responses in our brains. Free-will is an illusion. To them, life is random and the Universe has no pattern and is devoid of meaning or purpose. Since most of their knowledge of fringe subjects is acquired from the biased perspective of sceptical publications like the Skeptical Inquirer, conferences and books, subjects like the paranormal, religious belief, astrology and alternative medicine appear objectionable. Scientific evidence supporting fringe subjects is not welcomed in the the manner of a good scientist. It is seen as a challenge to their world view and causes cognitive dissonance. This inner paradox can surface in anger, abusive language or in a disturbingly perverse delight in insulting and mocking proponents of alternative views notably on Wikipedia.
http://www.astrologer.com/tests/wp.htm
Many of the skecptics are professional scientists and I’ve listed them on the page ‘Psychology in Denial’. It is a fact that the advancement of the careers of scientists in certain disciplines is dependent upon the level of their scepticism and a bizarre and dishonest pseudo scepticism ensues, as will be seen on the page.
The real reason for the trial was the coming D Day landings and paranoia on the part of military intelligence. Psychics have been used by the intelligence services since Elizabeth I and John Dee became 007 – most likely long before. The US military spent millions on remote viewing and psychics are used by the police on a regular basis. The security services know that psychics are useful in difficult cases and they know they have access to otherwise unobtainable information.
The website ‘Skeptical Misdirection’ says:
This case (Helen Duncan) was an outrageous example of a government abusing it’s power, using deception to suppress mediumship. Normally, the type of complaint made against Duncan would have been treated as a minor offence. When first arrested, the police charged her with vagrancy which would have been punished with a fine of up to five shillings. However, Duncan was denied bail and the charges were changed several times by the prosecutors. They finally settled upon pretending to conjure spirits under an archaic witchcraft act which was punishable by a prison sentence. This was an unprecedented overreaction. No other medium of that era was ever treated in this way. The only explanation for this miscarriage of justice is that the government wanted Duncan held incommunicado in prison during the time leading up to the D. Day invasion of Europe to prevent spirits from accidentally leaking secret information. That Duncan was denied bail for this minor and non-violent offence is further proof of this explanation. https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection#skeptical_misdirection_duncan
Victor Zammit, a lawyer, gives a thorough dissection of this miscarriage of justice in chapter 11 of his book “A Lawyer Presents the Case for the Afterlife”. The crown case consisted of the claim that Helen Duncan or an accomplice was pretending to be all of these ‘materializations’ by dressing up in a sheet and using false beards, wigs etc. But when the police had ‘raided’ her séance while she was in trance and producing materializations they had found no sheet, no false beards, no wigs, no accomplice—indeed no evidence of fraud whatsoever. …the English and Scottish Law Societies jointly and separately expressed disgust at the miscarriage and ‘travesty of justice’ in the Helen Duncan tragedy created by cowardly armchair-violent men to do untold harm to a spiritual person.
http://www.victorzammit.com/book/4thedition/chapter11.html
This case was an outrageous example of a government abusing it’s power, using deception to suppress mediumship. Normally, the type of complaint made against Duncan would have been treated as a minor offence. When first arrested, the police charged her with vagrancy which would have been punished with a fine of up to five shillings. However, Duncan was denied bail and the charges were changed several times by the prosecutors. They finally settled upon pretending to conjure spirits under an archaic witchcraft act which was punishable by a prison sentence. This was an unprecedented overreaction. No other medium of that era was ever treated in this way. The only explanation for this miscarriage of justice is that the government wanted Duncan held incommunicado in prison during the time leading up to the D. Day invasion of Europe to prevent spirits from accidentally leaking secret information. That Duncan was denied bail for this minor and non-violent offence is further proof of this explanation. https://sites.google.com/site/chs4o8pt/skeptical_misdirection#skeptical_misdirection_duncan
PSYPIONEER
Founded by Leslie Price
Archived by
Garth Willey
Edited by
Paul J. Gaunt
PSYPIONEER
Founded by Leslie Price
Volume 5 No 1: January 2009
BEWITCHED BY THE DUNCAN MYTH
There is considerable testimony that Mrs Duncan produced ectoplasmic phenomena, as we were reminded in the recent documentary Unexplained on UK’s Channel 4, when Denise Iredell spoke. It is also reasonable to suppose that her arrest in 1944 was orchestrated by MI5. Dr Robert Hartley has deployed much evidence about this in his recent book 1, starting with the diary of Guy Liddell which recorded that the MI5 effort began in December 1941, just after the Barham seance. Thus some revision of the 1944 trial verdict ought not to be impossible. The progress of the Shot at Dawn campaign, which is concerned with First World War events, shows how 1 [See: – Books for sale in this issue’ Helen Duncan – The Mystery Show Trial] even distant verdicts can be officially reconsidered. But there are a number of problems with the HD pardon campaign. It has not received much backing or leadership from the official Spiritualist bodies, and it has associated itself with historically dubious side issues. http://www.woodlandway.org/PDF/PP5.1January09.pdf
hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk
The prosecution witnesses all reported that they had been lured to the seance in Portsmouth by promises of seeing something truly supernatural and had instead been confronted merely with Helen Duncan herself covered in a white sheet pretending to be ectoplasm. The only problem was that this white sheet was never found even though one of the sitters reported seizing it at the moment the police rushed in. It is odd that on every occasion people have lambasted Helen for faking her act using white sheets or cheesecloth, they have never actually produced said textiles; even though she had performed innumerable times in both Spiritualist institutions and psychical research laboratories. The closest anybody came to it was Esson Maule and the extra-small vest mentioned above. http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/helen-duncan.html
Helen Duncan- The Mystery Show Trial by Robert Hartley, published in 2007 see: http://www.amazon.co.uk/books/dp/0955342082
alixus 