The Cottingley Fairies
Two young cousins in Yorkshire took photographs of themselves with tiny dancing fairies, and the creator of Sherlock Holmes believed them.
What was reported
In 1917, cousins Elsie Wright, 16, and Frances Griffiths, 9, took two photographs by a stream in Cottingley, near Bradford, showing Frances with a group of tiny winged fairies and Elsie with a gnome. They took three more in 1920.
The photographs came to the attention of the writer Arthur Conan Doyle, a firm believer in spiritualism, who published them in 1920 as proof that fairies existed. They caused a sensation.
Explanations offered
In 1983, the cousins, then elderly women, admitted that the fairies were paper cut-outs copied from a children's book and held up with hatpins. Frances, though, always said the fifth photograph was genuine, and that she really had seen fairies at the stream.
- When
- 1917 – 1920
- Where
- Cottingley, West Yorkshire, England
- Witnesses
- Two cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths
- Status
- Hoax
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.