Listening to Radio Five Live on my run-in to work the subject of witchcraft came up. Various events from history were discussed and it ended with the presenter saying that the last person to stand trial in Britain for witchcraft did so in 1944, meaning how could we have been so daft in 1944 - it seems we were dafter than he thought.
At a seance in Portsmouth in late November 1941, Helen Duncan, a spiritualist medium from Callander, Scotland, announced that she had contacted a dead sailor who had told her that his ship, HMS Barham, had recently been sunk (with the loss of 861 lives).
The Admiralty were trying to keep this fact quiet from the Germans who hadn't realised they had sunk the battleship and the British, on the grounds of keeping up moral. Relatives were later told of the loss of their loved-one's but also told not to tell anyone else on the grounds of national security.
Duncan was not arrested in the aftermath of the Barham incident but later, in 1944, superstitious intelligence officers learned of the event and feared that Duncan might reveal plans for the D-Day landings.
To make sure she was kept quiet Duncan was convicted under the British Witchcraft Act of 1735 and sentenced to nine months in prison.
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