Hellish Nell: Last of Britain's Witches

Hellish Nell is a highly recommendable book for one whose interest lies not only in the personality of Helen Duncan as such but is also interested in rather exhaustive information about the spirit of the age and background information on witch hunt Gaskill gives.
However, there are sections of the book that are hard to follow since Gaskill tends to jump back and forth in his descriptions, mixing the illustration of Helen Duncan's life with historical details that in some occasion could easily be left out for the convenience of the reader. Consequently, the book might leave one in a state of utter confusion because the author seems to have failed to concentrate only on the essential facts, namely the fate of Hellish Nell. If some of the detailed information and explanations were left out the book would be easier to comprehend not only for a scholarly but also for a ordinary readership.


Description of Gaskill's Hellish Nell   January 16, 2004
Hellish Nell - Last of Britain's witches by the historian Malcolm Gaskill is concerned with the story of Victoria Helen Duncan who was tried at London's Central Criminal Court under the Witchcraft Act of 1735 in 1944.

This book contains several pictures, a prologue, three parts - each subdivided into three sec-tions - and an epilogue. It deals with Helen's early life, her career as a medium and the inci-dent that almost destroyed it.
Helen McFarlane - with her nickname Hellish Nell for her tomboyish behaviour - was born in Scotland, to be more precise in a small Perthshire town called Callander. Helen was told by her mother that she would be burnt as a witch if she refused to be silent.
Furthermore, Nell was banished from home because of her illegitimate child. Helen finally found work in Dundee and married Henry Duncan, who had been invalided out of the army. The Duncan family consisted of six children, and they had to live under bad conditions, until Helen developed her gift of passing messages from deceased people to their relatives - she became a successful spiritualist medium. Mrs. Duncan could contact the spirits of dead people and manifest them. Clothed in ectoplasm, luminous matter generated inside the medium's body, these spirits would be reunited with their friends and family before returning to the other side.
Nevertheless, it has to be mentioned that Mrs. Duncan raised the attention of sceptics, as well. One day Helen had given a seance in the naval base of Portsmouth. The spirit of a dead sailor had materialised for his mother, upon his cap-band the name HMS Barham, a warship sta-tioned in the eastern Mediterranean. His mother contacted the naval authorities; they knew that HMS Barham had been sunk, but the government was hiding this fact from the public and would not state this for three months. It seemed to be nearly impossible for Mrs Duncan to know that the crew of the Barham was dead, so she appeared to have psychic powers. There-fore Helen Duncan was arrested - the police raided this seance. Towards the end of March Duncan was found guilty and prosecuted at London's Central Criminal Court, the Old Bailey, for conspiracy to break the Witchcraft Act of 1735. Helen had to spend nine months in Hol-loway Prison.
After Duncan's sentence, she seemed to be rather exhausted, but she continued to hold se-ances. In December 1956 Helen Duncan fell ill and diet at the age of 59 at home in Edin-burgh.
This book by Malcolm Gaskill is very detailed and depicts all the friends and enemies of spiritualism, for instance Harry Houdini is mentioned, moreover Helen's case came to the attention of Winston Churchill.

Today it is said that Helen Duncan still makes contact in her work as a spirit-guide to another generation of mediums.