Podcasts · Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford

Photographing Fairies

· 37 min · S3 E3

Episode Photographing Fairies

0:00 37:07

Sherlock Holmes is known for approaching all mysteries with cool logic - and yet when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle saw photographs taken by two young girls purporting to show real life fairies at play... he unwisely declared them genuine.

How did Elsie and Frances fool so many people with their photography... and why did they keep the hoax going for decades?

For a full list of sources go to timharford.com

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The episode on the publisher’s site (opens in a new tab)

Transcript

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