Helen Duncan’s trials

In a recent ‘It Happened to Me’ [ FT379:76-77] there were two spooky stories recorded in Copnor Road in Portsmouth: the old lady with the strange eyelash accoutrements sent in by David Twine and the rain of frogs from Nick Maloret. These rung huge bells with my research for my wartime crime novel, That Old Black Magic [ FT364:2]. Copnor Road is where the Master

Temple Psychic Centre once was, above the chemist’s shop run by Edward Homer and his wife Elizabeth. This was where Helen Duncan performed her fated séance on 2 December 1941, when she allegedly communicated with a sailor from the HMS Barham, which had been torpedoed by German submarine U-331 in the eastern Mediterranean on 25 November, with 868 killed, news of which was placed under a D-Notice.

It is also where a subsequent

investigation into the activities of Helen and the Homers led to them all being arrested at another séance on 14 January 1944. All were subsequently charged with contravening theVagrancy Act by “pretending to hold communication with the spirits of deceased persons”. This charge was later upped to one of fraud and framed by barristers and the Home Office into indictment, which was found in Section 4 of the 1735 Witchcraft Act: “… the more effectual preventing and punishing any pretences to such arts and powers”. It led to Helen’s infamous Old Bailey trial in March-April 1944 and subsequent conviction (although the Homers were let off) and incarceration in Holloway Prison for 10 months, a case that remains highly controversial to this day [see FT116:40-43, 372:38, 45].

The subsequent strange goings-on in Copnor Road suggest that the Homers had found a powerful ‘ley line’ to place their business on – even if things did not turn out so well for all concerned.

Cathi Unsworth

London