Faith in Mythology Made a Fool Out of Sherlock Holmes’s Author
Two years after Elsie Wright and her cousin Frances Griffith photographed “fairies” in Cottingley, things took off. The pictures went viral after Frances’ mother showed them at a conference of the Theosophical Society – a New Age spiritualist type group. The photos were clearly questionable, and experts who saw them declared that they were crude cardboard cutouts. However, the existence of Fairies and similar mythology dovetailed with some religious tenets of the Theosophical Society. So the society’s members – who included prominent British figures – began to spread the photos and vouched for their authenticity.
In 1920, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became aware of the photos’ existence. He was initially skeptical, and went so far as to ask Eastman Kodak for their opinion. However, before he had received a reply from the camera and film manufacturer, Doyle concluded that the photos were real. Before long, Sherlock Holmes’ author had begun to vouch for the photos’ authenticity. He eventually became a huge advocate for the existence of fairies in real life. It was the start of an awkward journey.