Fake fairy photos that even fooled the creator of Sherlock Holmes fetch 10 times their estimated value at UK auction
Images were taken in 1917 by Elsie Wright, 16, and her nine-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths by using Wright’s father’s camera, coloured paper cut-outs, and hat pins
The Cottingley Fairies photographs, widely considered to be one of the greatest hoaxes of the 20th century, have sold at auction for more than 10 times their estimated value.
The photographs of the fake fairies were expected to fetch between £700 (US$913) and £1,000 (US$1,300) at Dominic Winter Auctioneers in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, but ended up going for more than £20,000 (US$26,100).
They were taken in 1917 by Elsie Wright, 16, and her nine-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths, in the village of Cottingley, near Bingley in West Yorkshire. The two girls used Wright’s father’s camera, coloured paper cut-outs, and hat pins to stage the photos.
The two photos fooled eminent figures of the 1920s such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, who championed them as genuine. Wright’s mother showed the pictures to members of the Theosophical Society in Bradford, during a lecture on fairy life. Edward Gardner, a leading society member, sold prints of the photographs at his theosophical lectures in 1920.