Story Behind the Cottingley Fairies (includes Interviews with Frances Griffthis and Elsie Wright) — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00photographs perhaps the most famous are
2. 0:03these of fairies in a Yorkshire Glen
3. 0:07[Music]
4. 0:13Francis Griffiths has brought her
5. 0:15daughter to see the house in cottingley
6. 0:17where she lived with her cousin Elsie
7. 0:19Wright during the first World War
8. 0:23[Music]
9. 0:26Francis and Elsie used to go down to
10. 0:29play by the back the stream at the
11. 0:31bottom of the garden
12. 0:33and it was by that stream they said that
13. 0:36in 1917 they took photographs of fairies
14. 0:41that summer ten-year-old Francis kept
15. 0:43falling into the bank and getting into
16. 0:45trouble when her mother asked her why
17. 0:47she went there she said to see the
18. 0:50fairies
19. 0:52to back up the story sixteen-year-old
20. 0:55Elsie borrowed her father's camera to
21. 0:57try and photograph them
22. 1:01the girls came home an hour later Elsie
23. 1:05begged her father to waste no time he
24. 1:07had a dark room in the cupboard Under
25. 1:08the Stairs she remembers watching
26. 1:11anxiously while he developed the plate
27. 1:13impatient to see how it was going to
28. 1:15come out dad says I'll tell you what is
29. 1:17coming up like that that picture you've
30. 1:20taken it says it's very untidy he says
31. 1:23you've been eating sandwiches the
32. 1:24sandwich paper is all sticking up and
33. 1:27and then he says what's these little
34. 1:29make things down here
35. 1:32and Elsa shares it out they come they've
36. 1:35come they come out a month after this
37. 1:38first picture they produced another of
38. 1:40Elsie with a winged gnome these two
39. 1:43photographs are maze to Arthur Conan
40. 1:45Doyle creator of Sherlock Holmes he
41. 1:48published them in the Strand magazine
42. 1:49and pronounced them genuine foreign
43. 1:54[Music]
44. 1:54[Applause]
45. 1:57hit the headlines
46. 1:59and within days went round the world
47. 2:03though some critics were skeptical Conan
48. 2:06Doyle remained convinced
49. 2:08he arranged for the girls to be given
50. 2:10new cameras they took more pictures
51. 2:12Francis and the leaping fairy Elsie and
52. 2:16the winged fairy offering a posey of
53. 2:18flowers and finally the fairy Bower
54. 2:23for 50 years they stuck to their story
55. 2:26did you in any way fabricate those
56. 2:28photographs of course not
57. 2:29[Music]
58. 2:32you tell us
59. 2:33how to tell this and then we'll tell you
60. 2:35she remember she was 16. I was 10.
61. 2:40the case was finally cracked in 1982
62. 2:42with evidence from the Brotherton
63. 2:44collection in Leeds University
64. 2:47it holds what is supposed to be the
65. 2:49original negatives and prints
66. 2:51but Jeffrey Crawley editor of the
67. 2:53British Journal of Photography soon
68. 2:55realized that the midge camera which the
69. 2:57girls used simply wasn't good enough to
70. 3:00have taken the first photograph in
71. 3:02particular the simple lens could not
72. 3:04have produced such a sharp negative this
73. 3:07negative
74. 3:08is quite Lively
75. 3:10the edges of the fairy figures are quite
76. 3:13sharp and it clearly
77. 3:15could not have been produced by that
78. 3:18lens in that Midge camera
79. 3:20reasoned that this cannot have been the
80. 3:22original print
81. 3:23amazingly he Unearthed incottingly what
82. 3:27he believes is an original print it
83. 3:29looks quite different the original print
84. 3:31is much softer
85. 3:33exactly the type of should we say less
86. 3:37Lively image that you would expect from
87. 3:40a camera of this type
88. 3:41consequently a lot must have gone on
89. 3:44between that
90. 3:46and that
91. 3:48Crawley believes that the photograph was
92. 3:50retouched by an expert so what you would
93. 3:53have to do is first of all make yourself
94. 3:56a fresh negative of this and you retouch
95. 4:00that negative to improve it with an
96. 4:02airbrush and people very skilled in
97. 4:04those days possibly more skilled than
98. 4:05today even
99. 4:07now is the fair is that everybody's
100. 4:09interested in so he subdues the face
101. 4:12brings out the Pharisees and this is the
102. 4:14first thing that people noticed and they
103. 4:16said they were glowing with a theory or
104. 4:18light
105. 4:19and on the negative plate he found
106. 4:21evidence that the face had been subdued
107. 4:24probably by rubbing with Brasso he
108. 4:27thinks that the man behind it was Edward
109. 4:29Gardner believer in fairies and friend
110. 4:31of Conan Doyle
111. 4:33when Crawley published his findings
112. 4:35Francis and Elsie confessed that the
113. 4:37pictures were fakes
114. 4:40what really happened was this
115. 4:43after Francis had claimed she'd seen
116. 4:45fairies up the back both girls were
117. 4:47teased by the adults Elsie hit on a
118. 4:50scheme to stop the teasing Elsa said one
119. 4:53night we're getting ready for badges
120. 4:55I've been thinking kid she's a real
121. 4:58Sonoma girls Kelsey she says what about
122. 5:01if I draw some fairies and cut them out
123. 5:04in cardboard and we'll stick them up in
124. 5:07the grass and take see if Uncle and dad
125. 5:10who had this camera would take a photo
126. 5:12so if they see them they'll have to
127. 5:15believe it they'll stop all this joking
128. 5:17so she lent Elsie this book and from
129. 5:20page 104 Elsie traced this group of
130. 5:23dancing girls took off their wispy
131. 5:26drapes
132. 5:27do Wings on them
133. 5:30cut them out and arrange them in an
134. 5:33artistic group
135. 5:40then she took the photograph
136. 5:44to stand them upright they used hat pins
137. 5:46what we did
138. 5:48and I said we uh the the long hat pin we
139. 5:53put it down down the back like that
140. 5:58and stuck the uh the tape in the bag
141. 6:01like that and then gradually wormed that
142. 6:04they were longer than that though there
143. 6:06were although about that 18 inches at
144. 6:09least and then warmed that down into
145. 6:11there
146. 6:13and
147. 6:14they said that they said that the thing
148. 6:17was that they could see them that the
149. 6:19fairies were moving and the photographs
150. 6:21were stayed but that's because they did
151. 6:23it in the breeze
152. 6:26and they never even thought of it being
153. 6:28a fraud
154. 6:29it was just elsina having a bit of fun