In September 1943,
Helen Duncan was jailed under the act on the grounds that she had claimed to summon spirits. Her followers often contend that her imprisonment was in fact at the behest of superstitious military intelligence officers, who feared that she would reveal the secret plans for
D-Day. She came to the attention of the authorities after supposedly contacting the spirit of a sailor of , whose sinking was hidden from the general public at the time. After being caught faking a spiritual manifestation, she was arrested during a seance and indicted with seven punishable counts: two of conspiracy to contravene the Witchcraft Act 1735, two of obtaining money by false pretences, and three of
public mischief (a common law offence). She spent nine months in prison. Duncan has been frequently described as the last person to be convicted under the act. Another candidate for the last person convicted under the act was
Jane Rebecca Yorke of
Forest Gate in east London. On 26 September 1944 at the
Central Criminal Court, Yorke was convicted on seven counts of "pretending ... to cause the spirits of deceased persons to be present" and
bound over. The last threatened use of the act against a medium was in 1950. The act was repealed with the enactment of the
Fraudulent Mediums Act 1951, largely at the instigation of
Spiritualists through the agency of
Thomas Brooks MP. The South African
Witchcraft Suppression Act, 1957, which is still in force, was based on similar 19th-century laws in the
Cape Colony which were themselves based on the Witchcraft Act 1735. == Notes ==