A witchcraft law used in 1944: what was Helen Duncan blamed for?

In 1944, the Scottish medium Helen Duncan was sentenced to nine months in prison under the Witchcraft Act of 1735. The combination of a modern war and a law bearing the word witchcraft immediately makes the case amazing.

But the text of 1735 no longer rests on the same logic as the old prosecutions for demonic pact. The State Library of Queensland explains that it targets people claiming to exercise supernatural powers, in an approach related to deception. The conviction therefore does not prove that the court had established the existence of magical powers.

The newspapers of the time, preserved and presented by the library, show the impact of the case. The story wins by keeping this distinction rather than proclaiming a “last witch of Europe”. The real strangeness is enough: an 18th century legal tool continued to be mobilized in the United Kingdom of the Second World War.