Talk:Ignatius Cottingley/@comment-98.164.123.241-20170521194753

His name is most likely a reference to the Cottingley Fairies, which appear in a series of photos supposedly taken of the fairies in the the 1900s. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (creator of Sherlock Holmes and avid spiritualist) was a big supporter of the pictures as proof of psychic phenomena. It came out much later that the pictures were faked.

Wikipedia article