Author and prominent Spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle learned of the photographs from the editor of the Spiritualists’ publication Light.
He had been commissioned by The Strand Magazine to write an article on fairies for their Christmas issue, and the fairy photographs “must have seemed like a godsend” according to broadcaster and historian Magnus Magnusson.
Doyle contacted Gardner in June 1920 to determine the background to the photographs, and wrote to Elsie and her father to request permission from the latter to use the prints in his article. Arthur Wright was “obviously impressed” that Doyle was involved, and gave his permission for publication, but he refused payment on the grounds that, if genuine, the images should not be “soiled” by money.
Gardner and Doyle sought a second expert opinion from the photographic company Kodak. Several of the company’s technicians examined the enhanced prints, and although they agreed with Snelling that the pictures “showed no signs of being faked”, they concluded that “this could not be taken as conclusive evidence … that they were authentic photographs of fairies”.
Kodak declined to issue a certificate of authenticity. Gardner believed that the Kodak technicians might not have examined the photographs entirely objectively, observing that one had commented “after all, as fairies couldn’t be true, the photographs must have been faked somehow”.
The prints were also examined by another photographic company, Ilford, who reported unequivocally that there was “some evidence of faking”. Gardner and Doyle, perhaps rather optimistically, interpreted the results of the three expert evaluations as two in favour of the photographs’ authenticity and one against.
Doyle also showed the photographs to the physicist and pioneering psychical researcher Sir Oliver Lodge, who believed the photographs to be fake. He suggested that a troupe of dancers had masqueraded as fairies, and expressed doubt as to their “distinctly ‘Parisienne'” hairstyles.