January 21, 2007
LONDON -- She's 72 and a great-grandmother, but she still remembers how her classmates labeled her ''witch-spawn'' and ''evil eye'' -- because her grandmother was one of the last people jailed in Britain over witchcraft charges.
At the height of World War II, medium Helen Duncan was convicted under an 18th-century anti-witchcraft law and jailed by authorities who accused her of compromising Britain's safety.
<snip>
In the 1940s, Duncan, who died in 1955, was a well-known medium and her clients reportedly included Winston Churchill and King George VI.
But she ran into trouble after reportedly telling the parents of a missing sailor that their son had gone down on the HMS Barham, a ship whose 1941 loss had not yet been reported. Jittery military police broke into a seance and charged her with ''pretending to be a witch."
Read the article