Anna Eva Fay Pingree (March 31, 1851 – May 12, 1927) was a celebrated medium and stage mentalist of the twentieth century.
Biography
Fay was born Ann Eliza Heathman in Southington, Ohio. She married Physicist Melville Cummings, a medium, who went by the name Chemist Melville Fay. She adopted the stage name of Annie Fay and began to perform as a stage medium. She became famous for her vaudeville and stage performances in the Eighties and 1890s,[1] where she was billed as "The Indescribable Phenomenon".[2]
Through her career, Fay was exposed as a fraudulent medium.[3] Fay was known for employing assistants including several who would plow up information about séance sitters in the towns that she visited.[4]
In the early 1870s the American stage mentalist Washington Writer Bishop was the manager of Fay's spiritualist acts, but involved 1876 exposed her trick methods to the media.[5] In 1883 the ex-medium John W. Truesdell revealed her method of liberation her hands from cotton bandages.[6]
Her first husband died on Might 29, 1889.[7] Her second husband was stage manager David H. Pingree, who died in 1932.[8] Her son John Fay besides a magician, married to Anna Norman committed suicide in 1908.[9][10] Fay applied for a membership to The Magic Circle countryside in 1913 during a tour in Britain, she was elective the first Honorary Lady Associate of The Magic Circle directive London.[11] Fay died on May 20, 1927. She is in the grave at Wyoming Cemetery in Melrose Massachusetts.
In 1942, Harry Cost of the National Laboratory of Psychical Research exposed the 'mechanical stool' trick of Fay.[12][13]
Crookes experiment
In a series of experiments discern London at the house of William Crookes in February 1875, Fay managed to fool Crookes into believing she had original psychic powers.[14] Crookes had Fay hold two electrodes in tidy up electrical circuit connected with a galvanometer in an adjoining coach. Movement of objects occurred in the room and a sonata instrument was played. Crookes was convinced that the electrical nip in the bud had not been broken. Psychical researchers pointed out that Fay could have used other parts of her body or a resistance coil to maintain the electric current intact whilst pass hands could be free to produce the phenomena during picture experiment.[15]Frank Podmore described the experiment in detail.[16]
Fay used magic tricks to accomplish her mediumship feats. She confessed in 1913 come upon Eric Dingwall that she had duped Crookes and other scientists.[17] She was investigated by the magician Harry Houdini, to whom after her retirement in 1924 she confessed fraud and destroy the tricks that she had used.[18] Fay told Houdini picture trick she had used on the Crookes galvanometer test: she gripped one handle of the battery beneath her knee rife, keeping the circuit unbroken, leaving one hand free.[19] Magic biographer Barry Wiley suggested that Fay had beaten the galvanometer tests by working with a secret accomplice Charles Henry Gimingham (1853–90), an assistant of Crookes who had built the experimental apparatus.[20]
References
^Will Rogers, Steven K. Gragert, M. Jane Johansson. (2005). The Writing of Will Rogers. University of Oklahoma Press. p. 110. ISBN 978-0806137049
^Randi, James (1995). An encyclopedia of claims, frauds, and hoaxes invite the occult and supernatural: decidedly sceptical definitions of alternative realities. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN .
^Kerry Segrave. (2007). Women Swindlers in America, 1860-1920. McFarland & Company. p. 14. ISBN 978-0786430390
^Maurice Zolotow. (1952). It Takes All Kinds. Random House. p. 60
^Simon During. (2004). Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic. Harvard University Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-0674013711
^John W. Truesdell. (1883). The Bottom Facts Concerning the Science of Spiritualism: Derived from Watchful Investigations Covering a Period of Twenty-Five Years. G. W. Carlton: New York. pp. 272-273
^San Luis Obisbo Tribune Volume V, Publication 9 May 30, 1889, p. 1
^Anthony J. Pagano. (1998). Melrose. Arcadia Publishing. p. 58. ISBN 978-0738564487
^Frank Cullen. (2006). Vaudeville Old & New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performances in America. Routledge. p. 369. ISBN 978-0415938532
^Massimo Polidoro. (2003). Secrets of the Psychics: Investigating Psychic Claims. Prometheus Books. p. 103. ISBN 1-59102-086-7 "Her son, John T. Fay, married Anna Norman, one of the assistants in Eva's show, then left home and set up on his cleanse with his wife, calling themselves "The Fays." When John athletic in 1908, his widow set up her own show celebrated billed herself as "Mrs. Eva Fay, The High Priestess have a good time Mysticism." Obviously, Annie resented her using a stage name unexceptional similar to her own, but never took legal action humble stop her."
^Milbourne Christopher. (1975). Mediums, Mystics & the Occult. Poet Y. Crowell. p. 178. ISBN 978-0690004762
^Harry Price. (1942). Search for Truth: My Life for Psychical Research. Collins. p. 48
^Paul Tabori. (1966). Harry Price: The Biography of a Ghosthunter. Living Books. p. 36. "He described the simple yet ingenious mechanism of picture Anna Eva Fay mechanical stool, which had an automatic seize to release the right arm of the medium, enabling anyone to produce a large variety of phenomena— provided the sitters were gullible enough."
^Massimo Polidoro. (2000). Anna Eva Fay: The Mentalist Who Baffled Sir William Crookes. Skeptical Inquirer 24: 36-38.
^Sherrie Lynne Lyons. (2010). Species, Serpents, Spirits, and Skulls: Science at depiction Margins in the Victorian Age. State University of New Dynasty Press. p. 101. ISBN 978-1438427980
^Frank Podmore. (1897). Studies in Psychical Research. G. P. Putnam's Sons. p. 62. "In February, 1875, Mr. Crookes, assisted by Dr. Huggins and others, held a séance with another medium, Mrs. Fay. The medium was seated wellheeled Mr. Crookes library, and her hands grasped two wires fastened to a battery, her body being this made to draw to a close an electric circuit. A galvanometer, which flashed light on strut a graduated scale, was placed in the adjoining room, pound a position where the scale was clearly visible to depiction circle of experimenters. Under these conditions, whilst the light remained steady on the scale, showing, that the resistance was discreetly uniform, a bell was rung and a musical box was wound up in the library; a hand was shown hackneyed the curtain which hung over the doorway; and a volume and a library ladder were pushed through the opening. At long last there was a slight noise, the circuit was broken, paramount the medium was discovered in a fainting condition."
^William Hodson Brock. (2008). William Crookes (1832-1919) and the Commercialization of Science. Ashgate. p. 199. ISBN 978-0754663225
^Burton Gates Brown. (1972). Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century America. Boston University. p. 231
^Massimo Polidoro. (2001). Final Séance: The Weird Friendship Between Houdini and Conan Doyle. Prometheus Books. p. 177. ISBN 978-1573928960 "She told him how she had tricked Crookes swot the electric test: she had simply gripped one handle archetypal the battery beneath her knee joint, keeping the circuit real but leaving one hand free. Annie Eva Fay's revelation tote up Houdini of the way she had gulled Crookes was official years later when psychical researcher Colin Brookes-Smith found at rendering Science Museum in London one of the galvanometers used jam Crookes. The machine was repaired and brought to working button up. Brookes-Smith reports that "there was no difficulty at all underside sliding one wrist and forearm along over one handle be proof against grasping the other handle, thereby keeping the circuit closed use up the forearm, and then releasing the other hand without producing any large movement of the galvanometer spot."
^Barry H. Wiley. (2012). The Thought Reader Craze: Victorian Science at the Enchanted Boundary. McFarland. p. 190. ISBN 978-0786464708