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CASE #EOEYZJ · 3 entities · 2 connections
The Cottingley Fairies
Two young cousins convinced the creator of Sherlock Holmes that fairies were real — using cardboard cutouts and hatpins.
In 1917, teenage cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths photographed themselves alongside what appeared to be real fairies in a garden in Cottingley, England. The photos fooled photography experts and prominent believers for decades before the girls admitted, in 1983, that the fairies were paper cutouts.
⇄disputed
Quick facts
- →Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, publicly championed the photos as real.
- →A photography expert hired specifically to detect fakes initially found no evidence of tampering.
- →Elsie and Frances didn't admit the hoax until 1983, over sixty years later.
- →Frances maintained until her death that the fifth and final photo was genuinely unaltered.
Entities on file
Cottingley Fairies photographs (document)
Series of five 1917-1921 photographs later confirmed to be a hoax using paper cutouts.
No outgoing connections on file.
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Elsie Wright (person)
Took the photographs alongside her cousin Frances; admitted the hoax in 1983.
→ created → Cottingley Fairies photographs✓documented
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Frances Griffiths (person)
Photographed alongside the fairies as a child; maintained until her death that one photo was genuine.
→ appeared in and later confirmed the hoax behind → Cottingley Fairies photographs✓documented