As a child, Scottish-born Helen Duncan earned the nickname Hellish Nell for her tomboyish exploits. She alienated her peers with bizarre behaviour and sinister predictions, and her mother predicted that one day she would be burnt as a witch. In 1910 Helen, at the age of 20, married invalided soldier Henry Duncan, whom she had 'first met in her dreams', and Henry neglected his business of cabinet-making to help her develop as a psychic and to help raise their six children. To sustain this large family and a disabled husband she worked in the local bleach factory by day and her spiritual work and domestic duties by night. The small amount of cash she made from her sittings, mostly token donations from friends and neighbours existing in a similar poverty to herself, would often discreetly go to their local doctor to pay for those patients who were destitute. This was in the time before Britain's national health service concept of free medicine for all had been introduced.
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| Helen Duncan |
