The last person tried under a British Witchcraft Act was in 1944, but not for the reasons you might expect
Helen Duncan, a Scottish medium, spent much of her time doing battle with scientists and sceptics over her supposed abilities to vomit up 'ectoplasm' during seances, as well as her photography showing 'spirits' over her shoulder as she communed with the dead
Most of this stuff was amusingly ridiculous, she would regurgitate cheesecloth covered in egg and claim it to be ectoplasm. Her critics made her swallow methylene blue tablets or tried to use X-rays to show up her fraudulence to the public.
However, her desperation for success led her into trouble when she summoned the spirit of a dead sailor in Portsmouth 1941, who claimed to be a lost soul who went down with HMS Barham. The problem was, no-one knew that HMS Barham had been sunk!
The ship had been destroyed by a U-boat torpedo in Nov 1941, and the public had not been told. Only the immediate families of the crew knew the awful news.
A lieutenant in the audience was so disgusted by Duncan's performance that he reported her to the police, who arrested her under the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Later on, with the worry that she would continue to leak classified information, the authorities added more charges.
The 1735 Witchcraft Act was an ancient set of laws at this point, which outlined the position that witchcraft and magic were not real and those pretending to be in possession of such powers were guilty of a crime.
Duncan's trial was an interesting case of civil liberties. She and her supporters insisted she was a real medium, witnesses thought the whole affair was ridiculous. She was found guilty by a jury and given nine months in prison.
The 1735 Act was repealed not long afterwards. Spiritualism was prominent amongst many MPs, intellectuals, writers and journalists, and many felt the Act overstepped the mark in a free society.
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