Ventriloquists

Introduction

According to Roger Wilmut in Kindly Leave the Stage!, the vents the technique dates "back to the Greek and Roman priests who used it to provide the pronouncements of their oracles; and it was used by many people through the succeeding centuries for purposes of amusement or deception (although practitioners of the art in the Middle Ages were liable to find themselves being burnt for witchcraft).

"… around 1750 that ventriloquists began to use doll figures as the apparent source of the voice, but throughout the early music-hall period performers such as Walter Cole, Frank Mordaunt and Frederic Maccabe appeared, often with groups of life-sized dolls.

This section contains such information as Wilmut presents on Fred Russell; Coram; Arthur Prince and Arthur Brough.