Ventriloquists

Fred Russell

The credit for inventing the single small doll, usually perched on the ventriloquist's knee, belongs to Fred Russell. He first presented his dummy 'Coster Joe' in 1896 and set the format for ventriloquism which has survived with little variation to the present day.

Other dummies were sometimes uased as an experiment. Fred Russell, having pioneered the single small doll, reverted to the use of larger dummies around 1923 when he and his wife presented a court scene with about twenty dummies. It was so realistic that many people thought that he had several assistants and that the 'judge' was a real person. It was never popular, and on one occasion when he reverted to 'Coster joe', the theatre manager said, 'Why carry all those props about when you've got that act?'

From Kindly Leave the Stage! By Roger Wilmut