by
Teri_R
@ 22. Feb. 2007. - 02:15:52
Helen Duncan was known as the last witch of Scotland, she was a medium who was well known across the country and who even attracted attention from the authorities in wartime Britain. She was the last person to be tried, and imprisoned, under the 1735 Witchraft Act, which had lain dormant for over a century, not even being permitted right of appeal to the House of Lords.
In the midst of war, she spoke with a deceased sailor who told her that his ship, HMS Barham, had been sunk, although the War Office kept the loss quiet until several months later when they finally admitted its truth. In 1944, one of her seances was raided by the police who witnessed (and tried their best to stop) ectoplasm being emitted from her mouth while she was in a trance, after which she was arrested.
The uproar over her case eventually led to the repeal of the Witchcraft Act (1951) and official government recognition for Spiritualism as a religion (1954). She was seemingly watched by the police right up until her death (1956), their raids a not uncommon end to her seances after her release from Holloway Prison.
Her grandson has recently been campaigning for a posthumous pardon, so far to little avail and has launched a petition demanding that she be pardoned and her memory freed of its stain of criminality and imprisonment. Below are his own words and a link to the petition itself, should you wish to add your own name to it; please feel free to repeat this in your own blog or website so that many more people become aware of the story. I admit that i too knew nothing of her until i learnt of this petition but have since read a little more on the net, which i would also welcome you to do.
As most of you know my Grandmother Helen Duncan was a great medium in the UK, I have been trying along with many others to get her a posthumous pardon, I just found out from the web master of her site that a petition has been put before 10 Downing Street to have her pardoned, The problem is that only a few have signed this thing and it will fall by the wayside as being not in the public interest. I have attached a link to beg you to please sign this petition for my Granny. I dont want them to ignore her. Please help. Just copy and paste the link so you can sign this. It is only open to British citizens.
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/withcraft/sign
I signed 