Duncan, the article claimed, was branded "a witch and spy guilty of revealing wartime secrets" by an Old Bailey jury because of potentially sensitive information that she disclosed - "allegedly via contacts with the spirit world". Consequently, she received a nine-month prison sentence. Duncan's granddaughter, Mary Martin, has clearly suffered from the stigma this brought upon her family and is campaigning for a posthumous pardon, terming the conviction "ludicrous".

I have researched this case for my PhD on popular belief and British society, and, while I believe it highly unlikely that Churchill and George VI were among Duncan's clients, as has been rumoured, her trial was certainly sensationalised by the popular press, with headlines such as "Story of ghost that did not like lipstick" (Daily Express) and cartoons of hags riding broomsticks through the night sky.

The general public and the media tend to associate prosecutions under the act with actual witchcraft, but historian Owen Davies has pointed out that, in fact, the Witchcraft Act strove to eradicate the belief in witchcraft once and for all among educated people, the judiciary and the Anglican church. Its passage meant that it was no longer possible to be prosecuted as a witch in an English or Scottish court. It was, however, possible to be prosecuted for pretending to "exercise or use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment, or conjuration, or undertake to tell fortunes". Supposed contact with spirits fell into this category. Some 200 years later, when it was finally repealed, it was pronounced to have been "a most enlightened measure, well in advance of public opinion" by the then home secretary, James Ede.

Duncan is often dubbed the last person to be prosecuted under the Witchcraft Act, but six months after her trial, in September 1944, 72-year-old Jane Yorke was also prosecuted successfully. Yorke was found guilty on seven counts and was bound over in the sum of £5 to be on good behaviour for three years. The Witchcraft Act was invoked as late as December 1944 when police warned Emily Johnson, the president of the Redhill Spiritualist Church, that if her activities continued she would be liable to prosecution.

Most prosecutions for fortune-telling, astrology and spiritualism had been under section 4 of the Vagrancy Act (1824), but there had been other prosecutions under the Witchcraft Act in the first half of the 20th century. Both of these acts embody a long history of attempts by the authorities to protect the public from being duped by tricksters and fraudsters. There were various vigorous campaigns and petitions to repeal them during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, led by such advocates of spiritualism as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but despite those it was not until 1951 that the Witchcraft Act was finally repealed and replaced by the Fraudulent Mediums Act.

vanessa.chambers@sas.ac.uk