The 1917 photographs
In mid-1917, nine-year-old Frances Griffiths and her mother,
both newly arrived in the UK from South Africa, were staying
with Frances Griffiths' aunt in the village of Cottingley in West
Yorkshire; Elsie was then 16 years old. The two girls often played
together beside the brook at the bottom of the garden, much to
their mothers' annoyance, because they frequently came back
with wet feet and clothes. Frances and Elsie said they only went
to the beck to see the fairies, and to prove it, Elsie borrowed her
father's camera, a Midg quarter-plate. The girls then apparently
returned about 30 minutes later, in, what was described as, a
"triumphant" mood.
Elsie's father, Arthur, was a keen amateur
photographer himself and had his own
darkroom.
The
picture
on
the photographic plate that he developed
showed Frances behind a bush in the
foreground, on which four fairies appeared
to be dancing. Two months later the girls
borrowed his camera again, and this time
returned with a photograph of Elsie sitting
on the lawn holding out her hand to a
30 cm gnome. While Arthur thought the
photos to be "nothing but a prank", his
Cottingley Beck, where Frances wife Polly believed the photographs to be
and Elsie claimed to have
authentic.
seen the fairies
The photographs became public in mid-1919, after Elsie's
mother showed the photographs at a meeting of
the Theosophical Society in Bradford. As a result, the
photographs were displayed at the Society's annual conference
in Harrogate a few months later, where they came to the
attention of a leading member of the Society, Edward Gardner.
Later he wrote: “.... the fact that two young girls had not only
been able to see fairies, which others had done, but had actually
for the first time ever been able to materialise them at a de