World-famous fake fairies photos fetch £2,600 at 'extraordinary' auction in Louth
An auction in Louth, featuring the infamous Cottingley Fairies photos, has sparked “phenomenal” interest from across the world.
The set of photos, taken between 1917 and 1920, supposedly depicts two young cousins, 16-year-old Elsie Wright and nine-year-old Frances Griffiths, playing with magical fairies and gnomes at the bottom of their garden in the Cottingley area of Bradford.
At the time, they were accepted as authentic and attracted attention across the globe. They were even published by convinced author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Most of them were later exposed as fakes as Elsie and Frances admitted, in 1980s interviews, that the fairies had been created from paper cut-outs and hat-pins.
Frances said: “I never thought of it as being a fraud. It was just Elsie and I, two village kids, having a bit of fun. I can’t understand why people were taken in.”
However, the photos continued to create international fascination and when two of them, in their original wallets, came up for sale at John Taylors auction rooms at Eastgate, Louth last week, they fetched as much as £2,600.
They came under the hammer courtesy of their latest owner, David Whittaker, the son of Mary Anderson, who was Frances’s best friend at school. Frances had handed a set of the photos to Mary who, at first, believed they were genuine.
"My immediate reaction is that I’m amazed someone would be prepared to pay so much,” said David, 85, who lives in Saltfleetby.
"There is a lot of mystique to it all. But my mother would have been very shocked that she had something so valuable.
"I’m pleased the photos have gone to a proper collector. There is now another custodian of them and they aren’t just sitting in a drawer in our house!”
The auction rooms reported that the sale “aroused a phenomenal level of interest” and described the auction itself as “extraordinary”.
The most optimistic price-estimate was initially £1,000 to £1,500, but pre-sale bidding topped that the night before the auction even took place. It rose to £2,200 by the time auctioneer James Laverack opened the live bidding.
There followed an edgy two-minute battle between bidders from Lancashire and London, both online, before the lot was knocked down to the latter, a collector of memorabilia, for £2,600.
James said: “We were very pleased with the result. It was the provenance that gave these copies of the Cottingley Fairies such special appeal.
"The fact that the pictures were once owned by Frances Griffiths, the girl photographed, and were gifted to her best friend, the mother of the vendor, David Whittaker.”
David revealed that, in the end, his late mum accepted that the photos were probably all part of a hoax. But he was sure there were people who “still believe in creatures of the spirit world” and that they would “thoroughly enjoy looking at these pictures”.