of a ship’s company of 1,418.
Although not direct evidence Mr Hewit claims it suggests the authorities would have been aware of Helen Duncan’s activities and may well have been alarmed by them.
D Day Landings
Mr Hewit, a former solicitor advocate, said previous submissions to the Criminal Cases Review Commission had been rejected on the grounds that it ‘is not in the public interest to reopen this trial’.
“We want to get this case re-examined. There is ample evidence that the defence counsel handled the court case very badly and that Helen Duncan had been set up by members of the security services acting as agent provocateurs.
“Every time I look into this case I get more information,” said Mr Hewit. “I went to a spiritualist church in Cambridge one evening and I heard a woman talking to a medium saying her father had been on HMS Hood and he went AWOL when it sailed.
“She said her father had jumped ship because he had gone to a Helen Duncan seance in Edinburgh where his dead father had come through and warned him that if he went out with the Hood on its next trip he would not return.
“He was later caught by the military authorities just aſter the Hood had sunk and told them what had happened. He was promptly given a turn in jankers and then allocated to submarines, but he survived the war.”
HMS Hood was sunk by the German batleship Bismarck in May 1941. Only three men survived out
He claims that in the run up to D-Day Portsmouth was closed to all but military personnel, local residents and their relatives, clerics and doctors visiting the sick and injured.
“Why was Helen Duncan allowed to visit? She did not come under any of those classifications. I think it was because they were watching out for her, if she was going to do a demonstration they wanted to catch her in the act so she could be incarcerated.”
At a time when the military authorities were anxious to keep plans of the Allied invasion of occupied France secret, Duncan and other psychics were seen as a potential threat to security.
According to Leslie Price, of the College of Psychic Studies where Helen was tested in 1931, the published diaries of former spy chief Guy Liddell confirm the security services had begun investigating Duncan in December 1941, litle more than six months aſter the sinking of HMS Hood.
Indeed, interest in Helen Duncan
HMS Hood June 2015 75
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